Notices by Matt (zeldatra), page 68

Matt

Hoping to reclaim edge lord status with this cartoon

Matt

http://rainbowdash.net/url/875781 ramblings about youtube stuff

Matt

The Piano Man appleed my wife

Matt

(That is, I work my “real job” in six hours, not my equally-hard-but-not-profitable job)

Matt

And all this talk about animation is making me wanna work but I’m supposed to be sleeping, I work in six hours

Matt

The current global situation of course came at a pretty “good” time for animation. Had this happened in the 90s everyone would have been screwed, in 1993 an earthquake shut down studio production on The Lion King for a few weeks and people had to work from home and it was a huge deal.

Matt

(An article describing Pokemon's current production process, including their efforts to preserve the "hand drawn" look: http://rainbowdash.net/url/875780)

((Technically, Pokemon's been using digital ink-and-paint since their 11th season in 2007/2008, but that's beside the point))

Matt

Animation DRAWINGS are even more numerous because even after going digital, a lot of animators still worked on paper for layout and drawing the key poses and such. The Simpsons didn't go paperless until The Simpsons Movie in 2007. Family Guy took even longer, with the 2009 special "Something, Something, Something Darkside" being the last episode to be animated on paper - they switched to ToonBoom starting with the next production season since the studio was also working on The Cleveland Show, which was paperless from the start (American Dad, also animated by the same studio, switched around the same time). Disney tried to go paperless with The Princess and the Frog in 2009, but the animators weren't comfortable with using Cintiqs and did layout drawings on paper anyway. Anime productions were still done on paper as recently as 2018 and some might still do so today - in fact, over there Pokemon actually made the *news* for going paperless.

Matt

While we're on the subject, while Disney was the first major western studio to make the permanent switch to digital ink-and-paint, the technique was actually pioneered by Hanna-Barbera as a cost-cutting measure. It was developed between 1979 and 1983 by a computer scientist who worked in a laboratory funded by Hanna-Barbera, and it was at this same laboratory that computer-aided motion tweening (which was later a staple of Flash animation) was developed. All in the name of making cheaper Scooby Doo specials.

Matt

pretty bummed out that so far Joe Biden has been legitimately good at his job, I had been planning to whinge about it for the next four years

Matt

“It’s not a story the (((Jedi))) would tell you...”

Matt

this doctor who episode with the isis beheading videos sure is, uh, something

Matt

Realized today that in a little over a month it will have been a year since my friend died. I’ve still got her last paycheck sitting in my drawer at work, nobody ever came to collect it.

Matt

Hitman 3 is fun as hell if you completely ignore the Mission Stories, but otherwise holds your hand a little too much.

Matt

Man I kinda thought Trump’s post-presidency would be louder than this. Not being on Twitter does that, I suppose.

Matt

Day 1 of Biden’s America: that vending machine probably still doesn’t work but I haven’t been to that school in four years so it’s anyone’s guess really.

Matt

Gonna look like a grapein psycho buying a pack of Marlboro 100s and cutting the filter off with an exacto knife so I can accurately portray a Walt Disney-type for a live action sketch

Matt

But just so we’re clear: an older boy told me to say it. Yes, even all those times I said the f-slur when I was a teenager.

Matt

one day all of my most offensive jokes will catch up to me and Donald Trump will no longer be President so I can’t even say an older boy told me to say it

Matt

anyway here's a comic http://rainbowdash.net/url/875766

Matt

should i just skip to the most recent Doctor Who series? I tried getting back into the show right from where i left off (the start of series 9) but i just really, really, really, really, really hate it so far

Matt

Jimmy Carter is so universally beloved among my generation that it’s weird to go back and watch The Simpsons where he was so frequently derided as history’s greatest monster.

Matt

Despite feeling less and less like Futurama, this WAS also the season that reunited nearly every Futurama cast member, Katey Sagal excluded - Lauren Tom joins the recurring cast this season, which I thought was pretty cool.

Matt

Still, some parts meander, like they were trying to fill a ten episode order with only seven scripts, and yet other parts feel like they could have been expounded upon more - the sixth episode, which is about Bean's struggles with men, casually drops the bomb that Bean is bisexual with a supposed romantic preference for women, which was an interesting development, but following that episode that particular plot point is dropped and wasn't referenced again for the rest of the season - Bean's angst about romance becomes an "act one escapade" in the seventh episode and the rest of the season is about something else entirely.

Overall, I think season 3 is where the show - which I already enjoyed quite a lot - is starting to grow its beard, and I can't wait for the fourth season when it comes out during Mitt Romney's presidency in 2025.

Matt

Sometimes it's frustrating how slow the story moves, but that's a problem that was thankfully significantly improved upon with this new season, as unlike the last two, each of the season's ten episodes leads into the next one and develops the overall story or the characters in some way. Every episode feels relevant to what's going on and even the sillier, less plot-heavy episodes - like the eighth episode, "Hey Pig Spender", in which the cast heads to the neighboring kingdom to secure an army from Prince Merkimer's parents - are driven in some way by what's happening in the overall plot arc. This is a very welcome change from the last two seasons.

Matt

Disenchantment's third season is its best yet, not perfect, but it was definitely a lot more focused than the previous two seasons were and by bringing in a lot more of the drama and character development it's starting to feel less like "Futurama but with magic" and more like its own thing. Sometimes it still kind of feels like it's a little afraid to break away from the Matt Groening formula (main character does X activity for five minutes which leads to the tangentially related main conflict during the remaining twenty) but they've at least finally realized that they're not doing a weekly show on Fox anymore and are starting to take advantage of that.

Matt

Gonna have to ask customers to stop calling the grapeing police on the autistic cart attendant who shouts in the parking lot sometimes, your sheltered ass isn’t in any danger because you saw a guy making noises

Matt

It basically involves generating as noisy an image as possible so that the built-in denoiser will attempt to “correct” it in a certain way that it makes “mistakes” in color value and blending.

Matt

So, the good news - I figured out how to reliably generate painted backgrounds with 3D models. The bad news - you’re not supposed to be able to do that and so nothing about the technique is optimized in any way. Could still be useful, though!