winged art

Anyways! HERE'S YOUR HANDY GUIDE TO WHAT CAN COUNT AS EYESTRAIN! I'm pulling this straight from the Artfight rules page about what needs to be labeled and filtered as eyestrain because it's VERY helpful and VERY accurate! I also know not everybody has an AF account and might not always have access to this handy guide, and this is an important resource; That's why I'm sharing it here! (under the cut)

PLEASE TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY!!! THIS IS ABOUT THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF OTHERS!!!

And the response to me basically saying "maybe be informed first instead of talking out of your ass" from a variety of people was a great case study on able-bodied entitlement to disabled representation. Hearing and even some hard of hearing people (who clarified that they didn't know sign language) kept insisting that "at the very least the characters could lip sync to the songs".

Meanwhile Deaf people were quick to call out that demanding the characters lip sync the songs is hearing people trying to make the representation palatable for them. And it wouldn't make sense either, because ASL has different sentence structure to spoken English. It wouldn't match up to what they're signing, and it would look all the more confusing. Plus, facial expressions and mouth shapes are key elements to sign language. And to be clear, Deaf people were both celebrating and critical of Disney's portrayal of sign language. Disney worked with a Deaf theater group, but there's still some great critiques from Deaf influencers on these songs that I encourage checking out. But their opinions were getting drowned out by uninformed hearing people's perspectives. Because these opinions reflected a hearing person's vague idea of Deaf culture, these opinions were affirmed by other hearing people. Dominating the discussion.

Among the worst responses I got were hearing people saying "so what if we're ignorant! At least we're asking questions so somebody out there can inform us nicely! That's better than us being completely apathetic!" and it's in this unbridled ableist attitude that reveals something. This idea that marginalized people have to take in blatantly ignorant remarks on their culture and sagely inform this ignorant and insensitive person. If this marginalized person refuses this role, then the allyship vanishes completely. It was always conditionally based on how nice you are.

Hyram Osmond, the director of these shorts, is himself a CODA - child of deaf adult(s)! He recruited DJ Kurs from Deaf West Theatre to assemble an incredible team of deaf people from different states, of different ethnicities - my Hawaiian cousin is the actor for Moana 2! They had Deaf Colombian people working the signs for Encanto, with their own cultural signs added in!

Social media exhausts me, so I don't go around looking for comments on things like this. I was initially critical of it until I saw the songs animated in full - really, the only gripe I have is that I wasn't personally recruited to help with this as a Deaf animator, but I'm just barely starting to get into the animation industry! It's a miracle this entire project went as well as it could have in these difficult times. It's a testament to the dedication and joy of the entire team that gave life to the hearing characters' signing.

Is it perfect? No! I really wish they'd had a little more time to marinate! But for an animation studio as huge as Disney to pull off not just a few minutes, but over half a hour's worth of sign language, well-animated, smoothly, accurate? Completely skipping the step of motion capture and focusing exclusively on visual reference? Taking NO shortcuts? (I was so insulted when one filmmaker asked Hyram why they didn't use motion capture for animating sign language, grrrr.......)

I've never seen that before. When I first saw the trailers before that night, I couldn't believe my eyes. It felt unreal.

But the Deaf directors and actors fought to get their signs in, to make sure they were all represented in viewable angles, even demanding Hyram adjust the lighting for many scenes. An absolutely exhaustive amount of effort went into making this as polished as it could be.

The Kickstarter for the print and pdf book editions of Runaway to the Stars is now live! Come check it out!

Check it out at afroindex.org! 💛✨

First of all, and I'll be blunt: the entitlement towards cheap global south labor from indie artists is insane. You can place whatever marginalized identity in your shop, it does not give you the free pass to hire manufacturers that refuse to inform you about the wages and labor protections of their workers. If the only way that you can do x product is like that, then you don't deserve to have x product as a merch option.

Enamel pins, makeshift plushies, acrylic stands, shitty tshirts and apparel... why is our community filled with dropshipping slop whos production involves labor abuses and environmental damage? why are we constantly playing dumb to these manufacturers being shady and then getting surprised they get in labor scandals? why are we coddling artists that its ok to exploit others for profit because a smol bean who just has no choice or responsibility ever?

hm erm, hi there, this is what I've made since December that I haven't posted

uhhhh my OCs, behold