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Friday, April 15, 2016

GitS and Probably not what you thought I would say.



I like Ghost in the Shell, I like it a lot. And the not so recent news that Scarlett Johansson will be playing the Major in the Hollywood adaptation has got people in flurry. After reading some of the posts and thinking on it for the day I feel like I should say what I've thought for a while.


They could have cast The Major as an African, Russian, European, Japanese or anything else and the movie could be a 100% true to form GitS adaptation. Motoko to me has never been defied by her race and neither has any of the other cast members. GitS has always been about man and machine and the merging of the two. This is the most important thing they need to hit on, number two is ACTION ACTION ACTION! Kicking ass and taking names with military precision. Number three is some kind of political and social corruption. These are all themes that can be planted in any modern culture and not unique in anyway to the Japanese, GitS to me never hinged on the fact that it was in Japan or that the people where Japanese. Yes GitS does revolve specifically around Japan’s politics and its dealings with other countries after WW3, but it's naive to think that the themes and ideas that Shirow Masamune brought to life can only be placed in Japan.


This is in comparison to other shows that do hinge strongly on culture, say something like… Avatar? What if they made an adaptation of Samurai Champloo, that's a show steeped in japanese culture and works only because of the japanese themes. But an example opposite of that would be FLCL, would it still be whitewashing if these characters had white counterparts? A show with robots, aliens and things coming out of kids heads would best be represented to an audience in a familiar setting. Hell its why we have Dubs and to an extent Subtitles.
I wish they would take the GitS name and themes and just run with it, making their own unique character that follows the same formula. The oddest thing about this situation is if her name stays Motoko, clearly Japanese, that will be weird.


Scarlet is not the best fit for this role, but a lot of people have been saying “Rinko Kikuchi” but I don’t think she is a good pic either. To me Rinko is just another popular choice, someone who is hot at the moment and “ because she's japanese that makes her a better choice”.To me she is about as bad if not worse the Scalet. They are practically the same build but moreover Rinko has not played characters similar to Motoko at all, she has not shown the same action chops as Scarlet. Problematically she speaks english with a very japanese accent. Will she be speaking Japanese the whole film? Or will she be speaking broken english? That would be odd for a american adaptation.


I get the whole “let’s call out hollywood on their shit” fad, it's good! I want to see more women and different ethnicities in main hollywood roles. But people have to remember that when they make a hollywood adaptation of something, they are making an American adaptation. They will replace the characters for the benefit of the audience if it works better. In this case It does work better, not because white actors sell better to americans but because when you adapt something the ideas need to come first. GitS is about identity, consciousness, technology, corruption, and a whole lot of ass kicking.


This is much longer than I wanted it to be, it's still not all the things I wanted to say but I have to stop somewhere. I would love to get some responses and thoughts.
My last thought, if this movie is bad, it will be because they failed to tell the GitS story and not because an actor is white.

Friday, January 24, 2014

Frozen sketches

Ah Frozen, why do i love you so? Well obviously its the adorable characters!



Sunday, January 5, 2014

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Frozen? yeah I've heard of it...

I just had to guys, I'm sorry. This movie needed more hugs.

Its been 5 days now and I don't see an end in sight, the songs won't leave my head... I hear them all day and all night. It takes everything I have not to play the soundtrack over and over. But do I really want it to stop?

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Halloween ink

I don't care much for halloween but I wanted to do a sketch all the same. 

A cute picture of a slightly dysfunctional family. Its all fun and games until someone loses a meatball.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

City Sand: Yet another update

Every once and awhile I do stuff on this 30 second animation. I did a bunch of keyframes for the characters and the dust FX. 70% of the backgrounds are at a level I want them, but I always go back to improve them. 


The Music is Butterfly by Delicate Steve.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Luther: Characters and Backgrounds

Another post about Luther. I wanted to do a ink and color of the characters as well as some backgrounds based on the show.
The style of the backgrounds where interesting and fun to do.




Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Luther Season 3

Finished the last episode of season 3 of Luther. If you don't know Luther stars Idris Elba who plays a DCI with the genius on par with Sherlock and an unstoppable sense of justice. But that same sense of justice seems to get the ones he holds most deer into dire situations.

I always wondered about Luther and Alice's random journeys off screen. Though the tone of the show is very serious many of the characters are played to the extreme (like many serial killers are I'm sure) much like a batman villain would be, which I think lends itself to an animated show.


Monday, July 8, 2013

City Sand 30 second short

So i'm back at it again with City Sand (or City of Sand) with this super short animation. I don't know if I will do any of the actual animation, my goal is to complete all the backgrounds and probably some keys of the character. You can check out the rough backgrounds and the animatic down below.






Tuesday, July 2, 2013

The land of rain and water

Hopefully the first of a few Backgrounds in this theme, A city that lives and breaths the rain. this is just a small house outside the city but still collects rainwater to sell in other locations.

Monday, June 17, 2013

Galactic Homerun Work

About a month or two ago I had started doing layouts and backgrounds for my Galactic Homerun short. An assortment of thumbs, rough layouts, and finished backgrounds. I'll come back to it eventually when I make my rounds with my other projects.






Thursday, June 6, 2013

Out of Water, Character and Background

Did a background layout for one of my older projects.

I'm alway doing some little changes to it here and there. Trying to think of a short animation that would be compelling as a pilot if I were to ever pitch it.

The layout

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Cyberpunk Dreams

I know its been awhile since I've posted a new monthly project. I have been busy slacking off and playing video games!
I really like cyberpunk style, and even better when its 80's cyberpunk. It was only a matter of time before I did a theme like this.






Thursday, April 11, 2013

Good old beer

Well it has been WAY to long since my last post, time to end this hiatus.

I really like dark beer, Imperial Stout is my go to beers. I love the thick explosive flavor that only gets better as it gets closer to room temperature. But recently I found another type of beer called Barleywine! Same dark rich flavors but with a sweet fruity kick.

NAM!

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Galactic Homerun: Animation

Heres the final shot with a little bit of animation. I want to do more animation but it becomes increasingly hard to be motivated to work on my independendent stuff. 

That aside, I would really like to do a whole animated short in this style. Anyone interested? 


Monday, March 4, 2013

Galactic Homerun: Characters and layout

Oh where does the month go, Ill tell you where! It goes into ART!

The character and the final layout, I have some animation done already but no as much as I hoped to. This style really rocks, I would like to do a full short with this one. If I cared to animate that much.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Galactic Homerun: Development Art

Oh the colors!
Just some development art I was working on last week, I have really been slacking this week.

I still need to nail down the character design and have a finished background for next week!

I have been distracted by LoL! curses!

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Galactic Homerun: Concept sketches

I have not been getting a lot of drawing in this week, these sketches are from last week.
Some sketches of what the town may look like and the feel of a large but quiet city.


These are only a few of around 40 sketches I did last week. Character design 
A bit of monster design and a few more character sketches in Photoshop.

Friday, February 8, 2013

Galactic Home-run: Style

Month 2 is here and I've been busy working on this months project. Character design is a bit more a focus this time around as well as the style.
Elevator pitch for his story: "A girl has the power to hit baseballs into other dimensions, ripping a hole in space and time."
Today I'm just posting my style sheet/inspiration collages to let people get the feel for this project.
This shows the sort of overall feel I'm going for.

The character design should be line less, and will most likely be less detailed then  these designs here.

This is a bit of a combination of the style I want for backgrounds and the type of  layout design  I'm going to try and achieve.

Monday, February 4, 2013

Brandy by the Sea: Final

So my first project is finished and I quite like the result!

Its not animated on twos (more like just keys), I realize it wasn't going to get this finished unless I moved forward with what I had. But that's not bad, I will start a new project this week with what I learned. Part of this one month restriction is so I can keep focused and see my idea through to a polished point. Another part is to keep pushing myself and sticking with ideas because of time restriction. There are a lot of thing I would go back and work on with Brandy, but now I have to move on, taking the knowledge I learned with this project into the next project.


Despite the animation being clunky and the character model getting wonky at times, I am vary happy with the way it turned out.

In the mean time, have a listen.