MAY

Stunning sunset! This happens because of a phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering: cirrus clouds scatter the longer, red wavelengths of light and give the sky an orange or reddish hue | source

father, son, and holy spirit

I love that he apparently got the job because he looked so pathetic that children truly believed he would be unable to solve puzzles created by a cartoon dog without their assistance.

kids really said “i can fix him”

I must not buy. Buying is the purse-killer. Buying is the little-dopamine that brings total bankruptcy. I will face my wishlist. I will permit the limited time sale to pass over me and through me. And when it has expired I will turn the inner eye to see its impulses. When the mania has gone there will be nothing. Only $ will remain.

humbled

One of the things that sucks about being an animation nerd is having to live with the fact that, from a technical standpoint, the Hotel Transylvania movies are absolutely ground-breakingly staggeringly incredible.

As completely ignorant on animation, why is that? How is Hotel Transylvania any good??

The short version is that they’ve been figuring out how to plug the strengths of traditional animation into cg animation.

Longer version: cg animation is essentially puppet animation. You build a model, paint it and dress it up, and then move it around. That’s why Pixar’s first animated film was about toys, and their second one was about bugs: it’s much harder to make something look convincingly soft and fleshy than it is to work with something that’s supposed to be rigid.

Working inside this paradigm, the progression that makes sense is to work on developing more and more articulated puppets. Figure out how to add fur (Monsters, Inc.), move fish (Finding Nemo), get to the point where you can actually make human puppets who look appealing (The Incredibles.) In 2012 the big animated feature films showed off huge strides in particle physics (The Guardians), and hair (Tangled, Brave). Character effects and lighting were really hitting their stride, and the general movement was towards more detailed models, increased realism, richer and more intricate environments. The models only had so much range before they started to break, so squash & stretch was never going to be as pronounced as something from drawn animation could be. Hotel Transylvania challenged that.

As a show creator and director, Genndy Tartakovsky’s always shown a preference for stylization. He’s also got a reputation for incredible and deliberate timing, spectacular silhouettes, dramatic movement and clear staging, and just overall really good at directing animation. He wanted Tex Avery-type animation in CG and by golly, he did it.

Look at how exaggerated those shapes are, and how snappy, smooth, and fast the transitions between each one: that’s not something that was really being done. The motion-blurring alone was so defining that apparently Sony calls it a “Genndy blur.”

Animation is essentially the art of movement: the better the movement, the better the animation, and the Hotel Transylvania franchise has spectacular movement.

The model is actually being resculpted for maximum exaggeration, and the smears and blurs make the transitions between each pose fast, energetic, and snappy.

Like. Look at that movement. Look at how tightly he’s rooted while the follow through of his clothing sells the hard stop of each hip bump. Look at how sharp and deep his knees are bending, the way his weight shifts onto his heels and that tiny little side step at the very end, where he keeps his weight on his right foot for a split second before popping over to his new position. And he’s dancing the Macarena because he had to find the most brain-dominating, toe-tappingist song in the universe to win a DJ battle where a Kraken was being driven into a murderous rage by a mystical melody and it had to be counteracted by another song.

Yeah.

Somebody once described the Hotel Transylvania franchise as “like seeing Lamborghini making a clown car,” and honestly, that’s kind of what it’s like.

Using tumblr is like living in a low class apartment building. You just get used to the landlord not fixing things, and then someone new moves in and you’re helpfully like “oh yeah don’t drink the tap water, it’s got stuff in it that makes you sick” and then your neighbor you’ve had forever goes “oh they took the stuff out actually” and you’re like “what? when was this?”

“like two years ago”

“you mean i could’ve been drinking the tap water all this time?”

“yeah. they gave us individual mailboxes too finally, you don’t have to dig through the communal bin anymore”

“are you for real right now?? i just redirected my mail, i didnt know”

and the new tennant is like “why did you guys even live here if it was so bad”

“we like it.”

“I kinda miss the communal mail bin tho”

“the perpetually naked guy got evicted though”

“i know, so sad. he was really gross”

“i mean, his cousin streaks through the commons sometimes and knocks on all the doors”

“oh yeah, hate that guy”

New Person: I just saw this weird guy in the lobby in a really creepy anthropomorphic Pikachu costume??????

Old Resident: yeah we have no idea where that guy came from. We’ve left messages with maintenance ‘bout ‘im but-

Other Old Resident: just don’t make eye contact and you should be fine.

“what are these strange markings in the paint?”

“Oh! Thats from the crab infestation!”

“The crab infestation?! Wow, glad they got that under control before I moved in.”

“Oh, no no, it was an intentional infestation.”

“Uh….”

“Yeah, we’re hoping they bring the crabs back next year. A lot of us made friends with those crabs.”

No, I’m not joking, he doesnt just look like him, I swear to God neil gaiman lives across the hall.

The apartment building throws holiday parties but not typical parties like for Christmas or Valentine’s day

Knives are decorating the walls for the Ides Of March.

There’s a community movie night held on October 3rd where tenants choose to watch either Mean Girls or binge watch all of Fullmetal Alchemist.

Every single apartment opens their windows and blasts Earth, Wind, and Fire on the 21st of September

November 5th rolls around and the entire building just erupts into inexplicable chaos

“What’s with the floor?”

“Color theory. Don’t worry about it.”

“Why is the cemetery across the street partially dug up?”

“Ah, yeah, there was a problem with grave robbing witches a while back.”

“Why do you do [totally normal thing] this way?” “Oh, [totally confusing and illogical system] is how we’ve always done it. “You think we call it a Hellsite for fun?”

"your teens are about" "your 20s are about" there's no schedule babes

being in yr 20s is abt experiencing the worst thing you can imagine & then having to go to the grocery store

[sobs until im physically ill] [buys greek yogurt] [repeat]

do you ever see someone in some quiet intimate moment and suddenly love them so desperately you feel like you’re dying

#like when they pass a mirror and make a face and mess with their hair a little #or when you hear someone singing in their car with the windows rolled up as they drive past you #i don’t know how to express this i just. people are people and it makes me so sad and filled up sometimes

I love seeing grown humans setting about little creative tasks out of boredom and then looking quietly pleased with themselves, like maybe a middle-aged woman on her train home from work manages to make a tower out of empty coffee creamers and gazes at it proudly for a few seconds.

I love seeing other people make the overblown OOPS I FORGOT SOMETHING performance for no-one that most of us do when we have to turn around in the middle of the pavement.

I love seeing stony-faced people in queues unable to contain a smile when a baby looking over its mother’s shoulder in front of them locks eyes and does that astonished stare.

- when someone is standing in line and they don’t quite dance to the music playing, but you can SEE their head bop and them mouthing the words

- when someone thinks no one’s paying attention and they sing-talk themselves thru a task

- when they laugh or try to hide a laugh when looking at their phone

- when someone does the thing where they enter another space (such as a supermarket aisle) striding with total purpose, then suddenly forget what they’re doing/looking for, and stop there looking blank for a millisecond while they reboot. 

- when people are looking for scissors, in their home or in a store, and they make the scissors gesture with their non-dominant hand as an aid to remind them what they’re doing.

- when automatic social interactions glitch, like when you tell a waiter that you hope he enjoys his food too, or tell the stranger on the phone that you love them. 

- the hand gesture people make when they’re thinking at their computer, not typing, and their elbow rests on the table, and they feel the edge of their fingernail with their thumb. This is such a lovely little gesture and to my knowledge I have never seen it in fiction. You’d think it would come up all the time in fic.

- when you’re sharing an experience with a complete stranger (like watching a seagull throw up in public, or waiting for a late train) and you make eye contact, and some comment to each other, and then you guys are, like, ALLIES now. Like you would willingly ride to war to save them. You can’t make eye contact again, but you are very aware of them. 

- just evidence of other people’s rich, baffling and complex inner lives.

high standards protect you from low quality experiences.

cant recommend this enough but if youre able you should go on walks every day. like fuck weather fuck circumstance uust go outside. got rained on today and it was blissful. even just sit outside get fucked up by crazy ass wind youll never forget how small you are and rememebr everything matters

My cartoon for this week’s New Scientist. Many more here: www.newscientist.com/author/tom-gauld/

this is honest to god what we should all feel like at all times

"It's human nature" is always used as a defense of those with power but never as a defense of those without power.

Rich people call their greed "human nature" as a defense. But poor people are condemned for doing anything that's "human nature".

It's human nature to steal if your survival depends on it. It's human nature to use drugs to cope with a society that traumatizes people and offers no reasonable solutions. It's human nature to want to create a society that provides everyone's basic needs. But poor people are demonized for any of those.

When the rich are greedy, they call it natural. When the poor are desperate, they call it greed.

This is important.

This is what people are.

We want to be useful, and we want to make people happy

Pay attention to this.

Motherfucker effortlessly whipped out a balloon animal while talking about entropy and looking like a regular contributor to the Washington Post. I wish him nothing but the best in life

i love hearing girl’s ugly laugh like yes bitch gimme that witch cackle