Using a kettle and some string

Rich Morris' adventures in yet more social media. I'm an animator, webcartoonist, fanboy. I'm into Doctor Who, Star Trek, Space 1999, LotR and all other things old-school and nerdy. Find more of me at http://yafgc.net, http://comics.shipsinker.com and @YAFGCRich.

[jstor]

but they have no heel!!

@ the artistically gifted, I know you're out there: please can one of you draw a Roman centurion absolutely serving with these on:

[yafgcrich]

[yafgcrich]

The whole Man vs Bear debate thing is upsetting. Not because I side with Man, but because so many men don't get it. I drew these, but I don't find them humorous.

[yafgcrich]

[yafgcrich]

[yafgcrich]

Just finished reading Justina Ireland’s books, “Dread Nation” and “Deathless Divide”. They’re AWESOME original takes on the zombie apocalypse concept. My wife bought them for me because I’m a big zombie genre fan, and these are a treasured part of the collection now! I even did fanart. :)  Great stuff! 

[yafgcrich]

[yafgcrich]

Overheard this morning: 

My wife (to cat): Yes I know, life is stressful. Sometimes you just need to wash your leg.

[yafgcrich]

In accordance with @jennetalexander‘s  impending launch of her book, “I Kissed A Girl”, I’ve finally finished my companion piece to my Noa fanpic.

This is the other main character, Lilah, in “Who Would I be?” 

[yafgcrich]

NERD ALERT

So I’ve got the “I, Claudius” series going on in the bg while I’m doing cleanup on my storyboards. And I glance up to a scene where Postumus is telling Claudius that his grandmother Livia is poisoning everybody just after Postumus is exiled by Augustus... big dramatic scene, Postumus goes over to a wall and glances through a doorway before making his escape. 

On the table in front of the door is a bust. A statue of a bearded fellow with curly hair. 

And my instant reaction is:  “Marcus Aurelius?? But he won’t be around for another hundred years!”

[ao3commentoftheday]

There is a writer, I love every work she has written so far and I comment or leave kudos every chapter/work that she had published. Is that too much? I'm feeling like a stalker.

Odds are you are now that author’s favourite reader and they have you specifically in mind when they write because they’re looking forward to your reaction to it :D

At least, that’s how it goes for me.

[ao3commentoftheday]

a-candle-for-sherlock‌:

Reblogging for @onedamnminuteadmiral‘s very accurate tags.

[embershx]

Something I’ve found being the commenter in this situation… They worry when you stop too. I’ve more than once been confronted with the fact I am Known and Acknowledged when an author’s been like ‘Oh thank goodness, you didn’t comment last chapter I thought you were sick of it’. I’ve also had authors hyped to hear from me if I’ve returned to a fandom after disappearing for a while. I’ve had one ask if I was ok because I disappeared for a while.  They know you and they love you. 

[wiredandrewired]

Can confirm my wife has a favorite commenter, when they leave a new comment on something she’s written I get ‘BABE BABE BABE COME HEAR I GOT A COMMMENT FROM X’ and I hustle to hear her read it out loud to me, her eyes shining the whole time, her whole body vibrating with joy, blushing her head off and smiling from ear to ear.  She reads them and rereads them and I can always tell by the look on her face.  Every comment from a favorite commenter is a love letter and listen friends you are loved in return.  

She speculates about what Favorite Commenter will think of things in the new chapter, if they’ll guess new twists coming up in the plot, if they’ll like how she works in a new character or a rarepair in the b plot of the story.  She talks about her hopes that Favorite Commenter will enjoy a new story she’s working on.  She says things like ‘Favorite Commenter was said something about Y and it’s not actually where I’m going, but it’s given me a new idea…’  Every comment from a favorite commenter is an inspiration, and they are writing for you.

And honestly, from my experience, having a favorite commenter can keep you writing even when you don’t have the emotional wherewithal to write for yourself.  A lot of people advise authors to write for themselves and to heck with anyone else, but there are times you can’t.  For years, I didn’t write for myself–I wrote for my favorite commenter.  It meant that was the only person who saw a lot of my writing.  But it also meant that I didn’t stop.  

Don’t ever hesitate to tell someone how much you love their writing or why.

[princessgina88]

No you are not. A lot of authors really love the feedback. True some of them don’t want feedback but I think leaving positive notes shows the author you care which makes them happy. 

[yafgcrich]

As a webcomic artist, allow me to say, we feel the same way. I’ve got a little stable of Favorite Commenters and there have been entire storylines I’ve written just for them.

[thehappyfeminist-22]

Spock in a toga appreciation post.

[yafgcrich]

[everythingstarstuff]

[lost-carcosa]

Oh look, it’s campus-police officer Lt. John Pike who pepper-sprayed peaceful protesters at University of California Davis.

And UCD reportedly payed $175,000 for this image to not appear when you search it on google:

[ladychurch-deactivated20200811]

Darn shame if this circulated…

[deedesria543]

So you mean to tell me that just by reblogging this I’m ruining an organizations plan, wasting them money, and uncovering some shitbag humans awful behaviour?

T R I P L E K I L L

[yafgcrich]

Just ‘cause.

[yafgcrich]

SPACESHIP!!!  It’s a little bendy. Gotta figure out how to keep it straightened out. But the dark grey is kinda cool.

[wet-monsoon]

it’s kind of incredible how much pixar has backpedaled over the last couple of years, from the standpoint of character design 

these were the kind of characters designs they had when they did their first movie with humans as their main cast 

despite being cg all of the characters are visually distinct from each other and they look like 2d figures translated into a 3d environment

now it’s just???

all their human characters kind of lack that visual distinction and they’re all just? cute? 

[loserfuck]

Alright, I wasn’t gonna comment b/c it’s kind of a waste of time, but I see a lotta folks tryin to pass off “Incredibles” designs as ‘an attempt to avoid Uncanny Valley with primitive tech’ or ‘resembling comic book art’, and a lot of other…. un-design-savvy comments.

Brad Bird had come from a background in traditional animation, he’s the guy behind this

So Lasseter (Pixar) rings up Bird like “Hey you wanna make a CG movie with us” and Bird’s like “Yeah, lemme bring my guys”, artists like Lou Romano, Teddy Newton, Tony Fucile, and Albert Lozano, who worked with Bird previously.

This may have been Pixar’s first production to feature an entirely human cast, but I think mostly what the excellence in designs boils down to is simply good artists with good taste.

And then have the fantastic designs in “Ratatouille”, also by Bird and his boys

We’ve also got the film “Up”, directed by Pete Doctor. Animated films rely on several artists for the designs of characters, set, props, ect, but it often leans towards one artist’s work. Putting other artists in charge gives “Up” a distinctive visual difference in style to Bird’s films.

You could place the blame on all these newer movies featuring mostly children characters, but I mean…..

Come on. Way to drop the ball on the chance to play with evolution in a fictional, animated setting. The issue isn’t what the tech was or wasn’t, is or isn’t capable of. This comes down to the artistic choices.

Anyway, I wish I could get more in-depth with this, but it’s difficult to find the information I need online in a timely manner, and I don’t have my books here with me.

If you’re interested in the designs/work that goes into animated films, check out the “Art Of __” books. The older ones I mean, that have actual raw concept art done for production and not just a bunch of cutsie drawings of characters b/c that’s what sells.

[cozza-frenzy]

The difference between then and now is simply that Pixar was bought out by Disney, and is now one of Disney’s biggest money-spinners. They make superhero movies focus-grouped for boys, princess movies focus-grouped for girls, and since Pixar movies are supposed to appeal to both those genders equally you get, well, that. A neutered, generically cute art style that lends itself to big-eyed dolls with brushable hair and cute animal plush toys that make noises when you squeeze them. I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again; Disney (and by extension, Pixar) don’t make art any more. With a few scant exceptions they haven’t made art for decades. What they make is money. What they’re selling is a brand. Their last few passion projects spent years in development hell, hemorrhaging money the entire time, so what would eventually become Tangled, Frozen, and The Good Dinosaur ended up as bland and generic simply to recoup some of that enormous loss. And by being bland and generic, they ended up turning a massive profit, so you can expect that trend to continue.  A corporation that sells everything from kid-friendly cruise holidays to mickey-themed wedding packages is not going to make art. A studio that’s so creatively bankrupt that it’s now rebooting every good movie it’s ever made is not going to make art. If you want art, look to smaller studios (Laika, Reel FX), smaller, lower-budget projects (Captain Underpants), and anything that Hollywood considers ‘risky’. Expecting Disney (and Pixar) to make anything that doesn’t blandly appeal to everyone at this point is like expecting blood to come out of a stone.

[analvelocity]

#reblogging this makes me feel like a boomer complaining that everything used to be better when i was young

Nah, there’s more good content, real art coming out now than ever before, it’s just not coming out of Disney.

[starryrogue]

“We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective.”

Michael Eisner-former CEO of Disney

[yafgcrich]

I did 6 years at CINAR in Montreal as a character/prop designer in the mid-to-late 1990′s and we would spend ages exploring unique styles and looks for each new show. My own technique was to read the show bibles and  try to get a feel for the source material, what was important to the creators, what sort of things the characters would have to get up to and what the visual humour would be like.

When I got to another studio much more recently as a storyboard artist, I tried to connect with the designers to try to get the feel of the shows, but instead of thinking and creating and trying to interpret the concept, he spent all his time printing off stills from the latest PIXAR movie and just copying that. The man didn’t have a creative bone in his dumbass body. 

As a result the designs for most of the shows I worked on in the past 15 years have been insipid, derivative, and worst of all, non-functional with the requirements of the scripts.  

Animation designs are a sensitive subject for me.

[yafgcrich]

So I borrowed @jennetalexander’s advance copy of her new book “I Kissed A Girl” and though I am not in any way the target demographic, I really love her writing style and glommed immediately onto one of the two main characters, Noa the horror movie buff. I love her so much that I was inspired to draw this fanart of her, and I’m not even yet halfway through the book.  http://www.jennetalexander.com/

[llovinghome]

[yafgcrich]

There must be a black dog somewhere with a white ear that these guys traded.

[yafgcrich]

Scratchbuilding a ship model based on a design from DP9′s “Jovian Chronicles”. I’ve always loved scale modeling and I’ve done quite a few kits in my time, but I’ve always been shy to improvise The only ones I’ve done to anything like completion were a few dinosaur playset for my kids. This is something almost altogether new for me and it’s coming along, I think. Still got lots of fiddly things to do to it before I spray it all grey.