Sylvia Draws

Longer version: cg animation is essentially puppet animation. You build a model, paint it and dress it up, and then move it around. That’s why Pixar’s first animated film was about toys, and their second one was about bugs: it’s much harder to make something look convincingly soft and fleshy than it is to work with something that’s supposed to be rigid.

Working inside this paradigm, the progression that makes sense is to work on developing more and more articulated puppets. Figure out how to add fur (Monsters, Inc.), move fish (Finding Nemo), get to the point where you can actually make human puppets who look appealing (The Incredibles.) In 2012 the big animated feature films showed off huge strides in particle physics (The Guardians), and hair (Tangled, Brave). Character effects and lighting were really hitting their stride, and the general movement was towards more detailed models, increased realism, richer and more intricate environments. The models only had so much range before they started to break, so squash & stretch was never going to be as pronounced as something from drawn animation could be. Hotel Transylvania challenged that.

As a show creator and director, Genndy Tartakovsky’s always shown a preference for stylization. He’s also got a reputation for incredible and deliberate timing, spectacular silhouettes, dramatic movement and clear staging, and just overall really good at directing animation. He wanted Tex Avery-type animation in CG and by golly, he did it.

Look at how exaggerated those shapes are, and how snappy, smooth, and fast the transitions between each one: that’s not something that was really being done. The motion-blurring alone was so defining that apparently Sony calls it a “Genndy blur.”

Animation is essentially the art of movement: the better the movement, the better the animation, and the Hotel Transylvania franchise has spectacular movement.

The model is actually being resculpted for maximum exaggeration, and the smears and blurs make the transitions between each pose fast, energetic, and snappy.

Like. Look at that movement. Look at how tightly he’s rooted while the follow through of his clothing sells the hard stop of each hip bump. Look at how sharp and deep his knees are bending, the way his weight shifts onto his heels and that tiny little side step at the very end, where he keeps his weight on his right foot for a split second before popping over to his new position. And he’s dancing the Macarena because he had to find the most brain-dominating, toe-tappingist song in the universe to win a DJ battle where a Kraken was being driven into a murderous rage by a mystical melody and it had to be counteracted by another song.

Yeah.

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“She will follow you, if you remain true to your purpose,” Persephone said, icy and beautiful, with asphodel in her hair, and embroidered on her dress. She sat beside her husband, Hades, and looked down on Orpheus, her face utterly unreadable, “But if you cast a single gaze upon her before she leaves the Underworld, she will be lost to you until time ends.”

“Thank you,” Orpheus said, desperately grateful. His fingertips ached, blistered and bleeding as he played his plea to the gods who had no reason to give him what he requested of them. The return of his beloved wife, who had fled for her life, and lost it trying to escape. “Your Majesties, thank you. I will write a thousand songs in your honor.”

“You had best go,” Hades said, the first words he had spoken since Orpheus arrived. “The journey is long, and fraught with danger. It will not be easy.”

Orpheus took the dismissal for what it was, bowed again, and made his way out of the grand, dark, pillar-lined hall. Here and there, flowers sprouted up through cracks in the stone, the mark of the queen who was only here half the year, and must be dearly missed when she was gone.

Maybe his plea, and the mercy he received in return, made more sense than he thought. Surely there were none who understood the longing for a beloved spouse better than the king and queen of the underworld.

Hades’ warning struck him, and Orpheus fought with himself, with the urge to look back and make sure Eurydice was there, following behind him. The gods were fond of their tricks and traps, but they rarely lied outright.

Well, he hoped they didn’t, anyway.

On and on he went, out of the grand, black-stone palace, into the sprawling, twilight orchards beyond. It was beautiful and peaceful. Sprawling gardens filled the warm air with the scent of citrus flowers and herbs. Fireflies winked their green-gold lights everywhere, and danced in clouds around the hazy ghosts who walked and laughed together. Off in the distance, he heard music and longed to join.

But no. He was here with a goal, and everything here would tempt him, or frighten him, or try to distract him from his purpose.

And he had to have faith in Euridice. She was behind him. Persephone said she would be, and he could only trust, because to look back for her would be to lose her.

When they came to the River Lethe, Orpheus began to fear. After all, the River of Forgetfulness was no small challenge, and he wasn’t fool enough to think that it would not test him, although he would, at least, not have to ford it. There was a bridge, although it was not what Orpheus might call ideal. A rickety thing of woven branches and rough wood, it cracked under his feet, but it held.

It wasn’t until he made it across, that Orpheus heard a faint sound. The sound of a foot on the bridge, barely there, as if from far away, but only a step behind him.

That sound, that faint sound, gave him hope. Euridice was there. She was with him. The gods had not lied, or broken their bargain.

It also gave him an idea.

Music had gotten him this far. Perhaps it would take them just a few steps further.

His fingers ere too damaged to keep playing, but there was nothing wrong with his voice, and so, hopefully, he started on a song he wrote long ago, when he first fell in love with his wife, and heard her lovely voice.

It was a song for two, and he would be lying if he didn’t admit how frightened he was, how his heart caught, when he came to the end of his verse, and hers began.

For a heartbeat, a single heartbeat, he thought she would not, could not reply, but then her sweet, warm alto filled the air, a little tense, a little afraid, but as true as ever.

Orpheus would have wept at the sound.

The song wasn’t a long one, but he started another as soon as it ended, and another, and another. Together, they sang their way through Tartarus. Through the tortured, evil dead who howled around them and tried to drag him off the narrow path that sometimes faded to almost nothing under his feet. The gods had not told him what had happened if he left the path, but then, they didn’t have to. He knew the legends of those who left the path.

The path turn back to a road until the sky light with flame and they came to another river, this one deep, and angry, and blazing with fire.

The River Phlegethon. The river if fire, that bordered Tartarus, and imprisoned the lost souls within.

Orpheus was glad that Euridice had started them on battle songs of coming home almost an hour before, or his courage, shaken form hours of walking through the tortured dead, might have failed him. The bridge here was stone, but as fragile, as frail, and as frightening. Pebbles rolled off the sides when Orpheus stepped onto the thin stone, and his voice broke as he stumbled to his knees. In harmony with him, Euridice gasped, but she didn’t stop singing. Didn’t stop promising she was there.

Together, they made it across, into the slums of the undistinguished dead.

Here, they were followed, although not closely. The dead could not touch them. Not marked as they were by Cause under the authority of the queen herself, but they gathered near, listening to the songs, and whispering amongst themselves. Orpheus raised his voice louder, afraid to lose Euridice in the crowd. She answered him, strong and clear, and only a step behind him, always.

After what seems like hours more, Orpheus found his voice beginning to give out, but he sang on determinedly, unwilling to give up when victory was so close to hand.

At last, finally, they came to the last river in their journey.

So wide he could not see the other side, the Styx spread out like an ocean, and on the shore, the sandy shore, was a single boat.

“I wondered if you would make it back this way,” Chiron greeted Orpheus with a cackling laugh that was mostly hidden by his thick beard and hood. He had ferried Orpheus across only a day before, paid with one of the three gold coins Orpheus brought with him. “The ferry is not free, Bard.”

“I know,” Orpheus said hoarsely, his first spoken words since he left the palace. He dug in his purse and pulled out the coins he kept, carefully packed with the thinnest hope, and how proffered with more of the same. “A coin for each of us, to see us back to the land of the living.”

“Nice to see one of you heroes has the sense to pack for the trip,” Chiron said, begrudgingly impressed. He took the coins and nodded to the boat. “You’re not out, yet.”

“I know,” Orpheus agreed. It was a warning, he knew. They weren’t out, and until they were, he did not dare look back. Could not make sure that Eurydice made it into the boat as well. “Thank you, Ferryman.”

“Get in the boat, boy.”

He got in the boat.

On through the unmarked grey waters they sailed, with barely the lap of waves against the side of the narrow boat to show their passing.

With nothing to do but wait, Orpheus cast his mind over the many sailing songs he knew, chose Eurydice’s favorite, another duet, and started to sing.

Chiron’s laughter punctuated Eurydice’s voice when she joined. In, on time and on key as ever.

Hours passed, as they passed songs back and forth, flirting and joking as they sang silly songs, and bawdy ones, and ones of coming home after a long time at sea.

Through it all, the Ferryman behind him never stopped chuckling. It might have been frightening, but Orpheus thought that maybe it was a compliment too. That his laughter was in celebration of cleverness that rarely crossed his path.

When they came to the far shore, the boat nudged into the sand, and Orpheus caught himself, right before he looked back to thank Chiron for his service.

“You paid me, boy,” the Ferryman said from somewhere behind him. “don’t spoil it with thanks. Go on.”

Orpheus went.

The air was fresher, here. They were close, and now the songs shifted to those of love newly discovered. Not all were duets, but any song would be sung in harmony, and so they tangled their voices together and kept walking.

It wasn’t until Orpheus felt sunlight on his face that he realized, he was out. Out of the Underworld and back where he started this daring, foolish, hopeful journey.

He went to turn, but Euridice’s voice raised sharply, and she cut her loving song off for one of warning, a song for children, to teach them not to trust all they saw.

And Orpheus remembered.

The game was not done. Not until she took her final step into the weak, late winter sunshine.

So he kept walking. Kept singing. Kept hoping.

Until at last, the song faded, and a voice he mourned for, as hoarse as his own, spoke from just behind him.

“We’ll have to write a duet about this.”

And all Orpheus could do was laugh as he turned around, at last, to see his wife standing there, just a single step out of the Underworld, and smiling with tears of joy in her eyes.

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"A century of gradual reforestation across the American East and Southeast has kept the region cooler than it otherwise would have become, a new study shows.

The pioneering study of progress shows how the last 25 years of accelerated reforestation around the world might significantly pay off in the second half of the 21st century.

Using a variety of calculative methods and estimations based on satellite and temperature data from weather stations, the authors determined that forests in the eastern United States cool the land surface by 1.8 – 3.6°F annually compared to nearby grasslands and croplands, with the strongest effect seen in summer, when cooling amounts to 3.6 – 9°F.

The younger the forest, the more this cooling effect was detected, with forest trees between 20 and 40 years old offering the coolest temperatures underneath.

“The reforestation has been remarkable and we have shown this has translated into the surrounding air temperature,” Mallory Barnes, an environmental scientist at Indiana University who led the research, told The Guardian.

“Moving forward, we need to think about tree planting not just as a way to absorb carbon dioxide but also the cooling effects in adapting for climate change, to help cities be resilient against these very hot temperatures.”

The cooling of the land surface affected the air near ground level as well, with a stepwise reduction in heat linked to reductions in near-surface air temps.

“Analyses of historical land cover and air temperature trends showed that the cooling benefits of reforestation extend across the landscape,” the authors write. “Locations surrounded by reforestation were up to 1.8°F cooler than neighboring locations that did not undergo land cover change, and areas dominated by regrowing forests were associated with cooling temperature trends in much of the Eastern United States.”

By the 1930s, forest cover loss in the eastern states like the Carolinas and Mississippi had stopped, as the descendants of European settlers moved in greater and greater numbers into cities and marginal agricultural land was abandoned.

The Civilian Conservation Corps undertook large replanting efforts of forests that had been cleared, and this is believed to be what is causing the lower average temperatures observed in the study data.

However, the authors note that other causes, like more sophisticated crop irrigation and increases in airborne pollutants that block incoming sunlight, may have also contributed to the lowering of temperatures over time. They also note that tree planting might not always produce this effect, such as in the boreal zone where increases in trees are linked with increases in humidity that way raise average temperatures."

As you look at these maps of forests vs. temperature trends, remember that the temperature map is showing large-scale, very long-term averages, especially on the temperature map. Because of that, the map data doesn't reflect how very, very big a difference it can make on a local scale, e.g. those 9°F summer temperature conditions. And those local scale changes are the changes that people actually live in.

This is hugely

Forest Age vs. Warming Maps

Pictured: Guardian graphic. Source: Barnes, et al, 2024, ‘A Century of Reforestation Reduced Anthropogenic Warming in the Eastern United States.’ Note: Forest age data from North American Carbon Program. Age estimates as of 2019 at 1km resolution. Temperature data from Delaware Air Temperature & Precipitation Dataset.

Source: The Guardian, February 17, 2024. And the original study is here, from the journal Earth's Future, first published February 13, 2024.

(Also, btw, for any non-US and/or non-geography people, don't worry about the fact that there aren't any forests in the middle of the country. That's the Great Plains. Like we definitely did turn most of it into cropland, but it's not supposed to have forests.)

This is huge.

Even the small pockets of new reforestation elsewhere in the country are usually correlated with small pockets of cooling. (And of course correlation by itself does not equal causation, but that's what the rest of the study is for.)

This is genuinely strong evidence that the massive tree planting campaigns of the last 25 years are going to pay off dramatically much sooner than we thought.

The study found that the coolest forests were ones planted planted 20 to 40 years ago.

That means that trees planted in the 90s through 2004 are in that stage and causing the most cooling right now.

It also means that the ongoing, absolutely massive recent reforestation efforts are going to pay off a lot between now and 2050.

That means campaigns like China's 2022 pledge to plant or conserve 70 billion trees by 2030. Or India's annual tree-planting drive, which in 2021 saw 250 million trees planted in just one day. Or Kenya's new tree-planting holiday, started in 2023, to plant 100 million trees each year.

This study also gives strong evidence that newer forests don't have vanishingly few benefits compared to old growth forests - they do have benefits (if not as many), just different ones. It also, I would argue, suggests that tree planting efforts don't have to be ecologically perfect to make a real difference. They certainly were not nailing native plant biodiversity and ecological best practices in the US in the 1930s!

"It is too early. The hole is too big. Sadness washes over me when I think that I will never see him again. I have admired him so much since I was a child.

I remember the day he called me by name for the first time, the day you used the word "friend" for me and Kishimoto, I remember being overjoyed with Kishimoto on the way back home. I also remember the last conversation we had.

He was one of those who took the baton from the days when reading manga made you a fool, and created an era when both adults and children could enjoy reading manga. He showed us the dream that manga can go global. It was like watching a hero going forward. For not only manga artists but also the creators in various industries, the excitement and emotion of the time of Dragon Ball serialization must have taken root in their childhood. His existence is like a big tree.

For the manga artists of our generation who stood on the same stage, the closer I got to Toriyama's works, the more I realised that they had a greater presence. Scary. But I am just happy to see the easy-going man himself again. Because we love Toriyama-sensei on a blood level. With respect and gratitude for the creative world he has left behind, I pray for his soulful rest in peace.

1) the amount of time that went into considering this approach, which is a resounding 0.00 seconds

2) the baby's screm - yes it's sad bc the poor lil guy is scared but the way his yells for momma hitch with the guy's running have me lmao ngl

3) the guy either had the incredible good fortune or the foresight to put the baby between himself and momma so he could make a break for it. it was too quick. Too deliberate and almost instinctive. He has done this before.

4) the victory skips and turban twirling.

Some character designs with some…atypical color choices? I guess. I don’t know what’s going on in that area.

This is Nimona and her supervillain friend (He doesn’t have a name yet, I’m working on that). Nimona is his sidekick/squire, they’re like the Batman and Robin of slightly Medieval villains, but she’s actually way more evil than him. He does what he does to make a point, and he doesn’t really want anyone get hurt - Nimona just gets a kick out of destroying stuff.

Stop-motion is an animation technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments. By capturing 24 frames per second, the object comes to life

The movement of each character, the speed at which they move, and lighting are all taken into account. Everything is crafted and captured manually, frame by frame. By doing everything manually, the handmade nature of this series exudes warmth filled with the unique charm only stop-motion can provide.

Wow. The patience, kindness and calm communication skills. Outstanding.

They recognized that the mother was also expressing a vulnerable truth about herself - that she felt like a bad mother because her child was expressing gender feelings she wasn’t equipped to help with - and met her where she was, a concerned parent with limited information - to point her where she should be heading, research and resources.

love ourselves when we feel

loved as ourselves”

right now late june might be too late to try this out and get good results BUT. pick out any variety of tomato plant you like best. i prefer a good slicing tomato for sandwiches, not cherry tomatoes. any thing like Better Boy or even Black Cherokee is tasty. the other part is choosing a potato plant. you got to pick out a potato you like too. this has to be done before either plant starts fruiting or blossoming in the spring.

here’s you a video how to assemble your Frankenstein plant :D

But this one had a whole section that’s just “Things on Toast”. Another that was all about putting crap in your oatmeal to make it better. Those are fairly pedestrian and don’t take forever.

I haven’t looked through the whole thing yet but so far it’s actually pretty practical. Also if you’re broke like me and don’t know how to make Dal, you should get on that. 

I also liked that there’s this at the beginning:

I found her channel recently and she has various videos on how to make meals that taste good for only $5 or $10 ect.. And I don’t mean she buys everything and after mathing it’s $5 per portion but a total of $30 spent. I mean she goes into a store and buys everything for the meal and it’s $5 for the meal.