“Stop being funnier than me on my own post” is one of my favorite healthy tumblrisms, along with things like “hang on lemme look that up…yeah this is funny” and explicit tone indicators (positive). Like yeah let’s build a world where we playfully format healthy interactions. You made a post and you wanted to be the star but damn, you’ve really gotta hand it to this other person for their really funny addition, so here’s the internet equivalent of giving someone a friendly punch on the shoulder while making sure they know they got a good grade in social interaction
I actually hypothesize that big bird is a late surviving direct descendant of Deinocheirus
would you be willing to expand on this hypothesis
same general body structure, has hands instead of full wings, has a slight hump, similar beaks
clearly Deinocheirus’ descendants evolved to have more upright postures, a shorter tail, and forward facing eyes over the past 66 million years
This implies Big Bird slowly evolved into a carnivore.
look, it’s been a while since I saw Follow that Bird, because it makes me cry every damn time, but I’m pretty sure Big Bird eats grains
that said, this means Big Bird is an herbivore that convergently evolved carnivore-like traits, which should be significantly more alarming to all of us
Ok, I want to know why it should be more alarming. Am I missing something?
Are you trying to imply that this is batsean mimicry of a big bird looking actually carnivorous species, or is this stretch?
I’m not a scientist, just an enthusiast.
So herbivores are more alarming than carnivores in general because carnivores get full. Herbivores are always on alert for predators and either have one of two responses: run (these can trample us) or fight (these will destroy us). This is why herbivores are usually much more dangerous than carnivores - for one quick example, more people are killed by the herbivorous hippopotamus each year than by sharks (yes, all species thereof)
so, an herbivore convergently evolving carnivorous traits means its an herbivore designed to take out potential dangers with the swiftness and lethality of a predator
that is extremely alarming
consider the cassowary. now imagine it more exact and capable. now imagine it the size of big bird.
we should all be glad he is a friendly presence on sesame street and not the unholy terror he should be
To add more to Big Bird’s biology, it should be noted that his species is either very diverse in morphology, or his clade contains many species that live in various countries’ Sesame Streets. Some of them, like Bibo from Germany, look pretty much the same as American Big Bird, but others are quite different. In the Netherlands we have Pino, who could easily be the same species but has a more pronounced crest, orange beak, and blue feathers everywhere except the area around the eyes. On the rare occasions he has actually met Big Bird, he called him Cousin Jan.
Brazillian Sesame Street is inhabited by Garibaldo, who judging by beak and leg morphology is likely a different species. Between the sleeker legs and the very sharp beak, I think a stork-like lifestyle is likely for his ancestral population.
Then there’s Abelardo from Mexico, who seems to come from a population that convergently evolved several parrot-like traits. An interesting detail about this is that, unlike most other vertebrates, parrots don’t absorb their pigments through their diet, but make their own pigments called psittacofulvins. Given that his relatives are quite colourful themselves and can probably obtain plenty of carotenoids from their diet, I don’t think that is likely to be the case in Abelardo.
Caponata from Spain looks very different from all her family members, even the more divergent ones. This could be since she is the only female member of the clade I have managed to find so far. However, the very different feet make me think she might hail from a very derived species instead. I can’t even imagine what sort of evolutionary pressures could lead to a bird evolving such strange feet.
Other Sesame Street birds are a little harder to find information about, with mostly older sightings. There seem to have been sightings of one named Toccata in Quebec. His shaggier white feather coat covering more of his legs and being thicker around his neck does suggest adaptations of the harsh winters up north.
Portuguese Poupas has different colouration and seems to have some sort of feather puff going on around the ankles as well. The feathers around the head are notably swept backward as well. I think this is a somewhat derived population of the American species. Minik Kuş from Turkey may hail from this population too, or perhaps from some intermediate or interbred population, as they seem to be more morphologically similar to the more typical Big Birds.
someone needs to throw together a phylogeny and I recognize that, as a bird researcher, who has done too many phylogenies of birds, I am the prime candidate, but I have too much to do for SVP…
it’s kind of incredible how much pixar has backpedaled over the last couple of years, from the standpoint of character design
these were the kind of characters designs they had when they did their first movie with humans as their main cast
despite being cg all of the characters are visually distinct from each other and they look like 2d figures translated into a 3d environment
now it’s just???
all their human characters kind of lack that visual distinction and they’re all just? cute?
Alright, I wasn’t gonna comment b/c it’s kind of a waste of time, but I see a lotta folks tryin to pass off “Incredibles” designs as ‘an attempt to avoid Uncanny Valley with primitive tech’ or ‘resembling comic book art’, and a lot of other…. un-design-savvy comments.
Brad Bird had come from a background in traditional animation, he’s the guy behind this
So Lasseter (Pixar) rings up Bird like “Hey you wanna make a CG movie with us” and Bird’s like “Yeah, lemme bring my guys”, artists like Lou Romano, Teddy Newton, Tony Fucile, and Albert Lozano, who worked with Bird previously.
This may have been Pixar’s first production to feature an entirely human cast, but I think mostly what the excellence in designs boils down to is simply good artists with good taste.
And then have the fantastic designs in “Ratatouille”, also by Bird and his boys
We’ve also got the film “Up”, directed by Pete Doctor. Animated films rely on several artists for the designs of characters, set, props, ect, but it often leans towards one artist’s work. Putting other artists in charge gives “Up” a distinctive visual difference in style to Bird’s films.
You could place the blame on all these newer movies featuring mostly children characters, but I mean…..
Come on. Way to drop the ball on the chance to play with evolution in a fictional, animated setting. The issue isn’t what the tech was or wasn’t, is or isn’t capable of. This comes down to the artistic choices.
Anyway, I wish I could get more in-depth with this, but it’s difficult to find the information I need online in a timely manner, and I don’t have my books here with me.
If you’re interested in the designs/work that goes into animated films, check out the “Art Of __” books. The older ones I mean, that have actual raw concept art done for production and not just a bunch of cutsie drawings of characters b/c that’s what sells.
The difference between then and now is simply that Pixar was bought out by Disney, and is now one of Disney’s biggest money-spinners. They make superhero movies focus-grouped for boys, princess movies focus-grouped for girls, and since Pixar movies are supposed to appeal to both those genders equally you get, well, that. A neutered, generically cute art style that lends itself to big-eyed dolls with brushable hair and cute animal plush toys that make noises when you squeeze them.
I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again; Disney (and by extension, Pixar) don’t make art any more. With a few scant exceptions they haven’t made art for decades. What they make is money. What they’re selling is a brand. Their last few passion projects spent years in development hell, hemorrhaging money the entire time, so what would eventually become Tangled, Frozen, and The Good Dinosaur ended up as bland and generic simply to recoup some of that enormous loss. And by being bland and generic, they ended up turning a massive profit, so you can expect that trend to continue.
A corporation that sells everything from kid-friendly cruise holidays to mickey-themed wedding packages is not going to make art. A studio that’s so creatively bankrupt that it’s now rebooting every good movie it’s ever made is not going to make art. If you want art, look to smaller studios (Laika, Reel FX), smaller, lower-budget projects (Captain Underpants), and anything that Hollywood considers ‘risky’.
Expecting Disney (and Pixar) to make anything that doesn’t blandly appeal to everyone at this point is like expecting blood to come out of a stone.
Nah, there’s more good content, real art coming out now than ever before, it’s just not coming out of Disney.
“We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective.”
Michael Eisner-former CEO of Disney
I did 6 years at CINAR in Montreal as a character/prop designer in the mid-to-late 1990′s and we would spend ages exploring unique styles and looks for each new show. My own technique was to read the show bibles and try to get a feel for the source material, what was important to the creators, what sort of things the characters would have to get up to and what the visual humour would be like.
When I got to another studio much more recently as a storyboard artist, I tried to connect with the designers to try to get the feel of the shows, but instead of thinking and creating and trying to interpret the concept, he spent all his time printing off stills from the latest PIXAR movie and just copying that. The man didn’t have a creative bone in his dumbass body.
As a result the designs for most of the shows I worked on in the past 15 years have been insipid, derivative, and worst of all, non-functional with the requirements of the scripts.
That’s the trouble with these speculative endeavors in the tech industry where it’s just assumed that something so revolutionary will of course pay for itself down the road
i need non-usamericans to understand that they fall just as hard for the pro-US propaganda as the americans they’re always talking shit abt and it’s licherally effecting their ability to do leftism and international solidarity.
“kids are getting indoctrinated into transgenderism” did you know that left handedness increased from 3% to 12% when they stopped beating left handed children.
