Tag Archives: antoons

The Japanese Influence in my life

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So like most Millennials I have been exposed to Japanese games and animation from young age. Playing on Sega Megadrive/Genesis and Gameboy, and then moving on to Playstation and so on. All of these were made by Japan.

Naturally, I would be curious to learn the culture and it’s art history, so I spent a year as an exchange student in Hirakata, Kansai Gansai University. This was in 2009/2010, so ages ago, but I still have many fond memories and how it all made me appreciate Japanese games more than ever.

During the graduation ceremony I ended up wearing a really traditional kimono (for men) thanks to my homestay mom. This caught an eye of some reporter who took pics.

While I did not stay to live in Japan after this year (though I did spend an entire Summer there after graduation), I think I had enough experience in the Osaka culture to understand how the society operates and what other nations should and need to learn to be honest. Seeing what direction the modern industrial nations are headed thanks to the neo-liberal ideas I am glad there is still a spot in Japan where I could escape to when things really get bad.

I also learned to reject the “anime” aesthetic that is flooding the market. After learning why it is made that way I kinda became disgusted actually, to have a ‘national’ style, which must not be deviated from in most cases. There are some very rare exceptions in modern anime industry that allows the art style to have some unique elements not present in any other series/franchise made in Japan, so like One Piece which has a pretty unique artstyle in the way characters express emotions or just look. The JoJo series also has a very original look that cannot be found elsewhere too, but the rest, maybe 99% of the series in both gaming, manga and anime follow the same formula that makes me roll my eyes, and puts me away.

Sure, their faces still have the same formulaic shapes and sizes that is common in every other anime. But some of the characters stand out, like Usopp for example, and Robin too. Not to mention the manga tends to have a more wacky style than in anime show.

Jojo style also has the same generic head shapes, but some details and shading definitely stand out right away as unique to this series.

But this.,…

and this….

This is gross, there is no personality here at all.

I have a lot to say about anime history so this will be covered on one of my videos. But I still respect all the animators and teams who produce even the most generic slop, because drawing human bodies in that realistic anatomical style is very hard for even the pros, so if they can draw just for the sake of drawing it is better than CGI animation, where you have far less effort.

My life as a teacher #2

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I was teaching from 2017 until 2023, and there were a lot of students during this time, as it wasn’t strict in age ranges. There were students from age 11 or 12 all the way until 18 and above. Eventually, I did tell the organizer of this school that we need a minimum age for the kids to get along and also the skill to be more or less same. So we then allowed mostly kids from the age of 13 to join. Sometimes there were students that attended for years, while most were only for a year or so.

During this time I was fully immersed in the gen Z world. While I know that kids with talents and drawing skills tend to be quirky and introverted, this generation was poisoned by the social media without even noticing it. It was depressing to see how from 2017, the kids each year were becoming more and more depressed/anxious, to the point they could not maintain any friends in school, so this animation class was their haven to meet other kids and socialize. I noticed the moods of pre-Covid and post-Covid years, how it impacted their character and behaviors.

Now I don’t want it to sound all doom and gloom, as there were a lot of great times with the kids, mainly before Covid. I was genuinely looking forward to each of the classes (before around 2022) as it was rewarding to share my knowledge with the young minds, and to have the next generation learn the art of hand-drawn animation. It always depended on the group too, if the kids were passionate or would rather scroll on the phone without care. The covid year made it so much harder for anyone to focus in class, which made me lose interest as well. I am just not the type to force someone to learn, as it is energy costing and may be a waste of time anyway. If the kids can’t pay attention, then I can’t give them meds to help. I did try to ask them to put away phones, but we don’t have that rule in school sadly. So barely anyone could disconnect from their devices. Not to mention when some of them were drawing on tablets/ipads, it was even harder to keep them away from the internet abyss.

I had to also learn to not have favorites in class, as it was clear who had more skills than others from the start. Also, there is a factor of mental disorders, like ADHD, autism, GAD etc. Some of the kids were in that tough learning spectrum, so it made extra hard for them to learn animation. I was glad that they were not upset if I was asking to fix something, well most of them were not anyway… There is always someone who has no patience to correct something, and those were usually with little interest in animation, so I am not surprised if their parents used this class to get some peace from their offspring.

One student in particular really impressed me, she was really good at animation and also research of its history. She was so passionate to become the next showrunner, I really could not believe there are such people in Estonia, the land of little to no passion in this art. I will never forget her, she made me this Mr. Sneaks figurine that still stands on my shelf.

P.S. yes, I look like a hobo there. I was juggling both Youtube and this school at the time, so I had little time on keeping myself in order.

My life as a teacher

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I finally decided to share my history with teaching animation in Estonia. It has been a while now since I left that career (2023), so looking back I think I can see things more clearly on certain aspects.

The following posts will have some insights on what it was like.

Here is a pic from the 2022 Summer camp where we had the city kids/teens all in one group. It was meant to be aimed at Ukrainian refugee kids as the funding was based around this premise, to help these kids learn some new things, but there only ended up being 2 of such kids while the rest were all local.

Very few of these kids knew about animation, so I think their parents just saw this easy way to get some peace and quiet no matter what camp their kids go to.

Some girls , the older ones, were pretty sneaky in drawing on the light tables’ (the boards with that giant plastic circle, that has light from underneath to make the paper more see-through) surface, so vandalizing the property with their furry art. This made the organizer of the camp really mad, so she forced the girls to stay after the class to wipe the lightboxes clean. The girls were good kids otherwise, and because we had a few arguments on the furry art subject, they gave me a cute gift after the camp was over. I need to find that art they made and the marzipan bag. I took a pic of it but it was a while ago.

The camp was also part outside, so when kids were learning pixilation, or body stop motion, where you take a pic of each movement, and then it becomes like puppet animation, that feeling of awkward movement that skips the rest of live-action frames, so it becomes almost a slow motion type effect.

My focus was of course on hand-drawn animation, so we used the classic pencil and paper approach to learn the very basics. I could tell right away which kids had patience to complete even the simplest of tasks, and not surprising that younger ones cared very little on what they created, as animation is over saturated today. The magic is hard to appreciate when the kids all had smartphones from like age 5 (terrible parenting). Though I was glad the 2 teen siblings, who were older ones in that group, did show a lot of interest and care in what they did. My Estonian was pretty rusty (after not being around Estonians for years, as I was usually with expats or the Russian speaking kids in school where I taught), but their English was decent enough for our communication to go smoothly. It was a fun experience overall, despite the younger kids not really caring or understanding why they are in that camp in the first place.

Everybody wants to be famous on Social Media

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But most will fail.

Until someone goes viral, and the rest of the competitors find out in 24 hours. The problem is that you compete in a small league, or even big one. You compete with the 7+ Billion people.

And that means a lot of sour eyes who did not get the prize. This psychological hijacking of our life means that everyone is always hustling and looking for that golden chance to make it big and become a celebrity overnight. Even those who have quit the race, are prepared to boost or belittle other competitors, because each voice contributes to the status of most influencers.

Battle systems of Split Social

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The first battle idea was to use the turn-based combat. So you touch someone or they initiate the contact, the battle screen pops up. Very classic Japanese RPG style. I played Pokemon a lot in my teens, so this system makes perfect sense. BUT unlike many turn-based games, here you have fight using timing based commands, like in Mario and Luigi RPGs/Paper Mario. Which means you cannot do same damage each time you attack, but each hit is counted based on the performance of the move. It is very simple sequence of directional arrows to press at right time, each is displayed like in rhythm games. Though this is only during the player’s turn, because as soon as its the opponents turn, the condition is reversed, and you have to either mirror the arrow marks or hit them in reverse, so if it’s left you see from the enemy, you hit right. There are many types of situations, all based on the opponent and player’s skills.

Also, in the real world battle the turn changes perspective of the characters, so each turn it’s a fresh start.

A lot has changed since the battle idea was introduced in 2021.

Of course this is only the real world battle of the game. The online world is very different, and so the battle will be explained later 🙂

The protagonist development since 2021

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I always wanted to have a choice between the 3 races/2 genders from start of the game, so like in Pokemon games. As time went on, we did not focus on everyone equally, due to time constraints. So the main playable type for the demo is going to be White Male.

These are the young adult versions of the game protagonists. Notice the bright noses on all of them, the lore is going to be kept secret for now, but you will see it in the demo.