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
In the original Cowboy Bebop, Spike used to belong to the Red Dragon crime syndicate who were lead by a trio of elders dressed like Qing Dynasty emperors, named Wang Long, Sou Long & Ping Long. They are totally unambiguously Chinese. To confuse them for Yakuza is REALLY IGNORANT.
Of course Cowboy Bebop has Japanese influences. Spike is based on Yusaku Matsuda and Vicious is based on Goemon from Lupin III. But it's so clear that the Red Dragon are a Chinese triad inspired organization. And Hong Kong cinema is such a huge influence on the series in general!
This reminds me of when they made the Hollywood DBZ liveaction film, the costume designer said Goku's clothes would be authentically Japanese. Which makes no sense because Dragon Ball is "as Chinese as could be" in Toriyama Akira's own words!
Labor union poster by Katsuya Kondo (近藤 勝也) a luminary of Studio Ghibli (character designer behind GOAT films like Kiki's Delivery Service) and also character designer for the very underrated game, Jade Cocoon!
Here is the website for the organization that this was made for. You can still see Katsuya Kondo's art sprinkled throughout this site. I believe they are a construction worker union.
While I have your attention, did you know that Studio Ghibli regularly publishes a free, unapologetically leftist, anti war magazine every month? They've been doing this for decades!
This is the most 'liked' drawing I've ever shared on here. I personally don't like the actual drawing, but the composition and feeling (the most important thing) turned out alright!
Prediction: sometime soon there's going to be a slice of life spin-off about the domestic life of Krillin (the ultimate Wife Guy) and Android 18 and it's gonna be a smash hit.
I earnestly think they're a great couple! Krillin is just horny enough to forgive Android 18 for mass murder / genocide. But it goes deeper than that. He realizes that she was turned into a killing machine against her will. He has sympathy for her when no one else does.
When you read a crotchety old man take from your favorite legendary anime creators, please remember they often ham stuff up for fun in interviews. Tomino is making this face every time he says something provocative. He knows what he's doing!
In that interview he says something to the effect of "If fans really empathized with Gundam they wouldn't enter the anime industry!" That's FUNNY. Ya know?
I don't think he really truly thinks that fans/otaku should NEVER enter the industry. He's just hamming it up for dramatic emphasis to make the point that he wishes people in anime would bring more outside experiences and influences to anime.
My favorite sculpture in all of art history. A sculpture of the Kuya, a tenth century Buddhist priest who helped spread Buddhism in Japan. It's remarkably lifelike, which makes the little figures marching out of his mouth (representing the sutras) all the more striking.
My first day ever in Kyoto I decided not to look up directions to any specific temples, just let fate guide me. The very first temple I arrived at was Rokuharamitsuji, a beautiful, quiet place that happened to be the home of this statue. Seeing it was truly a religious experience
To be clear it was my explicit mission to see that statue. I intended to look up exactly where it was, but wanted to take things easy my first day. It was pure coincidence / providence that it happened to be in the first temple I went to. The first one that just felt right!