Look quick before WB blocks it: http://www.movieweb.com/tv/TExtzvDp.....irst-9-minutes


Overall, I'm not terribly impressed. Animation is bland (I am so sick to death of generic anime faces) and the dialog sounds like it was written by the Cliche-o-Matic 3000. I'm a bit sad they dropped the Third Earth angle from the original - being explorers on a surreal new planet and the last of their species would have been something fun to explore in a darker & grittier new version; this looks like furry Lord of the Rings instead.

Ah well. I'll still give it a chance since A. pilots usually suck and B. I'm often slow to warm to new things in general and C. nostalgia blinders.

http://www.youtube.com/user/alyanko...../4/BF6ct9ZEq5s

Animation by Augenblick (Ugly Americans, Superjail! back when the animation looked better). They did their research, too - a lot of those are based on real (unfortunate) tattoos! All the other videos are good, too.

True story: my one sis got to meet Al, and when she started nerding out, he hugged her. I'm so jealous.

Take your insulin before you watch.




My mom's pom puppy and the kitten my sis just rescued from the side of the road are getting along like a house afire. With cameos by stupiddog and my hairy, pale, fat leg.

. . . and another tiny baby step forward for civil rights is taken.

Dunno if I'm in my second childhood or what, but just about everything I watch nowadays is animated.

Anyone else excited about the upcoming season of Futurama and Ugly Americans?
Anyone else vaguely disappointed by the past season of Superjail?
Anyone else feeling wary but hopeful about the new version of Thundercats?
Anyone else grooving on Bob's Burgers?

Your evil overlord orders you to go wish  Iveechan a Happy Birthday.

That is all.

What with inventory and drama and a combination of hurty elbow and mild urinary tract infection I've been in a wretched mood for the past several days, but today was great. For one, we'd gotten an unusually small order AND someone else had already put away the buttons and other small, irritating crap so today I got to satisfy my obsessive compulsive desires and cleaned the stockroom, putting everything the iventory people had messed up back where they were supposed to be - which isn't just me being a freak, if things are in order we can find them when a customer asks! - and put together all the furniture that's been sitting around in boxes for ages. I looooove putting together furniture, for some silly reason it's very satisfying. The best thing of all today was getting to make displays.

See, corporate wants the stores to look like a "boutique", which means instead of lining items up on the shelf, for example, we have to arrange them all artsy, which I've been doing, and the furniture has to be put into what basically amounts to a tiny little set with matching pillows, rug, lamps, knick-knacks and so on. Needless to say I am ALL OVER THIS, and the last one I made came together so well we ended up selling the chair and table involved. I made four little displays each with a different color scheme and accessories. When my manager strolled by I had a little story for each one, for example the front display when you walk into the store is "grandma's sitting room" complete with a sewing basket and some scraps of material in it, and I draped fabric over the back to be "wallpaper". Basically today I got paid to play with a giant dollhouse for six hours. It was glorious. Also we were throwing out fake ferns and I snagged me one - free fern!

Also, don't know if it is because I'm in a spectacularly good mood or what, but I could not stop laughing at this: http://youtu.be/O2RqVUjwxdM


And dunno if you guys care ("No! Shut up and draw wolf boobies!") but here's an interview with my best guy's band: http://www.miroviamag.com/post/5632793809

My Paypal account seems to have been hijacked. So long money, commissions, selling selling the eyeballs and trying to make some scratch.
I am so pissed and depressed right now. Just letting you all know because, y'know, everyone is fascinated with the grindingly dull minutiae of my horrid life.

I pretty much quit fanfiction about five or six years ago now, although I used to write quite a bit of it. A stupid hobby, sure, but any practice is useful and I think just churning out so many words and actually getting constructive responses (sometimes), and also seeing the different points of view other authors brought to the same subject helped my "real" writing even if I never do get published. You know, like how jogging a couple of times a week is good for you even if you never plan actually running a marathon.

I'd like to concentrate more on writing, so just out of curiosity I started poking around ff.net to see what was new and exciting in my old fandoms.

It was amusing. Of course everyone knows Sturgeon's Law - 99% of everything is shit - but what's funny is it's the same, pretty much exactly, as I was seeing years ago.

For example, take two somewhat similar (male) characters from different franchises, we'll call them Dr. A and Dr. B. - both are mad scientist types, and in canon Dr. A is either utterly oblivious to or seemingly faintly repulsed by romantic feminine attention, while Dr. B is outright vicious towards women. So naturally, a good chunk of the fanfics are "Dr. A falls in love with a female OC" and/or "Dr. B falls in love with a canon male character and they live happily ever after". Not that there's anything wrong with that, lord knows, but you almost never see other alternatives, for example, "Dr. A meets a female OC who romances him, but in fact Dr. A is asexual and continues to have no interest in bumping uglies despite her charms and effort" or "Dr. B falls in love with male character, who loves him back, but because he's a terribly damaged human being despite their honest best efforts they can't make it work". Change it up a little. And man, you almost never see characters who are any variety of asexual. Ah well. Maybe I just like depressing fiction? If this rant bugs you, imagine it being said by the cat in my ID.

I'm not excusing myself from the general crappiness of fanfic, understand. I know damn well when I steal someone else's toys to play with in my own sandbox it's because they weren't playing with them the way I wanted to. Actually, I had this problem in real life, which is why other kids didn't want to play with me (yet another example of how autism borks your life) so I mostly ended up bossing my younger sisters around (and yet they still love me . . . ah well, I did improve a bit with age) and playing with armies of tiny plastic animals and toy cars that I could direct in epic melodramas. So I guess it's either fanfic, or giving in to the urge to buy bags of plastic dinosaurs at the $1 store.


In other news, I FINALLY got a couch (well, a loveseat), I'm working on the last book cover and of course managed to get injured again (I think I'm cursed) and my sister is in Hawaii submarine-ing with sea turtles, the lucky wench.

Haven't been posting much lately due to offline life/drama/work/etc. and also FA not really wanting to load for some reason. Just letting you all know I'm still upright and metabolizing.


http://youtu.be/Bp2tQ75pTD0
God damn I love DEVO.

More music video, sort of - my guy's band.
http://youtu.be/P8V5JoW4yjk
Sadly, despite great audience response they didn't pass this level, the judges went with a more mainstream rock band. Pfffffft, BOOOOO. So, buy Trojans!

I'm missing addresses! I don't know if notes here got eaten or what exactly is going on, but if you ordered eyes from me, PLEASE note me with your address!

Still a bit wonky and quite tired from work, but I couldn't let the day pass: the glorious birthday of my all-time favorite actor and interesting human being, Crispin Glover.

After the next two movies I've got in my queue, there'll only be one of his I haven't seen, because I am a ginormous geekburger and a completist. Not all of them good, mind you, but I can honestly say he brings a little something to even the smallest role in the stupidest movie.

*happysigh*

FYI, I've been down with food poisoning for the last two days, so I probably can't get to the post office til Tues or Weds at the latest.

. . . went over surprisingly well. I didn't expect more than 3 or 4 people to do anything, I had a good time on the livestream, and it was cool seeing all the different critters people came up with.

It's been godawful at work these past two weeks, hours cut and one crazy douchenozzle customer after another, not to mention ongoing family drama, so this was a welcome break of awesomeness.

I'm also in the midst of a nerdgasm because my copy of Berni Wrightson's "The Mutants" came yesterday, and I didn't even notice til this morning! It's pretty much the same thing as"The Reaper of Love" with some different bonus art, but hey, it's not a bad thing to have a back-up copy.

Also: Resin Eyes

Will be shipped out Monday morning! And we should have a little haiku of a website with an order form within a few days so I don't have to rely on FA's note system.

Also also . . . rah, rah Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen, there was a cat that really was gone OH GAWD SONG STUCK IN MY HEAD Thanks, Cetetic.

The geek zodiac: http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2011/04.....ic/geekzodiak/

OMG IT'S SO ACCURATE IT IS SCARY

FYI, I'm being interviewed over at Hot Y Chromosomes, a Deviantart group run by a very sweet guy, Beachelf, who's devoted to getting male-oriented erotic art the attention it deserves!

http://hot-y-chromosomes.deviantart.com/

If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments over there :)

Still working on covers for the books by  Rathacat

The latest one is shown in a book trailer, made by  SheilaRuth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2i_r7XusJ4

You can also get the image as posters and various swag: http://www.zazzle.com/sheilaruth/gi.....47159462214287

Man, it blows my mind that I've actually gotten published professionally . . . I'm still expecting to wake up.

Surely this is why the internet was created.

http://fuldans.se/?v=tqfsgcxvgb

(keep watching for a few minutes, it just keeps getting better and better)

I'm going to start selling those hyper-realistic fursuit eyes very soon. Did some resin casts and popped them out of the molds tonight, and they turned out great. For the tests I just used dollops of glass for making magnets, which is why they're over-shiny and lopsided in the photos. These are all perfect little domes, and I'm quite pleased. Tomorrow or the next day I'll be making molds so I can offer larger sizes, depending on the weather (have to have a window open to mitigate the fumes). If anyone would feel obliged to educate me on overseas shipping, I'd be grateful - otherwise, I can only ship to America cause that's all I know how to do.

In other news, I've done a couple of extremely strenuous overnight shifts, suffered through some intense family drama regarding my one sister's divorce from a manipulative, conniving, lying, animal-torturing, theiving d-bag, gotten hit by two nasty thunderstorms and for some reason have been feeling so out of it I slept about 12 hours last night punctuated by horrific nightmares (probably a side effect of stress). Not been able to get much creative done recently - just letting y'all know why I've dropped off the face of the earth this past week.

In good news, my stoopid tomcats seem to be getting along much better now that they're eunuchs (and are slowly turning into furry, striped bowling balls). I finally made myself choke back my dislike of Will Ferrell long enough to watch Megamind and found it was actually pretty cute, although there were some weird artistic choices there. For sure not a timeless classic but not a waste of time, either. Also, lost three inches off my waist and was able to fit into smaller work pants today. Cue choir or triumphant angelic voices.


In very amusing news, my guy's band is playing a gig for the Durex Ultimate Battle . . . yes, Durex. Apparently Durex requires a promotional video, so they came up with this:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Striden...../0/XUf-B0bHziY

That's not him with the grandpa guitar, that's Deon, and George is the face-melty guy, although you can glimpse my sweetie when they cut to the music video. Also, hands off ;)

http://musicalsinla.blogspot.com/20.....-gets-new.html

Answer: probably because I avoid the fandom - riddled with squeeing fantards - at all costs. But still, damn. Re-Animator is easily my favorite movie of all time, it's impossible to convey the breadth and depth of my love for it without sounds like a complete fucking lunatic.
So I'm sitting here with my jaw unhinged, wondering whether or not I should be horrified. Nerd rage at surprise-sexing my childhood (well, adolescence) or not? Hmmm, decision, decisions.


Also, re: Draw a Centaur day . . . y'all want to do this? How does April 16 grab you as a date? Just pulling a date out my butt there.
And yah, all kinds of taurs are good, not just the human+horsie kind.

Someone should make that a thing.

*goes to bed*

Saturday morning cartoons!




Fun With Father
A student film by Chris Sanders of Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon fame - a crazy wolf/fox critter involves his adorable kitten son in a vendetta against sugary treats. Very odd and beautifully animated.




Under Bergets Rot (Under the Root of the Mountain)
This is what Oingo Boingo would have sounded like as a metal band, how could I not love it? Even if you don't like the style of music the cartoon is a great example of what design can do to shore up limited animation.




CBS Storybreak's Ratha's Creature
Uploaded by our own Rathacat (author Clare Bell), this is the animated version of her novel. Obviously the complexities of the novel couldn't be crammed into 22 minutes, and the animation is so primitive it's practically a slideshow, but it's still rather cute.




The Talking Parcel
And speaking of childhood memories . . . I had never seen this until recently, but I LOVED the book as a little kid - the idea of a nature reserve for mythological critters remains one of my favorite fictional tropes - and I only recently discovered this was written by Gerald Durrell, a biologist and conservationist who I greatly admire and who I had only known through his nonfiction works. The animation was done by the folks who produced Count Duckula, also something I enjoyed greatly as a little fiend.
Everything is connected! Or I just have a really narrow range of interests.




Shop Vac
A fan made "kinetic typography animation" music video, extremely clever and even if you're not a font nerd you'll get a laugh out of it. Song's pretty catchy, too.

. . . and freaking hilarious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-CobellfLs

(NSFW)

Almost as funny is how many people are completely missing the point that a preachy commercial isn't going to scare anyone or even stick in their minds long. This is very silly and whether you laugh or are shocked you're certain to remember it.

This is about the most adorable thing ever: http://cache.gawker.com/assets/imag....._spineless.jpg

It's a mysteriously spineless hedgehog named "Spudlina" by the staff at St. Tiggywinkles, a British wildlife rescue where she's being cared for (including dressing her in a little sweater to keep her warm and giving her massages with Vitamen E moisturizer).

I love everything about this - Spudlina herself is so hideous she goes right round the bend and becomes cute. I like hearing about caring and niceness instead of pain and suffering in the news, and it absolutely slaughters me there is actually a vet's called "St. Tiggywinkles". Look at their webpage: http://www.sttiggywinkles.org.uk/

Among the many other things I'm doing this year that I've wanted to do for a while, one of them is running a class on making stuffed animals (which will probably go live in May or so)

http://plush-class.livejournal.com/ (still under construction atm)

Unfortunately I don't have a lot of them to show since I gave most of the ones I made away as gifts, and I didn't have a good camera until fairly recently so there's no record of them. I was thinking that as a lure to get people interested in the class it might be fun to run a contest or something and make a stuffed critter using someone else's design rather than my own. There would be publicity for the class, and someone gets a cuddly representation of their character.
The other alternative would be to do a "basic" furry character - probably a wolf or fox or something - as an example.

Since I'm not always the greatest at thinking things through, please chime in on whether you think this idea is good, bad, or if you have a better one.