I wanted to share some of the short animations I’ve found through my classes to help show people the variety of forms animation can take. I hope they can serve as inspiration for others as they have for me :)

Yes, this is absolutely stunning and makes me cry just thinking about trying to make something so fluid and precise :’) This was animated with colored salt on velvet by Aleksandra Korejwo! Just. Just watch. Your first watch will be like a spiritual awakening. I’ve done a couple of sand animations and the level of precision you have to have to make sharp lines and gradients like this, and animate them without losing their form is so time consuming and tricky! The process gets even more complicated with multiple colors because you have to make sure the grains don’t mix in an unintentional, unflattering way

This piece was directed and animated by Belinda Oldford. I wish I had found this piece when I was doing watercolor backgrounds with digital hand drawn animation. The contrast between the two mediums in this work is both eerie and beautiful, which helps show the conflict the old man faces with trying to look after his birds one last winter while death tries to take him

This is clay on glass animation! And this work was directed and animated by Shira Avni. I’ve spent a few weeks learning how to do clay on glass, and it’s like no other medium I’ve handled! The clay is both too hard and too soft, but if you can handle it right you can get a neat dream-like textured effect like seen in this piece. I think the clay being smudged around gives this pieces the look of a memory very sufficiently. You can recall the most important parts of the memory, with some moments standing out more than others, but the smaller details fade away

Lego Monkie Kid is a fantastic show with a stupid ass name.

Animated by the same dudes who did Rise of The TMNT (so you know the animation is great), LMK is based off of the old Chinese "Journey to The West" stories, but you don't need to have seen any of that to understand and enjoy the show (I certainly didn't).

Animation is great as per Flying Bark Studios expectations, the story is *amazing* and incredibly captivating, humour is very funny, and the characters are just an absolute treat.

You can watch the first 2 seasons and their specials on Amazon Prime Video, but you'll have to watch the last 2 with something else, as LMK was originally intended for primarily asian audiences and hasn't aired in the west to my knowledge.

On Amazon, the specials are separated from the seasons. The watch order is as follows:

A Hero is Born -> Season 1 -> Revenge of The Spider Queen -> Season 2 -> Other sites and resources for season 3 onwards.

If you don't have Amazon Prime Video or want to watch past season 2, do not worry! For the DubMK website has your back!

DubMK is an archival site dedicated to having all of the episodes of the show, including other language dubs. It's completely up to date with the freshly added season 4.

The on-site video player is quite finicky, at least for me, but there's a blue "GD Link" button beneath the video player that takes you directly to a Google Drive video, which works much better.

https://dubmk.gary12.workers.dev/

Green Eggs and Ham Season 2 will FINALLY and OFFICIALLY be out!

AHHHHH! I'M SOOOOO EXCITED!!! 😄 🙌 🎉

I have to say this was definitely my major fixation before Onward came out, but not like on a fandom level...

It's one of those rare instances where I actually love the adaptation better than the original source material!

And why is that? Miraculously it's because of Sam-I–Am!

Like for real, unlike the book, this series had me feel for him and enjoy his character SO MUCH and I can't wait to see where his and Guy's journey goes in the Second Serving!

Also, Netflix, you really didn't need to release this much-awaited season on my half-birthday, but hey I'll take it! 😎

Besides I'm already halfway through rewatching season 1 in preparation for this BIG day!

So yeah to my Quest Masters out there, I highly recommend watching this series! Trust me when I say, for a short book, they do a very, and I mean a VERY, good job expanding upon its story, and it might exceed your expectations because it certainly did for me 👈

I know I only just did one of these yesterday, but I suck at keeping finished things to myself. So I'm posting it now.

A lot of my "recreation" time these days, I spend working on the D&D campaign I DM, so it's made sense to get back into a D&D Podcast I kept up with a while ago, and start to explore the extra fandom and media surrounding it.

So this week, I'm going to talk to you about a short, R Rated animated series about Dungeons and Dragons called The Legend of Vox Machina.

The Legend of Vox Machina

Critical Role

Dungeons and Dragons has been a huge part of my life the past couple years. I play with my closest group of friends and its great that what's essentially playing make believe with rules is an acceptable form of adult bonding. As I became deeper involved in the intricacies of the lore and the strategies of play, I started paying closer attention to media related to D&D.

A group of voice actors, DM'd by Matt Mercer, have been broadcasting their D&D campaigns as a longform web series called Critical Role, since 2016. Now up to their third campaign, Critical Role has grown into a brand unto itself, with merchandise, supplementary comics, and even official D&D 5th Edition source books. This renown has culminated in an Amazon Prime animated adaptation of part of the first campaign, Vox Machina. And I loved it.

The Legend of Vox Machina is every D&D player's dream, a cinematic representation of the adventures a group of friends have built together. And it really does feel like that. A worrying prospect going into the series was that the adventure would get... epic-ified. Fantasy tales tend to get reflavoured to be more grand and chivalrous when adapted, and in my experience, that is not D&D. D&D players are crass, opportunistic, strategic, and... they make mistakes. And this translates very well into this The Legend of Vox Machina.

Briefly, without spoiling too much, this 12 episode run follows a group of wannabe world savers called Vox Machina, who had yet to make a name for themselves partially due to their own incompetency. The group fight monsters and men alike in the name of peace, but their methods and attitudes in civilisation make them hard to get along with. The story culminates in the resolution of one of the main character's backstory, and by the end of the season, the group has grown to be favoured by the kingdom, and slightly more respectable.

You can see in the moment to moment action and dialogue where the animators have directly translated the roll of the dice into how a situation unrolls. Good intimidation and performance checks translate into the player characters successfully winning over the people, and failed deception and slight of hand checks result in those characters being called out on their shit. Although players may design their characters as built for adventurer, nobody is on their A-game 24/7.

Even more so than ability checks, the failures and successes of combat rolls are used to choreograph nail-biting and fun action sequences. Good rolls are depicted as the players overcoming adversity and honing their skills, while bad rolls are depicted as having the odds stacked against them, something went wrong in the moment, or the enemy is more formidable than they thought. And critical hits, a natural 20, comes through as the fates favouring good, a deus ex machina, that comes through just as the good guys needed it most.

The visual design is a fun and elastic. Characters are expressive and energetic, and the effects of spells and action are both easily to follow and visually exciting. The world is lush and beautiful, and, as envisioned by Matt Mercer in his original campaign, varied in vistas and cultures. All player characters are voiced by the players who originally played them, which lends a unique authenticity to their depictions. Because who knows a D&D character better than their own player? Additional roles of minor and major characters are voiced by a variety of other guest voice actors, and no character feels like the DM putting on a bad impression. Every voice actor, artist, animator, composer and producer who put their all into this work deserves major props for the fantastic final product.

If you have been considering watching The Legend of Vox Machina but are afraid you'd be missing context from Critical Role, don't be. I had only started seriously consuming Critical Role last year, and am only up to date on the 3rd, most recent campaign, and went into this series with little to no knowledge on the original campaign and its characters. And I still enjoyed it immensely. If you are a D&D enjoyer in any capacity, you should watch The Legend of Vox Machina. You'll love it.

Lightyear is intensely EPIC! Absolutely amazing! 🤩

a definite must-see! and a definite must-see on the big screen!

it seriously felt so great to see a Pixar film in the theater again and you know what’s funny? I actually saw it in the very same theater I saw Onward for the first time in two years ago…I literally didn’t realize until I stepped out onto the parking lot! 😧

I know I saw NWH and Uncharted in the theater too but I actually saw those at the movie theater near my college

so that definitely felt special for sure

So...yeah...hi Quest Masters!

I’m so happy to be back here! I missed you all so much!

I can't wait to start posting again!

So...what's new?

Well uh, let's see...