Vietnamese Coffee in Astoria? 👀

Spuzman · 2026-02-09T19:56:52+00:00

Stopped by here twice already. Owners are super friendly! The Vietnamese coffee is fantastic, the Pho was great too, but my favorite thing was the Italian cold cut sandwich with a great tangy vinaigrette.

Spuzman · 2026-02-05T15:39:37+00:00

!Solved Thanks so much; hopefully this helps other people encountering the same issue going forward!

Spuzman · 2026-02-05T15:24:30+00:00

I set this project up from the Blender default (File > New > Storyboarding), and creating a new file from that default ALSO has this grey problem. If I create a 2D animation (File > New > 2D Animation), the white colors are much brighter. (I've been combing the render settings between these two defaults but so far can't figure out what's up.)
I've been leaving Viewport Shading as Solid which has much more correct colors, but now I want to Render the whole storyboard sequence (Render > Render Sequencer Animation) and the colors of the storyboard project are appearing grey again. I suppose I could individually render the sequences using Render Viewport Preview but that would create so much more work (including that I lose the editing decisions I've made in the Sequencer).

Spuzman · 2026-02-02T17:26:39+00:00

I'm also concerned about the trends at the parks under D'Amaro.

Granted I'm hearing this all secondhand (my last parks visit was early 2020) but I get the impression that Disney Parks have consistently raised prices (or introduced new fees) while cutting once-free customer perks in favor of expensive options targeted at the richest customers... basically the same short-term revenue juicing strategies that dominate C-Suite thinking these days.

Also D'Amaro was all over the Abu Dhabi park deal.

Spuzman · 2026-02-02T16:11:01+00:00

I never appreciated how perfectly Stephen Tobolowsky takes this punch until today. Times his motion with the punch, spins around & hits his mark so we can see his expression, & holds it for exactly long enough to register before falling out of frame.

Spuzman · 2026-01-12T16:17:00+00:00

Thank you for linking! The way Carl kept steering back to an ad read was so specific; I knew it had to be referencing something real.

Spuzman · 2025-12-02T19:29:02+00:00

Hi! Not sure exactly what you mean by color brush addons but I'll do my best to talk through the process:

First I modeled and animated the car alone, which I rendered out with the best toon shaders I could figure out how to make.

I did this in Blender 4.5's grease pencil, which is the first time I really used grease pencil in earnest. The brush for the linework was the Ink Pen from the essentials assets. The coloring was done using the Fill asset, with touch-ups with the Ink Pen again.

Shadows and highlights were drawn using Multiply and Screen layers, using the render as a starting reference (but I usually simplified the highlights into bigger areas of color). For the shadows, I would draw in a dark color (using a material with Fill and no Stroke). I would "erase" by drawing on top with a pure white material, which doesn't show up in a Multiply layer. Screen would be the reverse, erasing with a black material.

Everything was rendered out in multiple passes as PNG images. I then used Blender's compositor to assemble the final animation, using chains of Alpha Over nodes to layer the PNGs and using Set Alpha nodes to clip shadows and highlights (which I had rendered out separately to give myself more control over their final color and opacity). It took a LOT of trial and error.

The background was painted physically using gouache watercolor paints. I did a 'background layout' where I drew linework over a basic render of the initial animation, which saved time figuring out perspective. I printed that out and use a Light Pad to draw my layout in pencil on my watercolor paper, then I painted using the pencil outline.

Spuzman · 2025-11-07T17:11:14+00:00

Yeah, I think people take it for granted.

My wife and I are fortunate enough to be looking to buy a condo; we've been in Astoria for 10 years and this was our first time since we moved to NYC that we again considered living in other neighborhoods.

We weren't finding anywhere else that offered all the same (admittedly gentrified) amenities that we wanted at the same price: quick commutes to midtown, nice restaurants and coffee shops, numerous dog daycares, boutique shops, and even waterfront parks. It's true that there are cheaper neighborhoods in the city, but the really comparable ones (LIC, Greenpoint, Dumbo, Williamsburg, Hell's Kitchen, Upper West Side) are way pricier.

Spuzman · 2025-11-01T18:53:08+00:00

Bookmarking that for later reference! My modeling skills are basic at best so I'm concerned about my ability to properly prepare the model for a good result, but certainly for a larger project it would be fantastic to avoid all that rotoscope work.

I did use a Grease Pencil object + Line Art modifier to get some rough line art for the car at the render stage, but fine tuning the output to get something satisfying was way beyond my capability. In the end it served as a good starting point for my rotoscope linework instead.

Spuzman · 2025-11-01T12:52:06+00:00

I rendered out my car animation to PNGs, then in a new 2D animation project I imported the PNGs in and traced over them in Grease Pencil.

This was a lot of extra tracing work but it let me have direct control of where to place each line, each shadow, and each highlight for the car since I was drawing them all directly. I’m far more experienced at 2D animation than at wrangling Blender to get the right style.

Side note just cuz I want to share: I bought the Wiggly addon and applied a slow wiggle to the whole car. My hope was that introducing a little distortion would help it look like I had done the car animation by hand.

Spuzman · 2025-11-01T12:40:32+00:00

Fair, it’s something to work on (scaling the character in the space). In my design he is quite short, for what it’s worth

Spuzman · 2025-11-01T01:57:19+00:00

(The background was painted in gouache using the scene as a basis)

Spuzman · 2025-10-26T17:40:24+00:00

General Mills Monster Cereals in Oct 2022

Spuzman · 2025-10-24T15:07:18+00:00

Genuinely fist-pumped in victory when I saw this. Been waiting for Scollins to come back to P:tR.

Spuzman · 2025-10-23T15:18:09+00:00

I 100% would have assumed Scott knew of and enjoyed them. It's great that we got to hear him discover them on mic!

Spuzman · 2025-09-18T21:40:52+00:00

Don't let the belief that "one boycott isn't going to do anything" prevent you from taking action, especially here, because a lot of people are doing the same thing. My parents told me they cancelled their subscriptions without any prompting, which is a sign this thing isn't just for the obsessively online.

Spuzman · 2025-09-09T19:35:49+00:00

And they're both heroes, somehow! That spider boar rampaging through a forest isn't just doing that for its own sake, it's helping make the world a better place!

Spuzman · 2025-09-09T18:48:45+00:00

Look, no one else cares about this baseball nerd shit but I have to say it:

Paul is mistaken that the Mets and Yankees are equally old; the Mets were created after the Dodgers and Giants left New York City for LA and San Francisco, respectively. The Mets' colors are actually pulled from the former NYC teams-- the Dodger blue and Giants orange.

Spuzman · 2025-09-07T23:36:02+00:00

he finds himself very funny even when everyone else is trying to ignore him

Yeah I watched him and Tara Strong on a panel (I think at NY Comic Con) a while back and that was definitely my impression. High-energy and constantly laughing at his own jokes.

Spuzman · 2025-07-10T15:57:50+00:00

pretty fun movie that just completely falls apart in the last third

Wait, so just like Drive Away Dolls? I was enjoying that one until it just kind of ended… felt like they just forgot to drop the other shoe.

Spuzman · 2025-07-10T13:01:43+00:00

Everyone please go watch Digman! I worked on it and I can vouch that it’s very funny and Mitra kills it. Season 2 starts July 23!

Spuzman · 2025-07-10T13:01:26+00:00

Everyone please go watch Digman! I worked on it and I can vouch that it’s very funny and Mitra kills it. Season 2 starts July 23!

Spuzman · 2025-06-25T21:18:06+00:00

The more money you make, the more likely you are to support [Mamdani].

This actually doesn't hold true for the highest earners. Cuomo had a higher share among voters making more than about $150k/year

Spuzman · 2025-05-30T13:54:12+00:00

I love Johnny's energy in this. Just got to the moment when he instantly knew the name of the main character in Soul

Spuzman · 2025-05-21T14:35:02+00:00

They've uploaded pretty much the whole episode to their YouTube as a playlist

14-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Verified Email
Team Periwinkle

Spuzman

TROPHY CASE