Don't mind me. I'm just petting your dog.

I was an animator on this film, working for a year and a half on it (if any of you guys were wondering where I'd gone). While we were making it, we kept asking each other what the reception for this odd, special movie would be, and joking about it going to the Oscars. Lol can you imagine!!

Fast forward two years, and here we are.

At the Oscars.

Absolutely wild.

Please DO talk about it more! This movie had a minuscule budget compared to the other Oscar nominees; it's traditional 2D animation in a world where 3D has taken over; it's kid-friendly but not FOR kids; and it's SILENT.

SILENT! Not one line of dialogue. And the amazing scriptwriting and animatic work made it not just entertaining, but exciting and absolutely heartbreaking. My first day at the studio they made me watch the animatic, and even in that rough state it made me emotional. I had to hold back tears two or three times. And I did my work from that day on fully believing in this project.

Everybody I met there--background artists, character designers, producers, animators, clean-up artists, all through to the guys at compo, color key, edition, music, the skater girls who served as reference for Robot's and Dog's dance and more things that I'm definitely forgetting--showed a huge world what a passionate little team can do. I am SO proud of all of us.

This movie is weird, it's unique, and even coming from a very biased person, it's a freaking treasure and deserves all the praise it gets.

Naturally everybody will think it's fake because of the date only to lose their minds (both positively and negatively based on their opinion of trump) when realizing it's real

There will be massive celebrations in the streets and on social media and lots of predictable "don't speak ill of the dead" discourse about those celebrations

Weird evangelicals will pull some weird number trick talking about how Jesus was conceived on April 1st and that makes Trump a sort of messiah and people will make fun of that

The Republicans (after they're done with the faux-sadness and faux-outrage) will stomp over each other to be his successor but none of them will succeed. They'll tear each other apart and have no single nominee for the November elections.

There will be discourse about if Biden and the living former presidents should go to his funeral (they won't, he was a traitor insurrectionist)

The Ukraine-Russia War immediately goes in favor of Ukraine as morale in the Kremlin is reduced. China similarly backs off from its threats on Taiwan.

Ten thousand new memes are made, some sticking around for years to come.

part 1 pg 61-70

It's worth noting that the photos shown are comparing apples to oranges: the dog and deer are both moving at their fastest gait in a double suspension gallop, while the horse is cantering--not galloping! That horse is moving nowhere near its top speed. Here's a horse that's actually trying to hit speed. You can see quite a bit of rocking back and forth along the spine, which is why humans trying to ride a horse at top speed traditionally try to lift themselves up using thighs and knees: that lets you move with the rock-and-roll of a gallop rather than being thrown off.

Of course, the gallop is not remotely a useful gait for long distance transportation, because it's not sustainable for any animal over long distances. Instead, the gait for distance movement at speed is the trot, and I think you'll find that dogs aren't much more mobile at the trot than other species. Here's a horse and a dog:

You may notice that the dog's back is not noticeably more mobile than the horse's at the trot. The reason we do not typically ride dogs when we use them for draft work is not because the gait is uncomfortable. The reason is that dogs are not large enough to carry a human without damage to its spine. This is also why we do not ride llamas, reindeer, or ostriches outside of gimmicky novelty events. It is bad for their backs, and if you try as an adult you run a strong risk of just completely fucking up your animal. Ditto goats, which are also sometimes used as cheap draught animals.

You can safely ride a cow, but the mobility of the spine is not why riding oxen (as draught cows are also known) is unpopular. The reason riding cows are unpopular is that cattle are really fucking slow. A cow is essentially a tank on legs: the much more efficient hindgut takes up space, and the cow has opted to specialize in handling predators not by fleeing from them but by trampling them into paste. This means that cattle are more prone to stopping if they feel threatened and possibly becoming aggressive, and are very difficult to motivate to move at speed. The cow below is a trained Longhorn steer, one of the leggiest and mobile breeds around, and even those steers don't bother moving too quick unless they have a reason... and they are pretty likely to decide that the reason is worth squishing. As far as I'm aware, that USSR moose cavalry initiative went immediately to hell because the moose were not willing to carry a rider or predisposed to obey one, especially not into anything that seemed like a threat--rather as you might expect an attempt to ride aurochs to end up.

This is mostly true of thoroughbreds, especially racing thoroughbreds! Racing thoroughbreds are notoriously inbred (the the more times a famous racehorse repeats in a pedigree, the better) and highly specialized to go very very fast for comparatively short periods of time, until the age of about 7, at which point they spend their remaining 14-ish years of life expectancy doing whatever retired racehorses do. Which, unfortunately, is often "be euthanized".

They're hyperspecialized and not bred for long-term stability or health, is what I'm trying to say.