Nat

ok new winner from r/stupiddovenests

Actually very clever nest because larger and heavier birds such as those who would bully a little pigeon are more affected by the spikes and have probably already learned to avoid this spot

Martine Rose Spring 2024 Menswear

reject slot on a coinstar machine lookin ass

We’re so lucky they filmed Lord of the Rings when they did. Twenty years later, they would’ve had Viggo Mortensen riding a green bike that they CGI into a horse because that’s better for some reason.

This simple feeling… is beyond Disney’s comprehension.

Kids, kids. Are you telling me you think they didn’t use CGI in Lord of the Rings? One of the characters is entirely mo-cap and CGI! It has dragons and mammoths, and I promise they didn’t really build gigantic statues to sail boats through.

no, people are not saying they didn’t cgi the dragons they’re saying lotr used real horses unlike the above example of editing in a dog where they might have held an actual dog.

Exactly. LOTR was a masterpiece in balancing CG and practical effects, they didn’t overuse CG. That didn’t mean they didn’t use it, it means that when practical was better, they used practical. When LOTR used CG, it was because it could not be done at the time with practical effects; you just can’t make someone look like Gollum without making their suit and prosthetics impossible to act in. This was before motion capture, they had to animate Gollum BY HAND using Andy Serkis as a reference. Four tusked elephants with tiny people walking around on them aren’t exactly on sale, nor are fell beasts.

Isengard and Orthanc? Bigature (miniature but like, the size of a tennis court). Minas Tirith? Bigature. Helm’s Deep, the Black Gate, Barad-dur, Minas Morgul, Osgiliath, even elements of Lothlorien, Moria, and the Grey Havens? BIGATURES. Hobbits and Gandalf in one shot? Almost always tricks of perspective with, for example, a table set that was made in 3 pieces to move and make you think Tiny Elijah Wood™ was sitting at the same table as Giant Ian McKellan™, not greenscreen. They literally went so far as to make the Hobbits’ clothes (on the taller actors, not their little stunt doubles) with thicker thread to make their smallness look real.

Those statues, the Gates of Argonath? CG. The gorge and the boats? Real.

But the thing about the top example with the dog? They’re doing it because CG is less expensive because animal handlers have unions, while CG artists don’t and work in sweatshop conditions.

Regarding the “giant statues to sail boats through” especially, it was such a clever work of blending bigatures and real river exteriors filmed near Queenstown with actors/stunt doubles/scale doubles in the boats.

This is Richard Taylor with the bigature for a sense of scale from the behind the scenes special features (ngl, I want them to frame my front door) :

And this is what it looked like with all the lighting and framing put in place, with bluescreens to add background and foreground digitally:

And the gorge they transposed it over:

And the final result with the transposed river and sky and matched up colour-grading:

There is so much detail on the bigatures as well, that they incorporated the concept that the statues were only carved out of the cliffsides to a point, but that they constructed a quarry and cut the rock to build the rest. The bigatures actually include the worn down and aged remains of the quarry.

Definitely not the same as pasting on a dog for budget reasons.

Reblog to give the previous poster energy to do the one most urgent task from their to-do list (mental list counts).

to me the funniest thing about the reddit immigration to tumblr is that it's happening during droughtula. can't wait to see their reaction when that ends

that's the spirit! you can catch up on the text here: https://draculadaily.substack.com/archive?sort=new

or the podcast (skip the bonus eps if you haven't read dracula before): https://redracula.live/

When I tell you I snorted!

legolas:

gimli:

aragorn:

gandalf:

BLEASE

Gollum

Eomer:

Boromir:

Elrond:

This post is like getting pelted with marshmallows shot out of a tennis ball launcher

@karaboutmyart

This is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen in my life

elrond big naturals

love will always find you. Both threat AND promise

“but i don’t feel like i deserve it.” boo hoo. too fucking bad. Get loved idiot

*RARE* John Denver & Johnny Cash - Take Me Home Country Roads

Found this while going through my granddad’s VHS tapes and couldn’t find it anywhere online, so here it is.

Every time I’m lucky enough to have this hit my dash I listen to it, and every time I get chills all the way through.

superb

I’m so at peace rn

@nuka-nuke

imagine harmonising with johnny cash on your own song, i’d die on the spot this is beautiful

That was John Denver’s gift though. He was an amazing song writer, but the man could harmonize with just about anyone.

coffee break

Nothing Doing no. 2

i will say tenure is a pretty nice system and academic freedom is important. but the only cases where academic freedom ever really seems to be under threat is for early career academics

yet another case where random promotions (or large random component to promotions) could do a lot of good, potentially

#the other major case is almost all positions of authority - this is why adoptionism is such a fun little heresy, imagine if there was a god who did that all the time

You probably thought today was a normal Thursday. Nooooope. Big Papa Huge Time actually.

@neil-gaiman did that actually happen to you? Pretty funny nevertheless

It did. Although it was in the advanced readers copy of Neverwhere, so we caught it before it went out to the public. Universal Find and Replace is never your friend.

I know I put this on the tags of that "horses will eat meat and eggs" post but like if that's all it takes for people to get freaked out and think horses are deranged then they should also be aware that almost all other herbivores do the exact same thing. It's actually seems to be way less common for herbivores to eat 100% only plants than it is for them to eat meat occasionally (koalas are one of the suspected few strict herbivores bc their diet and digestive system is so specialized). They don't go out searching/hunting for it like carnivores and omnivores, but if they stumble across some carrion or some eggs (or some particularly easy live meat), that's fair game, even moreso if other food is scarce.

Like,,,,Deer will eat dead fish and rabbits, and have been recorded eating dead deer also. They've also been recorded eating live hatchlings from bird nests. Rabbits will scavenge birds a lot, and also do scavenging cannibalism. Snowshoe hares have been recorded scavenging a lynx, which is ironically their main predator when alive. Elephants will eat fish. Cows will eat live birds just right of the ground, along with eggs they may find.

Horses aren't deranged bc they'll eat meat, they're deranged bc theyre like if you put the ghost of a psychically-sensitive victorian child into the body of a 1500 pound mammal.