Semi_Hemi_Demigod

Yep, that's Mystery Men era Janeane

MacDraw was one of my favorite things about my first Mac. One thing I loved about it was that you could set up mirrors across the canvas and make really neat designs really quickly. I've not seen a drawing program with something similar since.

He is not "a" dude. He is The Dude.

The last time I cried was last night watching a video about the LOFTID inflatable heat shield. Tears of joy for the team and for seeing something that's only been in KSP actually become realized. It felt so cool I cried.

Whenever I read the words "broke the Internet" I imagine this scene from The IT Crowd

Porn is going to do to commercial space flight what it did for the Internet and VHS.

It is definitely a business problem. I deal with similar sorts of contract work and we always put in clauses about rework and going over time and I've got strict restrictions on what work I'm supposed to do. (Actually dealing with this now, honestly. Customer wants extra work done and I need to get approval for it.)

The problem is the VFX firms are at a disadvantage when dealing with studios. The studios have the work and all the lawyers, so they have the power in negotiations. If they studio says do more work and the VFX firm doesn't they'll get blackballed and go out of business.

Totally agree that qualified people can do good or even great CGI. But the reason everything is CGI these days - and why end credits are getting longer and why budgets are going through the roof while VFX firms are going bankrupt - is because it allows executives to send shots back over and over to get "fixed."

This is a real problem in the VFX field, and leads to a ton of burnout. They even have a term for it: "Pixel fucked."

Binding arbitration is terrible for consumers:

“This is not like having judges, who get paid the same no matter what happens,” says Stanford Graduate School of Business finance professor Amit Seru, who collaborated on the study with Mark Egan at Harvard Business School and Gregor Matvos at the University of Texas at Austin. “Here, you only get paid if you’re selected as an arbitrator. They have incentives to slant toward the business side, because they know that those who don’t do so won’t get picked. Everyone knows what’s happening.”

CGI gives the producers the ability to re-do complex shots over and over again. With practical effects you don't get to say "That fireball isn't red enough, make it redder" without a ton of extra work.

Back when the remake of Battlestar Galactica was on the air the showrunner Ronald D. Moore had a podcast where he'd sip some scotch and smoke a couple cigarettes and provide commentary for the episode. It worked really well, and got me to watch the show twice because I wanted to follow along. Eventually they made it onto the DVD/Bluray releases as commentary audio tracks.

With the growth of podcasting I'm amazed other shows haven't done something similar.