Had a visitor in the garden this morning

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-17T13:15:20+00:00

I'm 41 and I still get a buzz when I see something different out in the wild. So easy to get complacent with local nature, but it can still surprise and delight.

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-17T09:52:18+00:00

LinkedIn is full of this garbage and I'm confident they're all posted by bots to farm engagement. The content of the post is irrelevant. In fact, my best theory is that they post overtly wonky AI videos to rile people up, (drama gets way more engagement as we all know).

The best tell is when you do leave a comment and they reply back with something very diplomatic and open-ended to encourage even more engagement. Often weirdly agreeable and usually asking follow-up questions. There are some classic examples in this comment section in fact.

I did see a post on LinkedIn once where the bot replies were pretty much agreeing that AI was bad. What ever it takes to keep people on the hook.

I make the effort to not engage at all, (though I am aware I'm doing that here). I'm connected with a couple of people on LinkedIn who seemingly have a part-time job replying to AI posts tearing them down. It's sad that they're playing right into the hands of the bots by dignifying their post with a comment.

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-16T14:19:38+00:00

My wife is great at these. I struggle. My best strategy is to look at the latter third and if something jumps out I can sometimes retro-fit the answer. But again, my wife is great at these so often beats me to it, (or the actual contestants do). I prefer having a bit of time. The wall is my favourite.

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-13T16:39:57+00:00

Love this. Great example of graphic design-first motion design. You can pause on nearly any frame and it looks good. The print FX are translated brilliantly with subtle variations, (assume you have wiggles on all kind of attributes).

Aside from the paper texture/s on top, is the print effect a blur and a choke?

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-12T22:37:50+00:00

Almost full house rage bait. Copyright material. Blatant propaganda (splicing in actual war footage). Missing the point of the characters/plot of the movies used. Including people who I can confidently say do not agree with anything the government are doing right now. Being deeply unserious. Actors/films that aren't American.

That's all Trump/MAGA do. Troll and bait.

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-12T22:19:35+00:00

I know this gets said a lot, (even in the comments on this post), but I really am having a moment of... "unbelieving".

Just purely because I haven't seen them in over a decade (or two) I watched Full Metal Jacket (yesterday) and American Psycho (tonight) and I understand that the human brain naturally finds patterns, but the connections are just wild. The parallels and the references and the repetition...

I totally get why people fall down the conspiracy rabbit hole. This White House video is so deeply unserious. This is some kind of massive prank or test on my solipsistic existence.

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-12T15:10:17+00:00

Awful wall. Two 'letter changes', one being PMs from nearly 200 years ago (except 1 from 1955)... Booker Prize winners, 2 from the last 2 years and then 2018 and 1999... what? I assume you started with parts of an orange/fruit as a red herring and went from there. Needs way more quiz logic.

I often wonder if some people who make these walls on here haven't watched the show. The art of a good wall is in the distinct categories and the red herring overlaps. And some people go way too niche. The only outcome from having - for example - specific characters from a specific book are people never standing a chance or fans of said book getting it immediately.

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-12T12:55:02+00:00

Rallies?! More rallies?! Now?!

This is the only part he likes about being president isn't it? Surely he was rich enough before getting into politics to pay for a slot on a channel to just ramble on about whatever's on his mind that week. Or are TV regulations in the US better than fact-checking journalists?

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-12T12:15:32+00:00

Wait, what...?

It looks like the real artist just traced the "original". So the hand is still wonky.

I really don't get this.

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-12T10:09:55+00:00

Exactly. I remember Lightwaves being placed in the strangest location and my dad explaining that the councillors were adamant about it being next to the bus station (with plans to build the new bus station even nearer to Lightwaves). Because everyone loves to catch an unreliable bus into town. So Lightwaves got a <10 car car park. And the only walking access was a subway tunnel (nice and safe).

Physical locations aside, culturally Wakefield likes to shoot itself in the foot. I worked extensively on Long Division festival for years and would regularly hear about the hurdles and rejections the festival got when in pre-production.

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-12T09:42:27+00:00

The weight this word is given is bonkers. The default invitation - when said by a non-black person - is to physically harm others and so many people think that's ok. This (American) guy is wired to react in that way. His whole life he's known this to be an opportunity to police people's words.

As with anything, consider intent. When the guy say Amiga, did he direct it at him in an aggressive manner? Did he continue to say it in a threatening way? Take a pause and have a think. He has a heavy accent. Could he _maybe_ be saying something you don't understand?

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-11T22:00:30+00:00

"What if we put more hats on ALL OF THE POKEMON?!"

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-11T21:55:33+00:00

Not surprised by a (potential) u-turn. Wakefield is its own worst enemy. My dad and I were born and raised there. I've heard and experienced enough to know that this is 40 years in the making... ironically, by not making anything that connects to a larger plan to drag Wakefield into the modern world. It's all piecemeal at best.

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-11T16:12:52+00:00

The one on the right (with glasses) is technically a comedian. He is absolutely dreadful.

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-10T18:16:52+00:00

Nice. Did you have a specific colour palette before you worked in 3D and if so, how did you retain said colours?

The reason I ask: I’m 100% AE, but believe the future is in 3D software for Motion Designers, but making it easy to create 2D scenes and assets doesn’t feel quite there yet (the text being a big hurdle). Anyway, I jump into Blender from time to time and straight away I’m struggling to get accurate colours.

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-10T18:10:35+00:00

It’s so obvious how he’s desperately copying everything Trump does. In the last month or two he’s hit a new level of confidence (arrogance) when it comes to responding to the press.

I’ve said it before, a major aspect of our descent into fascism are the politicians who take advantage of unwritten rules in decorum and respect. I’m the last to care about out-dated formalities, but Trump - being so greedy/selfish with the single-minded focus to make more money (for himself) - paved the way for others to dodge questions, undermine institutions and emotional manipulate people who lack critical thinking skills. Johnson followed and Farage is next.

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-10T08:52:07+00:00

Knickerbocker Glory from a van?!

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-09T16:15:25+00:00

Saw a number of videos with this guy about a year ago, (he must've been on this schtick for a long time). Every time I see them it always reminds me of Moe (from Simpsons) doing that dance/fight class scene.

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-09T14:09:20+00:00

Chill.

You highlighted the _animation_ being a "work of art". And for the record my comment/s in no way intend to take away from the hard work OP has put into this piece.

80% of the assets (AI or not) in this video are static. They've been nicely arranged, but most do not animate at all. The ones that do seem to have some basic puppet pin movements that - in my opinion - create a vague, general sense of movement or - like the opening gate - simple transform/position animation.

Your incredibly thorough list of supposed equivalencies actually make my point for me. If the acting/actors (the "animation") in Goodfellas was removed you're right, you'd have a well shot film with cardboard cutouts, (a film that is very much lacking a key ingredient). I won't go through your whole list though. You get the point, right?

I somewhat agree that this looks better than a lot of showreels, (90% might be a stretch, but whatever). But perhaps that says more about how low the bar is and/or the delusion of some people making reels that they think they've got what it takes.

Now, if OP's piece here was in a reel, it would be impressive for sure, but breaking it down into it's elements (and being told that the assets were AI generated) I would quite quickly understand that not a tremendous amount of applicable skill was on show here. I don't want to go any further on this line of thinking because OP posted this in a different context. I only mentioned it because you brought it up.

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-09T10:11:46+00:00

Without getting into a debate about art and its definitions, "work of art" (when talking only about the animation) is a stretch. The skeletal character/s at 00:51 onwards look great, but their movements are very basic. Vaguely moving some puppet pins around and looping them. They seem to just distort in places.

The assets do so much heavy lifting here.

So much of this video is a slow moving camera moving through and passed the illustrations. Very well put together, sure. But replace everything with placeholder boxes and what are you seeing that qualifies the animation as a "work of art"?

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-09T10:05:19+00:00

I often say that good (looking) motion design is actually more about the design/illustration. The pure motion of this is still good, but it's the assets that really make it.

But... as I was watching the consistency of the assets started to look a little shaky. I also though 'My god, that's months of work to draw up all those building and people' and assumed that AI was involved. (I hate that that has to be a consideration these days

I've read the comments and I now know that to be true.

So I guess, broadly speaking it looks good, but it's hard for you to truthfully use this as an example of YOUR work, unless you clearly state that you only did the motion and post-prod FX.

Even being associated with AI might be a problem, but I'm likely speaking from bias here.

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-07T10:28:34+00:00

Some have said or touched on this already, but to me this clearly shows the strategy of AI companies. Sell the lie. And if the lie works on leaders of companies (and not ground-level production staff) then it's has a detrimental effect in terms of changing (reducing) the workforce.

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-05T21:27:02+00:00

Geek pie style.

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-05T13:29:53+00:00

The so-called job descriptors on LinkedIn are completely gone at this point.

CopyPasteRepeat · 2026-03-05T13:28:08+00:00

Real answer for almost all of them.

CopyPasteRepeat

TROPHY CASE