AMKitsune: As a fellow hat in time fan, I wholeheartedly approve of this cat-kid How would she look in the Nyakuza Metro outfit though? I mean, she already has cat ears and a tail...
Peckin' awesome work.
AMKitsune: @KuroNeko: I'm also looking forward to seeing what else you may animate in the future.
If I may offer a little input however, while the individual frames are very well drawn, the timing feels a little off. I'm not sure if your going for more of a 'slow rise from the water' or 'energetic eruption', but the smoothness with which she ascends doesn't math up with the relative snappiness that she comes back down with.
I had a little go at tweaking the timing (and faking some intermediate frames) to see if I could get the motion looking a little smoother, although I'm not thrilled with how my attempt came out.
The main point I tried to address with this was to have her spend a little longer at the peak of her ascension and for her eye opening to be faster. Basically, to put a little more emphasis on the keyframes of the animation.
Honestly, there are people here far more qualified to talk about this kind of stuff than myself, so hopefully they'll be able to be of more help than I can.
AMKitsune: Oooh, I get it now!
I was trying to figure out what the black thing she's holding is, when it dawned on me. A hat!
Knowing that, how many others cats hold their hats like that while making big eyes?
AMKitsune: @bluedraggy: At this resolution and duration, it's probably a good thing that you didn't try to animate it further. As it is, you've got a total of 22 frames, most being spaced either 5 or 10 seconds apart. If you were to have turned this into a full animation, the additional frames required would have caused the filesize to skyrocket!
AMKitsune: You know, burnt hair is actually a real nuisance. I actually burnt my beard a few weeks ago when testing some spark plugs on a lawn mower. Turned out there were more residual petrol fumes in and around the engine than I imagined and ended up taking an inadvertent fireball to the face. No serious harm came of it, but about half of my beard hairs became brittle, curled up, discoloured and absolutely stank of burned hair. I ended up shaving the whole thing off and waiting a couple of weeks for it to grow back.
Point is, it's a good thing Katia only get a comical 'covering in soot' when she catches fire, otherwise the razor incident would be more of a regular occurrence.
AMKitsune: Must have been a pretty uneventful walk so far. Katia still looks full of joy and optimism, while ASOTIL clearly hasn't had the opportunity to impart the emperor's justice to any wrongdoers yet.
AMKitsune: @damrok4321: Must have been a pretty dream, because it resulted in a very nice picture .
@DarthVader: Come on now, don't try hording the cat all to yourself. If you can't share, Kazerad might come and put her back on the top shelf for another 24 months. No one wants that. Do you? (also, I never imagined you as the 'enjoying moonlit strolls' kind of sith lord.)
AMKitsune: I am genuinely surprised that this is the first time we've seen this guy here. Is it finally time for Katia to learn the ultimate in transportation magic... Cat Space Mission.
AMKitsune: These are absolutely adorable! Honestly, I'm not even sure if this should be considered questionable as it's so cutesy, featureless and inoffensive, it could come straight out of one of those children's series where the animal characters don't wear clothes and nobody thinks anything of it.
AMKitsune: @EK_lance: ... NO.
Seriously though, the corn doesn't obscure the picture in any way and adds a much needed degree of context.
Personally, I don't think there necessarily needs to be a second version, but then again, more variety is always better (when it doesn't take over and clutter up the place). If you want to, I'd suggest embedding the cornless version here in the comments of the original. That way they're kept together without adding near identical duplicates to the main gallery.
AMKitsune: "Welcome to mage school. For your first lesson, go to a cave half way across the province and bring back a book that we need. Oh yeah, watch out for zombies, vampires and/or necromancers. We haven't actually been there in a while so gods know what might be there now. I'm not saying you need to kill them or anything, but bringing back vampire dust and other rare alchemical ingredients will net you some extra credit."
AMKitsune: That moment when you realize that you generally have better luck holding a ball of fire to light your way than using the inbuilt racial ability that you were born with.
AMKitsune: I quite like the proportions here. It feels like a nice mid-ground between large headed, noodle limbed cartoon and proper anatomy. The fact that she seems relatively happy is a bonus as well.
AMKitsune: I'm glad you finished this one off. You just had to prove that your human by adding in that little derpy Katia in the corner there didn't you? You just weren't content with dignified ones, eh?
AMKitsune: After seeing Makkon's sidebar drawings for the mage hoods, I wondered how they might look in colour. My imagination's not fantastic, so I made myself a visual aid
AMKitsune: @Filthypaladin: Ok, fair point. Her hips got caught up in the shrinkening, so they're something of an unintended casualty. On the 'swole legs' thing, well don't I look the fool now.
AMKitsune: If I may, a couple of small suggestions. While the posing is very good, I can't help but notice an apparent disconnect between her realistically styled lower half and her more cartoony upper half.
Specifically, the fact that her legs have clearly defined musculature while her visible upper arm is as straight as a board. Also, I'm really not too sure about this, but I feel like her legs might be a little too large in proportion to the rest of her body. Her thighs seem about as wide as her waist.
I'm not sure if this is an objective improvement or not, but this is what I imagine as fixes for these suggestions.
What do you think? I'm really unsure of myself at the moment, so do these strike you as legitimate suggestions, or am I talking out of my ass right now?
AMKitsune: @Makkon: Please do. I always love seeing your Katia renditions. They're some of the best realistically proportioned Katias out there (in my personal opinion).
AMKitsune: @Filthypaladin: Well I'm glad you are! With the exception of the (literally) sketchy background, this looks like it could have come straight out of the comic itself.
AMKitsune: I typically understand everything after the "photoshop" part. Everything before that is still 3d modelling magic to me .
It's still amazing to see how much work goes into these things. I never even considered that 3d rendering was a part of the production process for that update.
AMKitsune: @lapma: Part the third
I get that company scrip happened much less than the the communism equivalent My point there was simply that given the opportunity, individuals in capitalist nations have been known to enact psudo-communist practices for their own selfish benefit.
That's a very good point about the lifestyle provided by the military not being financially self sustaining. Honestly, the way things are progressing these days with regards to mass production and automation, the idea that there's a job for everyone is becoming less and less true. In the west at least, we seem to be entering an era where we don't work to produce things that we need, but to produce things that other people will hopefully want and buy. Jobs like food production can be handled by far fewer people now than used to be the case, so people have to try to find whatever source of income they can elsewhere (assuming that there are people willing and able to hire them).
As far as I'm concerned, there is no best system. Disregarding the fact that greedy people can turn any system into a nightmare, both systems have their up-sides and down-sides. Capitalism is great for those who can 'win' at it, but sucks for the 'losers' while communism is fine as long as you're ok just 'making do' and don't aspire for greater things in life.
Yeah, this has dragged on more that long enough. Time for more cats
AMKitsune: @lapma: Well, this calls for a part 2.
While it may very well be easier to negotiate a wage and switch jobs in a capitalist nation, in many cases it's either impossible or very financially risky to try leaving an existing job and get another one (given the recent economic troubles and poor job market). People are technically free to do so if they wish, but being free to try negotiating a higher salary or switching to a better job can in some cases be akin to being free to step out of a speeding train. You're more than free to do so and nobody's stopping you. You just know that there's a dangerously high chance that you'll come out worse for taking the option. (Not the case for everybody, but with the job market as it currently is, that's how it is for many people. The fact that it's an individuals responsibility to find employment where there may not even be any in order to support themselves can make the prospect of a government having job opportunities for all of its citizens with a stable income seem rather appealing.)
The issue of preferential treatment if you're a member of a certain political party/peer group is a common problem all over. That's just a product of people in positions of power allowing their personal biases to effect how they treat others in official contexts (in short, corruption).
Speaking of limiting what can be purchased with earned wealth, there have been schemes like that in the west before as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip
From what I remember being told about it (I'm too tired to read a wikipedia article right now XD), employers like mine operators would sometimes pay their workers in a 'custom currency' that could only be spent at shops also owned by the mine owner (effectively creating a miniature enclosed economy where the workers couldn't buy from anywhere else. Kind of like a form of communism where the employer could have ownership of everything from the homes of the workers to the provision of the food on their plates. Like a little self appointed government). This practice is illegal in most developed capitalist areas now thankfully, but it did used to happen.
When done right, the west has a pretty good analogue to the communist lifestyle in the form of the armed services (at least, that seemed to be the case back when my grandfather was in the air-force and my father lived with his parents in air-force accommodation.).
While they could interact with the rest of the economy like any other person could (buy stuff with real money), a great deal of their lives was managed and provided for by the military, including housing, schooling, e.t.c.
It's not a lifestyle that everyone would want, but for those who would, it was an option.
Of course, this is just based on what my father's told me about his childhood, so it's a personal rely of personal experiences and memories.
At the end of the day, my overly simplistic view of it comes down to people. Good, honest and well intentioned people can make a system fair and prosperous if they so choose and try hard enough. It only takes a few selfish, malicious or incompetent people in positions of power to make it hard (or impossible) for the common people to live well.
If I had to imagine, a communist state could work well for everyone if it were managed by such a hypothetical group of good people and if membership of the commune was voluntary. Alas though, as is so often the case, many people who seek power and status do so for their own reasons and not the selfless service of others (and for those who do have pure intentions, resisting the temptations that come with said power is another matter entirely).
AMKitsune: Wow, this is one political comment section. Might as well throw my hat into the ring to.
I'm not an expert in political regimes or ideologies but take a pretty simplistic view of these things instead.
Up to and including this point in history, there's no such thing as a perfect 'ism'. Certainly not as they're currently enacted at least.
For a start, healthy and happy societies tend to rely on the assumptions that everyone will act fairly and kindly towards each other. Unfortunately, this often isn't the case. If the multimillionaire business executive were to pay their factory floor staff a decent wage instead of choosing to amass a disproportionate amount of wealth for themselves (hence the whole 1% vs the 99% thing), there wouldn't be the massive difference in wealth that there is in the western world today. Of course people should be able to determine how much they're able to make by how much they work for it, but when the ability of a person to earn a wage is determined by another individual who also wants a larger slice of the pie, that's where personal greed can fuck the whole capitalism system up.
I believe that the same goes for the idea behind communism as well. If my understanding is correct, the general idea is that everyone receives pretty much what they need from the system and not much more while putting into the system what they can. An attempt to create a level playing field if you will. Again though, this relies on the groups in charge of maintaining the system to be honest and fair with how wealth and resources are distributed. To my knowledge, this rarely happens. Citizens live in relative poverty while the leaders of a nation who's job it is to ensure the prosperity of its people live in palaces.
This isn't limited to communism though by any means. How many other countries and organisations are there where the ones supposedly responsible for making the rules and distributing wealth end up becoming disproportionately wealthy?
secondly, life isn't fair. Any attempt by a government to make life fair is going to inevitably require unequal treatment/requirements of its citizens. Say, a person is born without arms. They can't provide for themselves as well as others will be able to through no fault of their own. Those are just the cards they were dealt. So what? Is it just accepted that they're going to have a harder life than everyone else and leave it at that, or is some of the wealth generated by other productive members of society siphoned off to help this less capable individual? Not everyone shares the same mindset with regards to whether this is good or not, so there's another problem. Is it fairer for it to be 'everyone for themselves' and to hell with those who can't keep up, or should the state step in to 'unfairly redistribute' wealth to those who haven't earned it as much as you have? Of course there are no solid answers for these questions. That's what makes matters like this so difficult to legislate for. So many different people have different opinions, yet you can't have a country that has different rules for different people (not a fair one at least).
There have been many varied atrocities caused by different governments of all different ideologies over time. In the argument of capitalism vs communism, one ideology will have produced more poverty and/or bloodshed than the other, but that's for a historian to say, not myself.
While arguing about which is better/worse though, just remember that the decisions that usually end up causing detriment to others (regardless of the political system) are often made by people who, strangely enough, find themselves reasonable well off and comfortable. Significantly more-so than the people they're charged with looking after.
Anyway, that's my uneducated ramble/contribution to the discussion.
Dramatic Descriptions
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How would she look in the Nyakuza Metro outfit though? I mean, she already has cat ears and a tail...
Peckin' awesome work.
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If I may offer a little input however, while the individual frames are very well drawn, the timing feels a little off. I'm not sure if your going for more of a 'slow rise from the water' or 'energetic eruption', but the smoothness with which she ascends doesn't math up with the relative snappiness that she comes back down with.
I had a little go at tweaking the timing (and faking some intermediate frames) to see if I could get the motion looking a little smoother, although I'm not thrilled with how my attempt came out.
The main point I tried to address with this was to have her spend a little longer at the peak of her ascension and for her eye opening to be faster. Basically, to put a little more emphasis on the keyframes of the animation.
Honestly, there are people here far more qualified to talk about this kind of stuff than myself, so hopefully they'll be able to be of more help than I can.
All that aside though, this is adorable as heck!
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I was trying to figure out what the black thing she's holding is, when it dawned on me. A hat!
Knowing that, how many others cats hold their hats like that while making big eyes?
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Still, a lovely little story.
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Let's not be too hasty with world breakage here...
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Point is, it's a good thing Katia only get a comical 'covering in soot' when she catches fire, otherwise the razor incident would be more of a regular occurrence.
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It's a very quiet shout.
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@DarthVader: Come on now, don't try hording the cat all to yourself. If you can't share, Kazerad might come and put her back on the top shelf for another 24 months. No one wants that. Do you? (also, I never imagined you as the 'enjoying moonlit strolls' kind of sith lord.)
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(it's important that the url actually leads to an image file. There's a full text formatting guide in the lexicon/help page)
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Seriously though, the corn doesn't obscure the picture in any way and adds a much needed degree of context.
Personally, I don't think there necessarily needs to be a second version, but then again, more variety is always better (when it doesn't take over and clutter up the place). If you want to, I'd suggest embedding the cornless version here in the comments of the original. That way they're kept together without adding near identical duplicates to the main gallery.
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Also, I get the hula hoop reference.
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You just weren't content with dignified ones, eh?
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Still, amazingly done.
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Specifically, the fact that her legs have clearly defined musculature while her visible upper arm is as straight as a board. Also, I'm really not too sure about this, but I feel like her legs might be a little too large in proportion to the rest of her body. Her thighs seem about as wide as her waist.
I'm not sure if this is an objective improvement or not, but this is what I imagine as fixes for these suggestions.
What do you think? I'm really unsure of myself at the moment, so do these strike you as legitimate suggestions, or am I talking out of my ass right now?
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Nope. Not much help at all
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It's still amazing to see how much work goes into these things. I never even considered that 3d rendering was a part of the production process for that update.
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I get that company scrip happened much less than the the communism equivalent My point there was simply that given the opportunity, individuals in capitalist nations have been known to enact psudo-communist practices for their own selfish benefit.
That's a very good point about the lifestyle provided by the military not being financially self sustaining. Honestly, the way things are progressing these days with regards to mass production and automation, the idea that there's a job for everyone is becoming less and less true. In the west at least, we seem to be entering an era where we don't work to produce things that we need, but to produce things that other people will hopefully want and buy. Jobs like food production can be handled by far fewer people now than used to be the case, so people have to try to find whatever source of income they can elsewhere (assuming that there are people willing and able to hire them).
As far as I'm concerned, there is no best system. Disregarding the fact that greedy people can turn any system into a nightmare, both systems have their up-sides and down-sides. Capitalism is great for those who can 'win' at it, but sucks for the 'losers' while communism is fine as long as you're ok just 'making do' and don't aspire for greater things in life.
Yeah, this has dragged on more that long enough. Time for more cats
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While it may very well be easier to negotiate a wage and switch jobs in a capitalist nation, in many cases it's either impossible or very financially risky to try leaving an existing job and get another one (given the recent economic troubles and poor job market). People are technically free to do so if they wish, but being free to try negotiating a higher salary or switching to a better job can in some cases be akin to being free to step out of a speeding train. You're more than free to do so and nobody's stopping you. You just know that there's a dangerously high chance that you'll come out worse for taking the option. (Not the case for everybody, but with the job market as it currently is, that's how it is for many people. The fact that it's an individuals responsibility to find employment where there may not even be any in order to support themselves can make the prospect of a government having job opportunities for all of its citizens with a stable income seem rather appealing.)
The issue of preferential treatment if you're a member of a certain political party/peer group is a common problem all over. That's just a product of people in positions of power allowing their personal biases to effect how they treat others in official contexts (in short, corruption).
Speaking of limiting what can be purchased with earned wealth, there have been schemes like that in the west before as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip
From what I remember being told about it (I'm too tired to read a wikipedia article right now XD), employers like mine operators would sometimes pay their workers in a 'custom currency' that could only be spent at shops also owned by the mine owner (effectively creating a miniature enclosed economy where the workers couldn't buy from anywhere else. Kind of like a form of communism where the employer could have ownership of everything from the homes of the workers to the provision of the food on their plates. Like a little self appointed government). This practice is illegal in most developed capitalist areas now thankfully, but it did used to happen.
When done right, the west has a pretty good analogue to the communist lifestyle in the form of the armed services (at least, that seemed to be the case back when my grandfather was in the air-force and my father lived with his parents in air-force accommodation.).
While they could interact with the rest of the economy like any other person could (buy stuff with real money), a great deal of their lives was managed and provided for by the military, including housing, schooling, e.t.c.
It's not a lifestyle that everyone would want, but for those who would, it was an option.
Of course, this is just based on what my father's told me about his childhood, so it's a personal rely of personal experiences and memories.
At the end of the day, my overly simplistic view of it comes down to people. Good, honest and well intentioned people can make a system fair and prosperous if they so choose and try hard enough. It only takes a few selfish, malicious or incompetent people in positions of power to make it hard (or impossible) for the common people to live well.
If I had to imagine, a communist state could work well for everyone if it were managed by such a hypothetical group of good people and if membership of the commune was voluntary. Alas though, as is so often the case, many people who seek power and status do so for their own reasons and not the selfless service of others (and for those who do have pure intentions, resisting the temptations that come with said power is another matter entirely).
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I'm not an expert in political regimes or ideologies but take a pretty simplistic view of these things instead.
Up to and including this point in history, there's no such thing as a perfect 'ism'. Certainly not as they're currently enacted at least.
For a start, healthy and happy societies tend to rely on the assumptions that everyone will act fairly and kindly towards each other. Unfortunately, this often isn't the case. If the multimillionaire business executive were to pay their factory floor staff a decent wage instead of choosing to amass a disproportionate amount of wealth for themselves (hence the whole 1% vs the 99% thing), there wouldn't be the massive difference in wealth that there is in the western world today. Of course people should be able to determine how much they're able to make by how much they work for it, but when the ability of a person to earn a wage is determined by another individual who also wants a larger slice of the pie, that's where personal greed can fuck the whole capitalism system up.
I believe that the same goes for the idea behind communism as well. If my understanding is correct, the general idea is that everyone receives pretty much what they need from the system and not much more while putting into the system what they can. An attempt to create a level playing field if you will. Again though, this relies on the groups in charge of maintaining the system to be honest and fair with how wealth and resources are distributed. To my knowledge, this rarely happens. Citizens live in relative poverty while the leaders of a nation who's job it is to ensure the prosperity of its people live in palaces.
This isn't limited to communism though by any means. How many other countries and organisations are there where the ones supposedly responsible for making the rules and distributing wealth end up becoming disproportionately wealthy?
secondly, life isn't fair. Any attempt by a government to make life fair is going to inevitably require unequal treatment/requirements of its citizens. Say, a person is born without arms. They can't provide for themselves as well as others will be able to through no fault of their own. Those are just the cards they were dealt. So what? Is it just accepted that they're going to have a harder life than everyone else and leave it at that, or is some of the wealth generated by other productive members of society siphoned off to help this less capable individual? Not everyone shares the same mindset with regards to whether this is good or not, so there's another problem. Is it fairer for it to be 'everyone for themselves' and to hell with those who can't keep up, or should the state step in to 'unfairly redistribute' wealth to those who haven't earned it as much as you have? Of course there are no solid answers for these questions. That's what makes matters like this so difficult to legislate for. So many different people have different opinions, yet you can't have a country that has different rules for different people (not a fair one at least).
There have been many varied atrocities caused by different governments of all different ideologies over time. In the argument of capitalism vs communism, one ideology will have produced more poverty and/or bloodshed than the other, but that's for a historian to say, not myself.
While arguing about which is better/worse though, just remember that the decisions that usually end up causing detriment to others (regardless of the political system) are often made by people who, strangely enough, find themselves reasonable well off and comfortable. Significantly more-so than the people they're charged with looking after.
Anyway, that's my uneducated ramble/contribution to the discussion.
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