weird Pinball

Op with all due respect this is literally the opposite of pinball

Genuinely fucked that cultural perception of aging is getting warped to the point where people in their twenties are considered old at the same time that all the constructed milestones of independence and self sufficiency that have become expected of adulthood are getting further out of reach for the majority of people. Like, no, you haven't missed out on anything, no one has "wasted" their 20s, or 30s, or any stretch of time, it's just that a lot of things really fucking suck right now. There isn't anything important you can do at, say, age 21 that you can't also do every other age after that.

Summer

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I think a lot about how in Ice Age 1 a huge theme is the slow but unstoppable advancement of the human species as they start to threaten previously unchallenged megafauna (hunting the pack of the antagonist sabertooth and killing Manny the mammoth’s family) and then in all the sequels they just fuckin disappear

I think a lot about how the first movie was actually pretty somber and dark with moments of lightheartedness and comedy, about three animals who had lost their own families finding family in each other while trying to return this baby to his own family…
The first sequel, while wackier, touches on the existential dread and loneliness Manny feels at being the apparent last of his kind, his exhilaration at meeting another like him, and the question of “be together because we want to be, or we HAVE to be?” as well as Ellie having been part of a found family herself…

….and then the franchise from then on out turns into “wacky animal hijinks.”

OKAY FOR REAL i rewatched the original ice age a little while ago for nostalgia and this movie is GOOD you guys—i literally rewatched it all over again the next day. there are a couple of key things i noticed:

1. they know how to shut up. the animals know how and when to shut up. yes, even the comic relief one. do you have any idea how important this is? yes, they play it for laughs when diego first confronts manny and they fight and then diego stops, clears his throat, and asks manny politely for the child (which was brilliant, by the way, i laughed aloud), but aside from that, when there’s a serious moment, they let it be serious. when manny accepts the baby from the mother, when he sees the paintings of the mammoths on the cave wall, when he returns the baby to its father, these are moments where everyone is dead silent, even sid, and the music is soft and heartwrenching and the next line is rarely, if ever, a joke that undercuts the prior moment. they let these scenes linger and it really makes this feel like an emotional, somber, serious movie with fun character interactions rather than a comedy that makes cheap appeals to emotion.

2. the way they characterize manny at the beginning is SUPER interesting to me. by the end of this movie, we know manny is a big softie who was deeply wounded by the loss of his family. we as the audience don’t know this yet, though, and the first time we catch a hint that there’s something deeper going on here, it’s when manny firmly, sharply insists to sid that partners should be loyal to each other. it’s not an obnoxiously blatant “hey i have trauma” flag, since it could be interpreted as the writers playing with the monogamy of mammoths and promiscuity of sloths, which i’m fairly certain they bring up in this movie, if not one of the others. still, though, it strikes that perfect balance of not making the Oh Frick Manny Had A Family reveal later on completely blindside us while also not telegraphing it too obviously. at the beginning, manny is clearly a loner who wants nothing to do with sid, but to avoid making him come off as a straight-up jerk, they make it abundantly clear in the introductory sequence that he has a strong moral code that he holds himself to (”I don’t like animals that kill for pleasure”). i just thought this was really well done, opening the movie with a scene that demonstrates both that manny is a complex character who comes off as cold but cares deeply (which sid basically sees straight through and i love it) and that sid is incredibly unlikable and as such nobody likes him. i didn’t realize it at first, but that’s such an interesting move. we open the movie with sid getting abandoned by his family, but then we find out how annoying he is and go “oh, well that explains it.” but then he tells manny all about how they regularly do their best to ditch him and it’s so clear that he’s just too pure and innocent to hold any malice towards them. under it all, though, it’s clear that he’s lonely, too, and has been for a while. these characters have depth, and feel like people, and every quiet moment just drives it home even more that they really don’t have anyone except each other.

3. DIEGO! we stan. i think it’s really interesting how instead of just throwing these characters into the world together, the writers make it clear that they had other people, before, but those people either were toxic and ditched them (sid’s family), were toxic and needed to be ditched (diego’s pack), or were loving but torn away by circumstance (manny’s family). i dunno, it just adds a really interesting layer of depth here. but anyway, diego’s arc was just really well done. he’s only there to get the kid, and though he does start to enjoy himself, he still has his mission. but when manny risks his life to save diego’s and sid makes that comment pointing it out, you can SEE how he starts to linger, starts to dread, the guilt builds up until he TELLS THEM. that’s so important! he tells them!!! there’s no stupid, “liar revealed” plotline where they figure out that he’s been tricking them because he comes clean himself, without provocation or pressure, and they do eventually forgive him and that’s SO important. diego wasn’t being honest with them, was living a lie and planning to betray them, and he made the incredibly difficult decision to stop in his tracks and come clean on his own terms because he knew it was the right thing to do. there were So Many Ways the writers could have handled that reveal, but to have diego just stop, think, change his mind, and confess was SO GOOD. also the dynamic between the three of them was just really, really great. i’m so emotionally attached to these early-2000′s CGI creatures okay.

4. speaking of which, this movie is surprisingly good-looking. like it came out in 2002. that is IMPRESSIVE. manny’s fur holds up shockingly well and my suspension of disbelief was never fricked up by poorly rendered CGI graphics. props to blue sky, man.

5. okay point five is lowkey the whole reason for this rant because it’s a really really cool point i only noticed on my second watch through: the parallelism. why does diego have to kidnap this baby? because his pack’s leader (soto, apparently) wants to eat it alive as revenge for the humans killing half of his own. why does manny want to rescue this baby? because he, too, is a parent who lost a child and doesn’t want the humans to go through that. but, wait, hang on a minute, how did he lose his child? oh, yeah, the humans killed it and his wife right in front of him. both soto and manny lost most of the people they care about to the humans—these humans, specifically, since they seem to be the only community in the area—but where soto swears revenge, manny doesn’t want them to go through what he went through, even though this very act could be what perpetuates that. and they acknowledge it in the movie. diego mentions how this baby is gonna grow up to hunt them and sid counters that maybe the fact that they saved it means it will remember their kindness and things will change. but the whole movie carries the somber atmosphere of a tragedy because, as someone else mentioned above, the humans are steadily encroaching and all of these creatures are going to go extinct, and this one act of kindness may not have the intended effect and may soon be lost to the uncaring tides of history, but that doesn’t make it any less worth it. manny isn’t doing this to try and make a statement or change the humans’ behavior, he just wants to prevent them from going through what he did. calling this story one of “breaking the cycle of violence” cheapens it, i feel, because the humans are hunting the mammoths, not out of malice, but out of necessity for furs and meat and bone and tusk. it’s nothing personal—they’re predators. but still, manny seeks them out to return their baby to them. and when the baby’s father is raising his spear at manny when he’s trying to return it, you can just see that look in manny’s eyes, that he’s begging this human to understand, but he’s prepared to get speared if it means this kid gets to be with his father and MY HEART, YOU GUYS.

6. FOUND FAMILY FOUND FAMILY like i know found family isn’t really all that hard to come by, but this movie is REALLY explicit about it in a good way! they make the distinction between a pack—a group who wants you for what you can do for them—and a herd—a group who regularly looks out to see what they can do for you. and a saber-tooth tiger leaves his PACK to join this HERD! and they joke that this is the weirdest herd they’ve ever seen, but a carnivore has just joined a herd and that makes me feel SO MANY FEELINGS

ultimately, ice age is a movie about choices. manny’s choice to return this kid to its parents, even though he lost his own kid to those very parents, diego’s choice to come clean about his betrayal and his choice to join a herd even though he’s a carnivore, manny making the choice to risk his life to save diego, diego making the choice to return the favor, and all three of them making the choice to not give up hope that they can find a new family again after losing what they had before. this is a movie in which characters are more than the way they were born, are more than the circumstances of their lives, are more than what happens to them. they make choices and their choices matter and they choose to be kind, even when they have absolutely nothing to gain from it and everything to lose from it.

i guess you could say this movie aged nicely.

thank you and good night

Again post of old stuff
It's my personal project, called The Case of Motel. In my mind it's funny noir game about a very suspicious detective who tries to find all bad behind every corner. But the problem his living in a quiet town, where nothing happened for very long time, until the x day!

So I gonna back to this idea sometimes and post more visual stuff about this one.

Mb one day it will be even a game, but it's just dreams for now :D

THERE IS. a website. that takes 3D models with seams and pulls it apart to make a plushie pattern and informs you where things need to be edited or darts added for the best effect. and then it lets you scale it and print off your pattern. and I want to lose my MIND because I've lost steam halfway through so many plushie patterns in the mind numbing in betweens of unwrapping, copying all of the meshes down as pieces, transferring those, testing them, then finding obvious tweaks... like... this would eradicate 99% of my trial and error workflow for 3D models to plushies & MAYBE ILL FINALLY FINISH SCREAMTAIL...

so this website let's you:

• import a model
• create seams in browser
• tells you how accurately the seams will recreate the model when sewn
• let's you designate fur direction
• let's you import markings so the pattern shows exactly where they go on the piece
• let's you add little measurements on the model that are also visible on the pattern
• let's you paint the model to play with fabric colors
• let's you name each piece so it's easy to sort the pieces later
• let's you scale it beside a human
• then calculates how much of each type of fabric you need, BASED ON YOUR DESIRED SEAM ALLOWANCE..
• and finally gives you the finished pattern with the detailed names and instructions it's transcribed from your notes

this is. beyond. this is BEYOND. and as far as I can see it's free???

“cmere boy”

*sound of clanging pots and pans getting closer*

STRAY  ▴  11 / --

Yeehaw!