eleanor

[font=trebuchet ms] Ah, backlash. It's a wonderful thing.[/font]

[font=trebuchet ms] Simplicity is relative, so while I think I'm a pretty simple girl I'm sure that, judging from some of the responses here, some OBers might disagree. For one, I love makeup. I enjoy putting it on, how it makes me look, etc. etc. While I admire girls who are naturally beautiful and can pull of never wearing makeup, I'm just the type of girl who always has to put some on. But I don't really go crazy, just foundation, eyeliner and mascara. Fashion-wise I'm a stickler for simplicity. I love preppy, clean-cut and single-color clothing (other than rugby stripes, which I also am obsessed with). In general I hate glam clothing, and I dislike layered outfits and patterned fabrics. Can't really say I strictly enjoy "simple" foods, because while I can really happy with a bowl of edamame or apples and peanut butter, I can go pretty crazy when I cook pastas, make salads or other dishes. And call me a loser, but I prefer sitting in with two or three other people watching movies/tv and cooking dinner rather than drinking and partying. Although I enjoy getting drunk and dancing, I do it like twice a month (which I'm sure to most college students is revolting).[/font]

[font=trebuchet ms] Today I wrote an entire essay into an online application and hit 'submit,' but my log-in time had run out so I lost it. I almost cried. [/font]

[font=trebuchet ms] For the first time in my life I got a paper assignment and I literally have no idea what to write the paper on. I am freaking the **** out.[/font]

[font=trebuchet ms] Yes, but I NEVER feel cool after winning them. :( [/font]

[quote name='SunfallE'][FONT="Lucida Sans Unicode"][COLOR="RoyalBlue"]A couple of weeks ago I woke up to find one of my toes covered in blood. o_O The nail was torn so I can only assume that it caught on the blanket and ripped during the night when I moved in my sleep. I just wonder how I managed to do that without waking up. [/COLOR][/FONT][/QUOTE] [font=trebuchet ms] girl have you been drinking your milk lately[/font]

[font=trebuchet ms] Sorta OT, but it's times like these that I love the independence of the Supreme Court.[/font]

[font=trebuchet ms] I was born in Atlanta. [img]http://i48.tinypic.com/105y1d3.jpg[/img][/font]

[font=trebuchet ms] After sharing a production room with the sports editors for several months, this year I actually understood the details of the Superbowl. It seemed like a win for New Orleans would be awesome, so I'm glad they won. Also I freaking love the fleur-de-lis. I never really got into football, which I am sorta sad over because it seems fun. I still have tennis, though :)[/font]

[quote name='Gavin'][SIZE=1][IMG]http://img3.ak.crunchyroll.com/i/spire2/03112008/7/6/2/2/7622f4343c7930_full.jpg[/IMG] .struh niarb ym woN [/SIZE][/QUOTE] [font=trebuchet ms] I feel weird because those things aren't moving to my eyes.[/font]

[font=trebuchet ms] So...on Facebook everyone is doing celebrity doppelganger. I ran my picture and aparently I look like Jared Padalecki. I am a 20-year-old Asian girl. [/font]

[font=trebuchet ms] Bah, I just found out JD Salinger died. I was already sad about Zinn, and now this. FU 2010![/font]

[quote name='James'][font=franklin gothic medium]You're right that they put sensors on the face as well, but I don't think it's simply a case of creating a model and then having software animate it completely based on motion capture. I mean, it's very possible that the tech has evolved so much recently that this is the case - so you could very well be totally right with that. But my understanding of motion capture is that it's still a fairly basic tool. The animation team still has to do a lot of manual work to achieve a lifelike effect. I would say that the techniques are [i]different[/i], but I'm not sure that one is inherently more artistic than another.[/font][/QUOTE] [font=trebuchet ms] I'm not 100% sure, so who knows? I'll leave it at that, since I don't really have a greater knowledge of the subject. [/font] [quote name='James'][font=franklin gothic medium]Also with Pixar's animation, there is an increasing amount of automation involved like I mentioned earlier. For instance, things like fur and hair aren't manually animated anymore - they're animated via the creation of specialised physics code.[/font][/QUOTE] [font=trebuchet ms] As I said, I agree about the technical animation (background, clothes, fur, lighting, etc.), but that's still different from character animation (body movements, facial expressions, etc.), my main point of focus.[/font] [quote name='James'][font=franklin gothic medium]Of course, it still can take months to engineer a set of code for a particular character and their particular materials (from memory, it took a long time for them to create the routines that would animate Sully's fur in Monsters Inc.) Either way, I think some people almost equate Avatar's animation to something like pushing a button that says "Go". And that, obviously, doesn't reflect the enormous work that goes into any kind of great CGI.[/font][/QUOTE] [font=trebuchet ms] This I absolutely agree with. The CGI of the caliber shown in Avatar isn't a cop-out, it takes years and years along with animators, illustrators, engineers, and who knows what else. I don't doubt that Avatar was a result of tremendous labor and talent.[/font]

[quote name='James'][font=franklin gothic medium]I'd say similar levels of artistry are required for both. The movement tracking software doesn't design or create the characters themselves - it simply tracks human movement. As far as I know, it can't track extremely subtle movement very well yet (including facial expressions, for example). So an enormous amount of detailed animation had to be performed on those characters in order to achieve their realistic behaviour and "look". You'll also find that the "traditional" CG animation in Pixar's films also uses a number of semi-automated elements. Animating water, for example, isn't done by hand - it's done by developing complex simulation software. So both Avatar and its Pixar counterparts are on a pretty level playing field I'd say, except for the fact that Avatar's animation technology is significantly more advanced (trying to animate photo-realistic beings and environments and composite them with live action actors is always a more difficult task than generating a more comical/whimsical world without any live action elements).[/font][/QUOTE] [font=trebuchet ms] I was strictly talking about character animation, which, I can imagine, is the hardest to capture well. I agree that artistry is involved in both processes, but they're not the same. As for as my knowledge goes, tracking animation places sensors on the face to mimic movements, so the basic character animation is there. There's a huge difference between creating a CGI look for already existing movements, and creating both the character and his/her expressions. I think people too easily jumble up technical animation and character animation. On terms of CGI background and such, yes, I think Pixar and the workers on Avatar are on level playing fields. But in terms of character animation, no. [/font]

[quote name='James'][font=franklin gothic medium] What I find most interesting is that James Cameron's use of CGI in Avatar is characterized by some as betraying a kind of laziness as a film maker. And yet, every Pixar film is credited with its beautiful and expressive CGI. I think Avatar just serves to demonstrate that the line between animation and live action is blurring all the time and that, more and more, we're seeing a combination of live and synthetic actors. I'm not sure who it was (might have been Speilberg), but I do remember hearing a director talk about creating a CGI "actor" who could be used in multiple films. This actor would presumably be voiced by the same person, but could be used to play different roles in films. As much as I think there are problems with that idea, I also find it interesting to see just how integral animation has become. You could almost call Avatar an "animation" - and that certainly wouldn't be a criticism.[/font][/QUOTE] [font=trebuchet ms] This has undergone some criticism in the animation world, mostly because a couple of years back motion-sensor animation (like Gollumn, but that was the créme de la créme of motion sensor and cheap motion sensor was bad) was looked down upon. Comparing motion sensor animation to the kind of animation Pixar does was at that time a kind of insult-- understandable, considering the animators behind any well-done character animation are in a way "acting" themselves, only through years of honing their talent. So to compare a program (if anything, let's applaud the people who engineered/created the program) that tracks human movements and animates them to people who pour thousands of hours into traditional/CG animation... yeah, I'm still iffy on that. [/font]

[quote name='Gavin'][CENTER][SIZE=1][IMG]http://failblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/epic-fail-avatar-plot-fail.jpg[/IMG] [/SIZE][/CENTER] [SIZE=1] +1 for Matt Bateman [/SIZE][/QUOTE] [font=trebuchet ms] [img]http://i45.tinypic.com/jtrp92.jpg[/img] It's called the hero's journey[/font]

[font=trebuchet ms] So judging by what I've seen, I think you'd really like the program Paint Tool SAI, if by chance you also have a PC lying around you should try it. I only have a Mac myself, so I haven't been able to try it but I hear wonderful things.[/font]

[font=trebuchet ms] My friends and I sometimes play trivia. When we were in high school our team name was Editors-in-Chief, because we were all on newspaper together, but now we use Meow Zedong, because I doodled him one day in gov class. Except he has no resemblance to a Chinese man, he's just a cat. [img]http://i46.tinypic.com/e6qd91.jpg[/img] [img]http://i46.tinypic.com/qrm5oj.jpg[/img] [img]http://i50.tinypic.com/2rzdtw4.jpg[/img] [img]http://i48.tinypic.com/24ay6w6.jpg[/img] ^the winning card! [/font]

[quote name='Boo'][font=lucida fax]First of all: Chill. Your caps, "ffs"s and "you COULD just suck it up!"s aren't changing anyone's point. To say "laws are laws so suck it up" is completely ridiculous. Also, TV always sucked. I don't know how TV was tons better in the past. It's there to keep the masses entertained and it's doing just that. [/font][/QUOTE] [font=trebuchet ms] u hurt my feelings, TV is awesome [img]http://i50.tinypic.com/xyivn.jpg[/img] [spoiler]BTW I download everything like a mofo. I just also am not delusional. Also I was talking more about the TV industry, as in like ratings and ad money and stuff. duhhh[/spoiler][/font]

[font=trebuchet ms] I truly, truly cannot understand peoples' defense of downloading films/tv shows/music for free. You're stealing the product of peoples' work, work that makes them a living. It's essentially the same thing as making an employee work for 50 hours and then not paying him for it. Laws are laws, people, stop trying to make yourself feel better about stealing. I'm also SO tired of the argument that "artists make most of their money from tours anyway, and music recording labels are just evil corporations so who cares lol?" In case everyone has forgotten, corporations and industry are part of the reason why capitalism works. So unless everyone who argues this is a socialist (highly doubtful), there's no point in using this argument. It's so easy for people who steal creative products to just blame the business companies behind them. God it's like another surge of ambiguously anti-corporation hippies. Oh, film studios are just unfairly charging too much for tickets! What evil, money-grubbing bastards-- bbviously this justifies stealing the film online and not paying anything for it! If tickets were cheaper, I'd totally go see it in theaters (lol NO you wouldn't. Let's be honest.) Same goes for TV. Ever wonder why the TV industry SUCKS right now? Partly because so many people are downloading, driving rates lower, less ad money, less spaces for writers, less spaces for crew workers, less risk taking, less quality shows. Seriously, you think pirated films on the web are part of a free INFORMATION BANK? You COULD just suck it up, pay money and watch the film in theaters, ffs. Or deal with the fact that if you don't have enough money you can't watch the film. [/font]

[quote name='Sara'][url=http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=202]This is not [i]entirely[/i] relevant to your post, but Jane Austen reminds me of the Brontës, and any excuse is a good excuse to plug Kate Beaton (link).[/url][/QUOTE] [font=trebuchet ms] I love Kate Beaton, her comics are so clever I become jealous. Err to make this post on topic, Romeo and Juliet totally do not reinforce my ideals about love. I sort of hate that they're considered great lovers.[/font]

[quote name='Nerdsy'][color=deeppink]Methinks you are overexaggerating my level of objection over it.[/color][/QUOTE] [font=trebuchet ms][img]http://i48.tinypic.com/imjymf.gif[/img] On the subject of the trilogy, I hope the rumors about the setting them on other planets are true. Mostly I'm just excited that more original blockbusters are coming out. And IA with Dagger's point about the female characters. God I love me some Sigourney Weaver and Zoe Saldena. Even Michelle Rodriquez. I loved EW's interview with Cameron when he said Hollywood forgets 50% of the population is women. [/font]

[font=trebuchet ms] Very nice, I really like your style and your sketches are great. Probably one of the best artists I've seen on here![/font]

[font=trebuchet ms] I think one of the reason the anime market is suffering so much in the U.S. is because most anime fandoms operate online and there's so much bittorrenting or downloading or whatever that there's minimal financial gain. Anime fans were a small group to begin with, and now most of them are happy to stay with their free, underground cultures. Sorta sad to me.[/font]

[font=trebuchet ms][size=6]ELIZABETH BENNET AND MR. DARCY[/size] for life[/font]