RED RED ANGER

So Netflix is releasing this animated movie but here’s the thing - all backgrounds are done in AI. No actual BG artists were hired or credited for this work.

And here’s the kicker - I gave them too much credit. I realized that not even the AI users are credited apparently. Check this out:

“+Human”. No names, no nothing. 

I know it’s tempting, but please don’t hate-watch this thing. Numbers equal profit even if the people watching are just doing it to mock. Don’t give Netflix and other studios even more incentive to fire more animators and replace them with machines trained on their work and skill. 

Hilarously, the excuse used is ‘there aren’t enough artists’. That’s not true - there are more than enough artists, but the real issue is that no one wants to pay a living wage. Here’s a short video about the reality of animation in Japan.

The biggest winners in this equation at the end of the day are the AI infrastructure owners - owners of Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, etc. Do not feed this machine, it creates more monopolization of entire industries, raises a powerful few and dehumanizes the rest.

Victor Hugo’s description of an octopus (1866) // Nope (2022)

[image ID: text reading “… it contracts, it condenses itself; it reduces itself to the simplest possible expression. It confounds itself with the shadow. It looks like a ripple of the waves. It resembles everything except something living.“ below is a screencap of OJ watching the clouds at night and briefly seeing a flying saucer far in the distance above the hills.

text reading “It has no bones, it has no blood, it has no flesh. It is flabby. There is nothing in it. It is a skin.” below is a screencap of black, rectangular hole, with what looks like corrugated metal leading into it.

text reading “It has a single orifice in the center of its radiation. Is this one hole the vent? Is it the mouth? It is both.” below is a screencap of the haywood’s home, covered in blood. above it, overwhelmingly large, is a giant saucer with an abysmal hole at its center. rain can be seen illuminated and pouring down from the edges of the saucer. below is more text, “The same aperture fulfills both functions. The entrance is the exit.“

one screencap of OJ looking at from his car window, up at the sky. it is dark and shadowy, but a strip of moonlight illuminates his eye. a second screencap of Em, looking horrified in the dark, staring at something intensely. below, the text reads, “A claw is nothing beside the cupping-glass. The claw means the beast entering into your flesh; the cupping-glass means yourself entering into the beast. When God wills it, he excels in the execrable.“

It is never really the kind of battle where a pretty hero character mows down faceless mooks you see the mook's faces and also the faces of their children and babies.

It is always the primal dilemma of the great Either-Or:

Either you die, or we do.