In a world of Dungeons and Dragons, there are heroes and there are villains. Meet the Lords of Chaos, a group of ragtag adventurers trying to take over the world. Chaos and mass murder abound!
Change is very scary. After all, you have your way of doing things. Dancing in front of painted backgrounds. An archaic way of speaking that makes you sound like a grandma to the youngsters of today. A design that's simple and easy to draw. I come from a time that seemed so much simpler than today.
But things do change. This has happened before after all. First it was sound, then color, then new techniques to draw characters faster than before. It was terrifying when computers got involved. Suddenly everyone wanted three dimensions, not two like you’re used to. I’ve seen several friends make the adaptation. Some are more successful than others, mind you, but change all the same.
The trend did not stop as a gimmick. It became the way of life. Soon, everyone was created on machines. Artists now are computer experts on top of illustrators. And you developed new friendships from this new world being explored. After all, they can now leap out of the screen better than before. They are solid and real. You still exist, even if you don’t seem as developed as they are.
It didn’t stop with three dimensions. Soon they turned to something beyond the animated. Adjusting well beloved characters into what they deemed the real world. No longer bound to the limits of an artist’s pen, but an actor's facial expressions. Many tell me it is cheaper this way.
I’m told the process is painless. The transfer only relies on finding a body that looks similar enough to you. But I have my doubts sometimes. Perhaps it's my old age getting to me, but something feels wrong with this new idea that has risen. Many of my old friends have changed. Not just in looks, but sometimes in character as well. They are themselves, yet different. Like they have been adjusted to fit a story that is no longer theirs.
Even some of my three dimensional friends have changed. Their hair doesn’t quite sit right. Their faces are less expressive. Their movements are less… I’m not sure how to say it. Active? There are choices they make that do not seem like them. They are stoic in times they would not normally be. Their actions are different from how I saw them before. Would they really act that way? Is this not a betrayal of themselves and those who know them. Or is it the inevitable change this new medium has brought?
Some of them are hardly recognizable, having their entire personality and motives changed. I have met many villains who no longer resemble the vile, imposing figure I once knew. Perhaps it is old fashion to wish for stories of good and evil. I certainly could not imagine my own villain acting as such.
Some of these new movies rely still rely on the work of computers. There are simply things that don’t transfer as well it seems, like many of my animal companions. Apparently a ‘real’ lion is not a great actor. These too seem off though. Some lose what seems to be their humanity, if that’s the word, when transferred this way. The light in their eyes, the expressions on their faces. Is this too inevitable? Frankly, some transfers seem to result in terrifying visuals. But perhaps a simple cartoon such as myself cannot understand.
One change I fear above all is a new technology. One that seeks no human heart whatsoever. One simply applies a prompt into a machine, and the machine reveals a ‘new’ idea into reality. I have seen many of my friends in ways that I cannot unsee or understand because of this new machine. My friends proclaim that it is not them, and I believe they are telling the truth. But these doppelgangers look so much like them. They do things that seem so beyond their character. In many ways I can tell when it is not them but an impersonation. But there are times I cannot tell. It is unnerving when that happens.
I have never had the courage to see if I have my own twin in this new media. I did not consent to such a violation of my character, but it seems this new type of computer does not care. I have heard that anyone can use this new technology, even those not trained in animation at all. This technology can make anyone do anything. It feels like becoming a puppet, a doll that can be forced to say whatever these new creators chose. Is this art if the soul is gone? Perhaps I should be quiet- everyone is doing it so it seems inevitable I will become part of this too.
I hear that there are more changes coming, some of it with this new technology. It scares me. But I must be brave. After all, I too will be transferred soon. I hope I do not change too much. Those who have loved us before have not always been pleased with the changes. And when there is little change other than medium there is still anger. I just hope that it is as painless as people say. I would hate to be blamed for something I did not choose.
I’m sorry.
Love,
Your favorite animated character
Author’s note:
This was a piece I had rolling in my head for quite a while. A response to the trends seen with creative work, specifically animation. I framed this to be from the perspective of an older cartoon character, but I feel it could apply to just about any character in animation. Imagining the way these characters are twisted and changed is something I think about. To me a character is in a way, its own entity once it's created. Its personality is shaped by the medium it inhabits. Imagine if something like this was happening to you? Wouldn’t you be scared too?
As an artist, writer and overall enjoyer of animation and creative works, it’s hard to see corporate greed and corruption become a part of a medium that I enjoy. I have spoken in previous posts my disdain for certain things in the movie industry. I really do believe that when heart and soul is put into any creative project, that is when something truly shines. Having grown up with both 2d and 3d animation, I don’t fear new technology.
In this prose I considered two different issues that plague the creative industry. The dreaded “Live action” remake popularized by Disney but catching on with other studios given the release of How to Train your Dragon. Another being the rise of generative AI. It is no surprise that characters have often been portrayed in certain ways by fans for their own entertainment and enjoyment. That is just inevitable. I do have an issue with AI straight up stealing the work of others. I’ve made my stance pretty clear on that. I take issue especially with the imagery that I’ve seen beloved cartoon characters being put through in the name of ‘expressing’ one's desires. I personally feel that such creations violate the characters themselves. And the fact that companies like Disney are embracing a technology that does this to their IP instead of cutting it down is frankly disgusting.
Understand that this post isn’t going to fix things. People will still do these things as long as it is permitted and as long as it is profitable. We as consumers have a choice to make. Do we accept these trends and changes as inevitable. Or do we fight for what we love?
I've made a tradition of adding New dnd characters to a tavern photoI created. I added a few more characters now. A cleric noblewoman named Peony, A triton wizard, and a goliath druid. What characters have you made for dnd?
I've been working on a fan made region for Pokémon called the Occido Region based on the American West. This is the Pikachu clone/ electric Route 1 Pokémon, Elecoon. Its name comes from Electric and racoon. I like how it looks though I may adjust some things later. Would you catch this Pokémon?
On April 13, 1985, Danuta Danielsson - a Jewish-Polish woman whose mother was taken to a concentration camp in WWII - hit a local neonazi with her handbag in Växjö, Sweden.
Update: The neonazis were subsequently expelled from the city, and a statue was erected in her honor.
This week 34 years ago, Danuta Danielsson demonstrated how much respect fascists deserve.
How dare you leave out that the Swedish government was against the statue, out of concern that it could promote violence, and the people added handbags to statues across the country out of protest!
Feed your dashboard by answering my question, blogger.
Hmm honestly I really enjoy Minecraft for destressing. I also like Stardew Valley and Tears of the Kingdom. Things where I can do my own thing, build up life how I want.
I remember in my medieval philosophy class my professor once mentioned that silent reading wasn’t always the norm and that rather people would read outlouad typically. One of the most well known examples of this is in Augustine’s Confessions where he remarks that he was astonished at how Ambrose of Milan would read books silently and without moving his lips or mouth at all. It wasn’t that people didnt have the ability to read silently like people would be aware if a situation called for them to read the contents quietly such as a politician or general recieving a letter with sensitive information. The point rather is that in those cases the person would intentionally will themselves to read quietly and if you were going to sit down and read a book or scroll the default was that you would read it out loud so someone that read silently as their norm would be seen as ‘odd’. And by ‘odd’ I dont mean that people thought they were a freak or stupid just that it was a strange quirk.
As a matter of fact reading silently might’ve been seen as a sign that someone was an incredibly heavy reader such as with Ambrose. The reason being that one of the reasons vocalized reading was the norm had to do with how people wrote texts like it was pretty common for there to be irregularities with the script or especially that it was highly common for writings tonothavespacesinbetweenwordssoreadingoutloudfeltlikeamorenaturalasawaytomakeouttheindividualwords. An incredibly ‘veteran’ reader like Ambrose (Augustine also mentions Ambrose could read quickly) might develop mental shortcuts letting them more easily pick part the individual words that had been squished together and in doing so simply gradually drop the habit of reading out loud because it wasnt an aid to them any longer. In Latin Europe this changed when Irish monks in the late 7th century developed the practice of writing with more uniform letters as well as separating different words by leaving blank spaces between them. This slowly spread to the rest of Latin Europe (at least with the monastaries) until it finally became the norm in the 12th century, just in time for the explosive importation of scientific and philosophical literature from the Arabic world which was nice.
Anyway back to before that happened, something my professor said that was pretty interesting was that that if you stepped into a medieval library before this change ocurred is that youd be struct by how much talking was seeming to go on the monks read to themselves. That combined with the fact that the expensive nature of books often meant might could be attached to chains meant that a medieval library would be have a continuous din of murmuring and rattling metal which is interesting imagery for a library.
I saw this on Facebook and had to look it up. It really happened, albeit the details are different. From Homesteading Space: The Skylab Story:
"On the evening of MD-46, I finally played the trick that had been in work for over two month," said Garriott. "It even had the flight controllers puzzled for twenty-five years! My objective was to pretend that my wife, Helen, had come up to Skylab to bring us a hot meal, even though this was an obvious impossibility. Here is how the scheme worked. I recorded her voice on my small hand-held tape recorder before flight, pretending to have a brief conversation with a Capcom, with time gaps for his replies. The Capcom would be my only accomplice, but his role would be carefully disguised.
It was also necessary to have some recent event mentioned to validate the currency of the dialogue, so it would seem it could not have been recorded before fight. The short dialogue is printed below in its entirety. I knew that both Bob Crippen and Karl Henize were going to be Capcoms for Skylab, so they were brought into the planning, given the script and rehearsed on their timing. They kept the short script on a piece of paper in their billfolds, awaiting the right moment.
"For our flight in August-September, there would be many occasions of natural disasters involving forest fires or hurricanes, which would be widely known throughout the United States. So a few comments about one or the other were made on the tape. This led to four different scripts being recorded, one for each of the two Capcoms and one each for the two natural events. I would play the tape on the normal air-to-ground voice link with my wife's recorded voice and the Capcom would respond as if totally surprised by the female interloper."
Near the end of one period of voice contact Garriott said to the ground, "I'll have something for you on the next pass, Bob." Crippen replied, "Roger that, Owen." Then quietly and surreptitiously, he reviewed the brief script that had been in his pocket for all these weeks. Soon after coming into voice range, the ground heard this voice on the standard air-to-ground link:
Skylab (a female voice): "Gad, I don't see how the boys manage to get rid of the feedback berween these speakers.... Hello Houston, how are you reading me down there? (s sec. pause) Hello Houston, are you reading Skylab?"
Capcom: "Skylab, this is Houston. We heard you alright, but had difficulty recognizing your voice. Who do we have on the line up there?"
Skylab: "Hello Houston. Roger. Well I haven't talked with you for a while. Isn't that you down there, Bob? This is Helen, here in Skylab. The boys hadn't had a good home cooked meal in so long, I thought I'd bring one up. Over"
Capcom: "Roger, Skylab. Someone's gotta be pulling my leg, Helen. Where are you?"
Skylab: "Right here in Skylab, Bob. Just a few orbits ago we were looking down on those forest fires in California. The smoke sure covers a lot of territory, and, oh boy, the sunrises are just beautiful! Oh oh..... See you later, Bob. I hear the boys coming up here and I'm not supposed to be on the radio."
"Then quiet returned to the voice link, but we were told later, Bob Crippen had lots of questions coming his way in the Control Center," Garriott said. "What was going on? Where was this voice coming from? Bob must have been a very good actor, because he claimed complete ignorance and innocence of how it happened. Everyone heard it coming down on the air-to-ground loop. The whole two-way conversation sounded like a perfectly normal dialogue. No breaks or gaps, and they all heard Bob respond in real time. Could I have recorded Helen's voice on a 'family conversation' from our home? Yes, but there was no recent one. How would she have known about the fires, or who was to be on Capcom duty and how could she respond to Bob's comments in real time, as everyone could hear?
"No one ever worked out how this was accomplished. Finally, at our twenty-fifth reunion celebration in Houston in 1998, and with many of the flight directors and controllers present and still with no clue as to how it was done, I described it all as above. My prejudiced opinion is that this was the best 'gotcha' ever perpetrated on our friendly flight controllers!"
Crippen recalled: "That was kind of a fun trick. There was head rubbing.
Everybody in the MOCR, or the control room, was looking like, What the hell is going on?' We did a good job. It was fun. Working those missions got to be tough. We did all kinds of things to try to come up with levity. That was a nice one that the crew got that the ground control didn't know about."
A while back I made a OC for the spiderverse. This is Paige Parker. I liked the idea so much I'm attempting to make a comic for it. Let me know if your interested!
This is my design for my original villagers in Animal Crossing New Horizon if they were human. From left to right we have Biff, Hazel, Aurora, Tutu, Rex, Lionel, Allie, Ellie, Rasher, and Yuka. I might do a series of this with each animal crossing character. Question for you is who is your favorite Animal Crossing Villager?
Reblogging this since its relevant. Funny enough I have a good chunk of these guys on my island. My current island is Aurora, Different, Dotty, Drago, Ellie, Judy, Kyle, Petri, Rasher, and Wolfgang. I dont think I'll ever let Aurora or Ellie leave
This is the final entry for inktober that I never got around to posting. I had the idea of basically a kid from a super wealthy influential family basically coercing his way into superherodom because he just really wanted to be a hero. His design is based on the barn owl.
