A Pictureless Post

I was on another computer earlier so didn't get a chance to do up a blog pic. Would have done it on my laptop but, since the hard drive replacement, I haven't installed my Wacom or Photoshop or anything yet. I was going to draw something up with a mouse for a laugh but the 'Photoshop Elements' that comes bundled with this Vista laptop tells me it's not compatible with the Vista operating system. Well, it would have been a crap picture anyway but all in all it just reaffirms my hatred for computers. I think I may go Amish.

On the overnight guy with low productivity, it certainly seems he's working - it's not that he's taking loads of breaks or procrastinating or anything. He's a busy boy. No, it seems to be the confidence thing. He's good enough to know when a scene is ready (good judgement is something sometimes lacking in animators with great ability) but he just can't get it right the first time. Second-guesses himself, the lead animator and the director. And overcomplicates things.

I think he spends as much time undoing stuff as he does doing stuff.

I've seen a lot of lazy animators (some days, I'm one of them), I've seen animators who just aren't good enough (it's tragic when these turn out to be the people who most desperately love animation) and I've seen animators who just have too many bad habits, that were fine on one production many years ago and they haven't been able to rid themselves of those habits. There are a lot of reasons why people can underperform in animation. So it's actually a little frustrating watching someone flounder like that when they're actually pretty good and work hard.

On a totally unrelated note, Star Wars fans are scary. I love the originals and grew up with them but there's a section of the community that, well, I think there's something just not right with them. I was curious about reviews for this animated Clone Wars movie. I don't know if people saw what was going on over at Aint It Cool News but basically they posted reviews and then told they had to take them down again until the film was released. In one of the talkback posts, it mentioned that a copy of Harry's review was on theforce.net message boards so I headed over to take a look.

And what I found scared me. It's almost too much too talk about but the rabid psychotic nature of some of the posts there were just terrifying. Almost like if you said one bad thing about Lucas, they'd find out where you lived and kill you. Or beat you with a plastic lightsaber or something.

There was an anger there. A notch above or below (whichever) any rational thought.

After reading those boards, the next morning I took the Mr.PotatoHead R2-D2 that was on my desk, along with the other Star Wars stuff and stuck them in my drawer, in case anyone might think I'm one of them.

Anyway, the reviews are back up on AICN and it seems they think it's rubbish. No surprise there then.