Power Stone is so beautiful! I love everything about it, but what stands out to me right now is how the color design is so ON POINT. This is so appealing and legible and well balanced!
Power Stone is on another level. Compare it to popular entertainment products today. Power Stone looks vibrant, but also much more naturalistic. It doesn't have Instagrammy color grading to bring the colors together. It feels like those colors are really there if that makes sense
Modern games and films tend to heavily rely on color grading, which in my opinion tends to actually flatten out the final image. Power Stone is lower tech and relies on good ol baked-in lighting via textures with a bit of simple realtime lighting. It has more intentionality!
I complain a lot about color grading, but of course it's just a technique. It's not inherently bad, and in fact it's an incredibly powerful tool that every filmmaker benefits from having access to. It's what you do with it that counts.
The Matrix is one of the films that hugely influenced the generic color grading you see across most films today. And yet, the first Matrix film had EXCELLENT color grading. Look at how the green filter makes the reds pop by contrast.
And look at how much detail you can still see in the shadows. This is good stuff! They didn't apply the FX uniformly. The color grading here gives the final image even more depth! It's executed with so much intentionality!
Color grading is often an ongoing process even after a film is released. Sometimes home releases of films look radically different from how they looked in theaters. Or even from other home video releases!
If you'd like to know more about digital color grading in films, I suggest you look into "Oh Brother Where Art Thou." It was a game changer. It's actually one of the most influential films ever made. Laid the foundations for digital color grading.
My god, these early digital color grading rigs look like so much FUN!
4 more and she can summon Shenlong!
I just cracked myself up hehe
Explaining the previous joke because I am so self satisfied to have made it
🧵The Western take on Yoshitoshi is that he was a tragic figure waging a lone war against industrialization and modernization. A war that he lost and thus the traditions he championed died with him. It's a romantic notion that also satisfies tons of biases.
🧵But it's so far from the truth. Yes Ukyo-e fell out of favor for more modern methods of reproduction like photography. But it never died out. For instance there was the Shin-hanga (新版画) movement of the early 20th Century, whose purpose was to keep Ukyo-e alive and evolve it.
1. Manga has been more popular than Marvel or DC comics in the west for decades now
2. Marvel & DC =/= All American comics. Dog Man is one of the best selling books (not just comics) in the US. Americans definitely still enjoy reading American comics!
In fact, there have been times where Dog Man has been the #1 best selling book in the US overall!
Dog-Man is the most popular comic in America, outselling any manga. But for some reason it's not really considered a comic by most, i guess cos it's for kids? Where are the articles about how Dav Pilkey is a threat to Superhero comics lol
Listening to this nice piece on the film "Living" and how the author, British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro was inspired by the Akira Kurosawa film "Ikiru," an internationally beloved classic whose title means "To Live." npr.org/2023/03/06/116…
The piece drops the ball at the end tho, when the narrator says that the film "is not just a remake" and they have a Brit critic that goes "'Ikiru,' by Kurosawa, seems to be a film about Japan, 'Living,' by Ishiguro and his colleagues. seems to me a film about humanity"
Like WTF
What does that mean? Ikiru has been widely regarded as one of the "great films" internationally for decades. It's obviously very universal in its appeal. How is it that "Ikiru" being set in Japan makes it "about Japan" but "Living", being set in the UK, makes it "about humanity"?
Sometimes I think about when Hail To The Thief dropped & this one music critic called it pretentious pap saying Thom Yorke simply screams the words "PENETRATION" over and over in 2+2=5. But the actual lyrics are "we are not even PAYING ATTENTION" lol
Oh man this album rules. It brings back so many TERRIBLE MEMORIES lol. But in a good way!
I think There There is one of Radiohead's best singles. Such a rich, downbeat, groovy, anxious sound. And what a perfect message for the times. "Just cos you feel it, doesn't mean it's there." Tough pill to swallow. But sometimes you really need to hear it
I'm overdo for a food post! I hit up some nice places in Chiang Mai recently. #ArtEaterEats
Dirty Mocha from ... Google Maps has them listed as "Cutlater Cafe" but I could swear they had a Japanese sounding name. Probably rebranded without updating google. Anyhow it was a very good cup of coffee and a beautiful cafe! #ArtEaterEats
In addition to great coffee this place specializes in wagashi, traditional Japanese sweets, which go perfectly with a hot drink (really I should have just gotten an Americano or cappuccino instead of a sweet drink to go with these!)