The ongoing struggle of getting myself to write

1. canonically female (no variation)

2. canonically the protagonist of her story (if it’s an ensemble cast you have to say you can legitimately see her as The main character)

3. your personal #1 favorite character in that story (ties are acceptable)

Cloître de Saint-Sauveur (Aix Cathedral cloister) in Aix-en-Provence, France. It is a serene Romanesque cloister dating back to the 12th century.

reminder for anyone who's been frustrated that Screamer-Killer 6e's official character sheet has been in legal limbo since 2007¹, we at the HORIZON MACHINE acquired the rights last year at a bankruptcy auction for systems bitch magazine and have made it available in pdf form here

Sylvano Bussotti. Siciliano. 1962.

R. Murray Schafer Apocalypsis. 2015.

Conlon Nancarrow. Study for Player Piano No. 25. 1976.

R. Murray Schafer. Divan I Shams I Tabriz: Lustro, part 1. 1969.

Mark Lombardi. Oliver North, Lake Resources of Panama, and the Iran-Contra Operation. 1984.

George Crumb. Makrokosmos, Volume II. 1973.

Marco Fusinato Mass Black Implosion (Algo Para Guitarra, Carlos Cruz de Castro). 2007.

Edgar Martín Jiménez. *Arquitectura del sonido. 2013.

A plotter acted as sort of a 3D printer but for 2D images. There was a ball point pen that could move up and down, and the paper underneath could be moved in and out. Using CAD based programs you could plot points in 2D space and the plotter would draw the lines between them and even do geometric shapes!

When it came time to do The Great Mouse Detective, the animators at Disney wanted to do more dynamic shots for the climatic battle inside Big Ben. Drawing all those gears and cogs would be a nightmare for the animators, so they experimented with using 3D animation.

But this was still the early 80’s. There was no digital ink and paint program, no way to merge the 2D animated characters with the 3D animated backgrounds digitally. So how did they get the 3D animated backgrounds out of the computer?

By drawing each frame on the plotter.

Every frame was printed out on the plotter, and then xeroxed onto animation cels, and then hand painted like traditional 2D animation cels are.

But why the plotter? If they were gonna have to export every frame anyway, why not use a printer? Well… because printers back then just weren’t very good. A plotter uses points and physically draws the line between them, much like how vector graphics work. It yielded a much smoother and higher fidelity line than if they just printed them out.

This was still a massive undertaking, but it was probably the best solution to getting the dynamic camera moves they wanted out on paper. 2D animation was drawn over top and then both layers of animation cels were filmed frame by frame.

And that’s how you got dynamic shots like this in the mid 80’s! 3D animated backgrounds, printed with a plotter, xeroxed onto animation cels, hand painted, and then re-photographed with the 2D animation on top!