Scribbles

He has Marfan Syndrome, which is a rare connective tissue condition that gives him bizarrely elongated limbs and allows him to do unnatural things with his body, and he’s built quite a resume for himself appearing in horror movies

Like Doug Jones, he also appeared as three of the ghosts in Crimson Peak:

But you may have also seen him as The Crooked Man in The Conjuring 2:

Eddie’s leper in IT:

The Nina monster in all three REC movies:

Set, the God of Death in The Mummy (2017):

The titular creature in Mama:

He did motion capture work for the Xenomorph in Alien: Covenant:

And he most recently appeared in Insidious: The Last Key and the Slender Man movie!!

American animation: We have to create simplified characters to make the movement faster and more creative and interesting.

Me glancing at Japan: 

Also animation in Japan, while it does have plenty sakuga stuff, are actually just budget dumps for the best fight scenes. During normal scenes, characters can be very static and has a lot of holds. There’s also the mouth-flapping thing that a lot of animators in America detest. Everything is revolved around budgets for both countries. For America, to pay animators working wages they decided to cut costs and ship labor overseas. For Japan it means terrible working hours and labor, where plenty of animators have fallen ill or even die in their own cubicles.

Action scene in an American animated adventure show

Action scene in an American animated adventure move (where the budget will be higher)

Low budget Japanese animation (though I’ll grant it’s also dated, it’s what I had):

Visual style is not the same thing as Animation.  

Like…Garnet’s wedding dance from “Reunited” is actually very NICELY animated!  It’s fluid, it’s dynamic, it’s expressive!  It does the thing animation is supposed to do and uses Motion to communicate Narrative.

Buuuuuuuut Garnet’s got a big goofy grin on, her proportions are not entirely “on model” (for the sake of facilitating the big expressive dancing) and the perspective is relatively flat, erego it is “bad” animation.

Except that all of those things are and have been from the very start deliberate aspects of “Steven Universe”’s visual aesthetic.  An aesthetic that is connected to the show’s animation by virtue of having that aspect in mind at a design level, yes, but it’s not really the same thing.

You must know. Surely, you must know. It was all for you.

WHAT are you doing? I’m uh… I’m putting my hands up. You are making us look BAD. I… no I am not! Yes, you are. No, I’m not. Yes you ARE. 

Music in Film:

Pacific Rim (2013) dir. Guillermo del Toro

Let’s start with the obvious: the whole film Nux has wanted to establish his life has some meaning by dying “historic on the Fury Road.” Of course, all his previous efforts were attempts to continue things the way they were–in Immortal Joe’s terms. Thus, those deaths would not have really been historic. They would have been forgotten, just another blip in the status quo. In crashing the rig and allowing the wives to return to the Citadel, Nux does in fact fulfill his wish to die historic–without his actions, the wives likely would not have been able to return to the city and enact the changes they inevitably do. His death matters in a way none of the other deaths in the film do–it matters to changing the future, and thus becomes an important part of the future Citadel’s history.

Nux only knows how to do that in his own terms, though–the terms of the War Boys. Thus, his death only gains significance if it is witnessed. For Nux, the action itself is not as important as it being seen and acknowledged. This makes a lot of sense in terms of Immortal Joe’s world and its patriarchal structure. Individuals are not important, actions don’t matter unless they are showy and seen–all life boils down not to meaningful actions but to showing off.

But here’s why this film is a feminist masterpiece, and why this scene in particular cements that: Capable’s reaction.

Capable does witness him. She locks eyes and acknowledges the significance of his action, of his inevitable death. But she doesn’t respond like one of the War Boys–when the War Boys die asking to be witnessed, the others respond yelling “Witnessed!” This answer does say, “I have seen your action, it matters,” but hollered with usual the War Boy bravado, it also acts as an attempt for the witnessing War Boys to build up their own importance by making themselves part of the action.

Capable does not yell “Witnessed.” She responds with a gesture–holding her hand out and pulling it toward her heart. This is the Vuvalini’s gesture of mourning–a beautiful gesture that essentially mimics pulling the lost soul into one’s own heart. Capable has only just learned this gesture, but she seems to innately understand its significance. Thus, while she witnesses Nux’s death, she refuses to “witness” him in the sense of the War Boys and instead mourns him in the manner of the Vuvalini. Nux likely sees this–the editing implies he doesn’t turn the rig until after he’s seen the gesture. Thus, he knows he is witnessed, but more importantly, he knows that he will be mourned and remembered. With that knowledge, he finally has the strength and the worthy reason to sacrifice his life for a cause that matters.

Frozen vs HTTYD:

Disney animated snow here to be soft and heavy. I think they even developed a whole software just for animating snow! They add a lot more vivid color, like the blues in the shadows and the oranges in the light. Obviously, the way they animate catches the eye easier because of its strong color and bouncy movement. Characteristic and still reminiscent of the classic Disney movies.

Dreamworks made the snow here look powdery, like it had just fallen. Look how it kind of “explodes” and clouds up like dust when it’s hit with such a great impact. It’s less colored by light, but it still looks very real. Dreamworks puts so much love and detail into their animation, making it look so real you feel like you can reach out and touch it.