Apparently Thailand is famous for directly and blatantly ripping off the productions of other countries. Copyright laws be damned! The studio behind this masterpiece is so notorious that it gets panned even in its home country. Kinda' like those animated Bible DVD's you can buy in the Wal-Mart checkout for $1.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Updates
You'll notice that I haven't spent much time updating, recently, and there's actually a really good reason for that: it's too damned hot.
The room that has my workstation isn't air conditioned. I'm not worried about overheating my computer, mind you, I'm worried about the river of sweat that starts at my neck and flows like the mighty Mississip down to my butt crack. So, to avoid looking like the foil in a deodorant commercial, I spend most of my time downstairs in the air conditioning on my laptop. My laptop is a super-portable with naught but a 13" screen; not exactly an epic amount of screen real estate on which to get graphical work done.
Hopefully, with summer nearing an end, I'll be able to spend more time upstairs grinding out lovely images of cartoon breasts. Because, seriously, what else is there?
The room that has my workstation isn't air conditioned. I'm not worried about overheating my computer, mind you, I'm worried about the river of sweat that starts at my neck and flows like the mighty Mississip down to my butt crack. So, to avoid looking like the foil in a deodorant commercial, I spend most of my time downstairs in the air conditioning on my laptop. My laptop is a super-portable with naught but a 13" screen; not exactly an epic amount of screen real estate on which to get graphical work done.
Hopefully, with summer nearing an end, I'll be able to spend more time upstairs grinding out lovely images of cartoon breasts. Because, seriously, what else is there?
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Of Figures
Since I began my work on cartoon figures in earnest about a year ago, I've become well acquainted with the lines that make up the human form. Cartoons, especially some of the more simplistic ones, are essentially distillations of the human form down to a set of gross lines. This sort of perspective gives you an interesting take on people, and it also helps me to understand the world of fashion and the uncanny valley that they seem to have hit.
Put briefly, the uncanny valley is the "region" on a curve representing the realism of a human form. On one extreme is a simple sphere, and on the other extreme is a perfect photograph of a person. How realistic the image appears climbs as you move away from the simple sphere, by adding eyes, a mouth, and ever-more details.
Oddly, though, once you hit a certain amount of details, the realism breaks down and the human eyes ability to "see" it as a person plunges. This is why full CGI human faces are a sort of Holy Grail for movies, and why Benjamin Button was such a breakthrough.
I think that the crossover happens when the brain switches from interpolation to sensory-acceptance. What I mean by that is when the brain stops filling in gaps with its pattern recognition "software" and instead accepts what's coming in via the eyes without alteration. We're incredibly good at finding patterns, even faces, so things that are roughly human have just enough detail to trigger our brain's pattern searching mechanism, which happily fills in the blanks. With this, we can see things in clouds, make abstract art, and even see Mary in a cheese sandwich. But after enough details are found, the brain stops filling the gaps and hands it over to the holistic processing part of the brain, that gels all of the perceived details into a whole figure for storage in memory. People who are unable to see the gestalt of the human face are suffering from what's called Prosopagnosia, or face-blindness. I assume that these people would be unable to experience the uncanny valley.
In the same way that creating ersatz human forms is a bottom-up approach, it makes sense that we can also take a top-down perspective, where we start with entirely realistic photographs and then push them down into the uncanny valley on a search to exaggerate positive characteristics.
Advertisers have always used airbrushing and illustrations to create idealized forms. But back then, our ability to manipulate photographs was limited, and illustrations were created by hand, which meant that if one characteristic was pushed too far, the artist could easily compensate. But with an illustration, 100% of the output was from the human perspective. With a photograph, 100% is already there and the artist is instead trying to draw out exaggerations.
Since I spend all of my time working with very broad lines, I know exactly what they're doing when they totally screw up images of women. They're attempting to use the same lines that work so well in cartoons but fail miserably when applied to pictures. In a cartoon, you can extend or squash lines all you want and the form can remain consistent, as long as you manipulate the rest of the form accordingly. They've been moving towards this for some time. Making legs longer, waists thinner, lips plumper, etc. Only recently, I think, have they effectively hit the limits of what they're able to do. The watershed moment came with the infamous Ralph Lauren photo.
I'm sure that you've seen it at least once. It hit every major news site and has been a source of constant discussion for the last eight months. The model's figure is so grotesquely malformed that she has entered the uncanny valley. She no longer looks human. But the principles of the image manipulation are identical to earlier efforts, and her form's lines are similar to many cartoons. In fact, if we remove the details and break her down to nothing more than a silhouette, it begins looking alright again.
We have another example of photoshopping gone awry with Ann Taylor, who received their fair share of flak for some editing awhile back.
Again, look at what they've done. They're tried to reduce a complex human figure down to gross lines. They removed detail and exaggerated other details. They've pushed the figure towards the uncanny valley. It's not all the way there, but the website's little screw-up that reveals the original photos illustrates how even mild, unskilled rejiggering makes the figure appear off. All of this because they're trying to reduce real women down to cartoon-like lines.
What the industry may find is that, going forward, they will either have to accept that this is as far as they can go with manipulation of the female form, or they might want to start hiring cartoon character designers and animators to take over Photoshop duty, because, man, this shit is just getting weird.
Put briefly, the uncanny valley is the "region" on a curve representing the realism of a human form. On one extreme is a simple sphere, and on the other extreme is a perfect photograph of a person. How realistic the image appears climbs as you move away from the simple sphere, by adding eyes, a mouth, and ever-more details.
Oddly, though, once you hit a certain amount of details, the realism breaks down and the human eyes ability to "see" it as a person plunges. This is why full CGI human faces are a sort of Holy Grail for movies, and why Benjamin Button was such a breakthrough.
I think that the crossover happens when the brain switches from interpolation to sensory-acceptance. What I mean by that is when the brain stops filling in gaps with its pattern recognition "software" and instead accepts what's coming in via the eyes without alteration. We're incredibly good at finding patterns, even faces, so things that are roughly human have just enough detail to trigger our brain's pattern searching mechanism, which happily fills in the blanks. With this, we can see things in clouds, make abstract art, and even see Mary in a cheese sandwich. But after enough details are found, the brain stops filling the gaps and hands it over to the holistic processing part of the brain, that gels all of the perceived details into a whole figure for storage in memory. People who are unable to see the gestalt of the human face are suffering from what's called Prosopagnosia, or face-blindness. I assume that these people would be unable to experience the uncanny valley.
In the same way that creating ersatz human forms is a bottom-up approach, it makes sense that we can also take a top-down perspective, where we start with entirely realistic photographs and then push them down into the uncanny valley on a search to exaggerate positive characteristics.
Advertisers have always used airbrushing and illustrations to create idealized forms. But back then, our ability to manipulate photographs was limited, and illustrations were created by hand, which meant that if one characteristic was pushed too far, the artist could easily compensate. But with an illustration, 100% of the output was from the human perspective. With a photograph, 100% is already there and the artist is instead trying to draw out exaggerations.
Since I spend all of my time working with very broad lines, I know exactly what they're doing when they totally screw up images of women. They're attempting to use the same lines that work so well in cartoons but fail miserably when applied to pictures. In a cartoon, you can extend or squash lines all you want and the form can remain consistent, as long as you manipulate the rest of the form accordingly. They've been moving towards this for some time. Making legs longer, waists thinner, lips plumper, etc. Only recently, I think, have they effectively hit the limits of what they're able to do. The watershed moment came with the infamous Ralph Lauren photo.
I'm sure that you've seen it at least once. It hit every major news site and has been a source of constant discussion for the last eight months. The model's figure is so grotesquely malformed that she has entered the uncanny valley. She no longer looks human. But the principles of the image manipulation are identical to earlier efforts, and her form's lines are similar to many cartoons. In fact, if we remove the details and break her down to nothing more than a silhouette, it begins looking alright again.
We have another example of photoshopping gone awry with Ann Taylor, who received their fair share of flak for some editing awhile back.
Again, look at what they've done. They're tried to reduce a complex human figure down to gross lines. They removed detail and exaggerated other details. They've pushed the figure towards the uncanny valley. It's not all the way there, but the website's little screw-up that reveals the original photos illustrates how even mild, unskilled rejiggering makes the figure appear off. All of this because they're trying to reduce real women down to cartoon-like lines.
What the industry may find is that, going forward, they will either have to accept that this is as far as they can go with manipulation of the female form, or they might want to start hiring cartoon character designers and animators to take over Photoshop duty, because, man, this shit is just getting weird.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
A Very Short Despicable Me Review
Despicable Me wasn't as good as I was hoping. The early trailers, especially the usage of the Hitchcock-like silhouette, made me expect a quirky, more adult CGI film, perhaps along the lines of the first Shrek. Instead, it's a very straightforward, childish film. As many of the best child-oriented films illustrate, though, that's not necessarily a bad thing, and it certainly isn't with Dee-Me. It's loaded with good slapstick, generally good voice-overs, and great character design. The story was very slight, and lacked drama, which I actually blame on poor story blocking. A solid 10-15 minutes of the early film was unnecessary and would have been well-served with simply jumping into the action and letting the characters reveal themselves throughout the rest of the film. This would have allowed them to better explore the rivalry between Gru and Vector, which makes up a very small aspect of the film, considering that the trailers made it seem like it was going to be a primary point.About those trailers, I'm assuming that the direction of the film was changing wildly as production went on considering that each trailer presented an entirely different picture of the film. The first trailer made it seem like Gru stole the Pyramid (he doesn't), the second made it seem like Gru was trying to recapture his crown as #1 supervillain (which he's not), and only in the third trailer do they finally introduce the children and the painfully merchandiseable "minions," that comprise the biggest chunk of the film.
Oh, and, is it a requisite that all 3D films have a roller coaster scene? Seriously?
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Betty Boop Wallpaper
I noticed that the Betty I have in my logo is my runaway first place in views, with over 100,000 from my various hosts. I figured a wallpaper was overdue. I had a lot more fun with shadow to bring some serious depth to the images. It moves ever further away from the original, but I'm feeling safer doing that as time goes by.
Here are the two color schemes.
White 4:3 ratio.
White 16:10 ratio.
Black 4:3 ratio.
Black 16:10 ratio.
Here are the two color schemes.
White 4:3 ratio.
 |
| From Cartoon Vixens Wallpapers |
White 16:10 ratio.
 |
| From Cartoon Vixens Wallpapers |
Black 4:3 ratio.
 |
| From Cartoon Vixens Wallpapers |
Black 16:10 ratio.
 |
| From Cartoon Vixens Wallpapers |
Sunday, June 20, 2010
A Very Short Toy Story 3 Review
Toy Story 3 isn't as good as the first two. It is more poignant than the first one though, and generally more emotional than the second, but as a work of craft, it falls behind. It's not as good because Lee Unkrich doesn't appear to be as good a director as John Lasseter, who directed the first two Toy Story films. In the same way that I found Up to be inferior to Wall-E or The Incredibles, the balance required to wedge lots of story into the comparatively short 90-minute "kid block" was slightly beyond him. Whereas Toy Story 1 and 2 had one primary journey and a great deal of exposition and character exploration at the key points, Toy Story 3 is much more rambling. They spend the entire movie running from place to place. I found it less focused and a less disciplined example of story blocking. This is, generally, unimportant. Taken as a whole, the movie is powerful, funny, sad, and above all, joyously entertaining.
The short before Toy Story is called Day & Night, which is Pixar's strongest short since For the Birds. It is an artistic take on a hand-drawn character awaking and representing day time. He meets another character who is asleep and represents night time. The two then begin a short adventure as they discover the joys and differences between night and day. Visually, it's just fantastic. And much like music videos, that's what makes shorts so cool. You don't need story coherency. It can be jumbled nonsense thrown on the screen for no other reason than visual wonder. This short is not jumbled nonsense, but it does take all the freedom allowed by a short and puts it to good use in the construction of something coherent and beautiful.
It reminded me a great deal of Chuck Jones' adventurous work in the late 50's and early 60's, like his now legendary Duck Amuck, but especially his hilarious (and personal favorite) Now Hear This:
The short before Toy Story is called Day & Night, which is Pixar's strongest short since For the Birds. It is an artistic take on a hand-drawn character awaking and representing day time. He meets another character who is asleep and represents night time. The two then begin a short adventure as they discover the joys and differences between night and day. Visually, it's just fantastic. And much like music videos, that's what makes shorts so cool. You don't need story coherency. It can be jumbled nonsense thrown on the screen for no other reason than visual wonder. This short is not jumbled nonsense, but it does take all the freedom allowed by a short and puts it to good use in the construction of something coherent and beautiful.
It reminded me a great deal of Chuck Jones' adventurous work in the late 50's and early 60's, like his now legendary Duck Amuck, but especially his hilarious (and personal favorite) Now Hear This:
Friday, May 28, 2010
No Good Girls in Cartoons
Considering that the years just keep going by, and cartoons remain distinctly male dominated, I'm beginning to get depressed. You'd think that in the brave new world of CGI films, we'd see at least a few more female protagonists. Or, even better, ANY female that isn't the "sassy" type that drives me up a fucking wall. It's like cartoons with "'tude." Don't know what 'tude is?
This is 'tude. It's this pestilence of bad-assery that has infected cartoons. Catering to boys? Your cartoon better be oozing with 'tude to even stand a chance with the network executives. Your cartoon also better star some confident, yet otherwise strange male, with the standard arrangement of sassy girls and token minorities. Or in my example, have your only two minorities also be girls. Kill two birds with one cliched stone. (On a further note, I love how the fat one is never a girl.)
Even Pixar, with whom I'm practically involved, has never had a female protagonist. It's a fucking boys club. The closest they've ever gotten is The Incredibles. Even there, though, Elastigirl? Yeah. She's still sassy.
That's not to take anything away from Pixar's films. I love every single one of them (except for Cars) and have watched them all over a dozen times. But it should serve as a point of serious consideration for all those in and entering in to the entertainment world. Where are the girls?!
I understand that cartoons skew male. They always have and they still do. But I don't think we've ever sufficiently experimented with girl-oriented cartoons that aren't also terribly sexist in some way. It still seems like a valid hypothesis to say that girls don't like cartoons because cartoons have never been theirs. What bones to they getthrown? Jem (which became more popular with boys), Rainbow Brite, Kim Possible, and... what else? Not much. Now try and make a list of popular boy-oriented cartoons that's under twenty shows long. Just try it.
The vast majority of the cartoons have a male at the center. Strong secondary female characters be damned. The male is front and center in ever group shot. He's on all the posters. He's given the most screen time. Even children's shows are ridiculous!
Make a list of young children's shows that have a female at the center. I can think of very few. The juggernaut, Dora the Explorer, Allegra's Window, and Eureeka's Castle stick most prominently in my mind. And even Dora birthed Go, Diego, Go! Gotta' get that boy in there somehow. Other's include the likes of Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Kids, which is very much an ensemble cast with her husband spider always nearby. Maggie and the Ferocious Beast is also quite good.
Still, most of these are quite new. New as in less than three years old. I also imagine that I could pretty easily dissect these cartoons and find stereotypes being reinforced. Regardless, back to films. The thing that set me off was looking at the lineup of CGI cartoons coming out. How to Train Your Dragon? Boy. Hell, I went to the list of all CGI films ever, here, and counted the films that featured females. I counted three, four if you throw in Home on the Range, If you go yourself, you'll find such gems as Appleseed, Final Fantasy, and Kaena. I just noticed that all of the films are foreign. I'm sure that says something. The fact that all three films were also ungodly bad also likely says something.
Whatever. I've made my point. My rant is done. We need more women in entertainment and we need it yesterday. Movies, television, and cartoons are in a decade-long death spiral that shows no signs of letting up. We need fresh blood and a fresh perspective.
This is 'tude. It's this pestilence of bad-assery that has infected cartoons. Catering to boys? Your cartoon better be oozing with 'tude to even stand a chance with the network executives. Your cartoon also better star some confident, yet otherwise strange male, with the standard arrangement of sassy girls and token minorities. Or in my example, have your only two minorities also be girls. Kill two birds with one cliched stone. (On a further note, I love how the fat one is never a girl.)Even Pixar, with whom I'm practically involved, has never had a female protagonist. It's a fucking boys club. The closest they've ever gotten is The Incredibles. Even there, though, Elastigirl? Yeah. She's still sassy.
That's not to take anything away from Pixar's films. I love every single one of them (except for Cars) and have watched them all over a dozen times. But it should serve as a point of serious consideration for all those in and entering in to the entertainment world. Where are the girls?!
I understand that cartoons skew male. They always have and they still do. But I don't think we've ever sufficiently experimented with girl-oriented cartoons that aren't also terribly sexist in some way. It still seems like a valid hypothesis to say that girls don't like cartoons because cartoons have never been theirs. What bones to they getthrown? Jem (which became more popular with boys), Rainbow Brite, Kim Possible, and... what else? Not much. Now try and make a list of popular boy-oriented cartoons that's under twenty shows long. Just try it.
The vast majority of the cartoons have a male at the center. Strong secondary female characters be damned. The male is front and center in ever group shot. He's on all the posters. He's given the most screen time. Even children's shows are ridiculous!
Make a list of young children's shows that have a female at the center. I can think of very few. The juggernaut, Dora the Explorer, Allegra's Window, and Eureeka's Castle stick most prominently in my mind. And even Dora birthed Go, Diego, Go! Gotta' get that boy in there somehow. Other's include the likes of Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Kids, which is very much an ensemble cast with her husband spider always nearby. Maggie and the Ferocious Beast is also quite good.
Still, most of these are quite new. New as in less than three years old. I also imagine that I could pretty easily dissect these cartoons and find stereotypes being reinforced. Regardless, back to films. The thing that set me off was looking at the lineup of CGI cartoons coming out. How to Train Your Dragon? Boy. Hell, I went to the list of all CGI films ever, here, and counted the films that featured females. I counted three, four if you throw in Home on the Range, If you go yourself, you'll find such gems as Appleseed, Final Fantasy, and Kaena. I just noticed that all of the films are foreign. I'm sure that says something. The fact that all three films were also ungodly bad also likely says something.Whatever. I've made my point. My rant is done. We need more women in entertainment and we need it yesterday. Movies, television, and cartoons are in a decade-long death spiral that shows no signs of letting up. We need fresh blood and a fresh perspective.
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