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Apocalypse Animated Lenticular prints!

I just got my test batch from the printer and they look as good in real life as they do in this video. (One of 8 in the video was printed at the wrong orientation, so that one is not offered, but it leaves 7 which was my goal anyway). Order yours here: https://apocalypseanimated.com/store/

Currently unsigned only, to US addresses only. I will offer more expensive, signed and numbered sets of 7 later. These are cheaper (but still expensive! Sorry, custom lenticulars ain’t cheap) because they ship directly from the printer. I’m also working on much larger 14″x11″ “walk-by” prints that can hang on walls, but hoo boy are those expensive.

Lenticulicious

I’m exploring custom lenticular prints of loops from ApocalypseAnimated.com. I still don’t have them in hand; the first tests arrive in hand next week. Here’s a preview video from the printer of the design below:

But I’m so excited I’m already setting up designs for 6 more, to make a set of 7 lenticular prints (7 seems to be the most fetishized number in the Book of Revelation). Because I want to look at them adjacent to each other, I’m posting them here!

These loops are all 8 frames (except the Throne and Temple Smoke) because the more frames interlaced into a lenticular, the blurrier it gets. I really won’t know how or whether these designs will work until they’re interlaced, printed, and sealed under a ridged piece of plastic called a lens. Also there are 8 here, not 7, so one of them will eventually be excluded.

Introducing the TERF-Tranny Alliance

It’s just an emblem, a pin, a really ugly web page, and a dream. But it’s ours, and we intend to run it into the ground like any other movement, with a series of schisms, betrayals, false accusations, personality conflicts, poor communication, co-optation by more powerful “allies”, selling out, and ultimate abandonment of our ideals. In the meantime, feel free to share this emblem wherever you like, and go here to get a shiny gold and enamel pin that costs so much to ship there’s no profit for us, even at the high price of $10.

Apocalypse Animated video

I made this little “trailer” video for ApocalypseAnimated.com . It’s only 3 minutes long, while there are almost 12 minutes of animation (without even looping!) in the project, so this is but a mere sample of the wonders to find at the website. But this has music so people are likelier to share and attend to it.

There are some technical looping flaws that bother me. Apparently when I export HD video from Moho, it omits the last frame of the loop, causing a jerk in the seams. This doesn’t happen when I export gifs. To make my hi-res video archive perfect, I will have to go back and add one frame and re-render every. single. file. This took 4 boring tedious days last time, and I’m not looking forward to doing it again. But such are the responsibilities of an Apocalypse animator.

Choosing the song was not straightforward. I was really smitten by Fuck Everything by Euringer (aka Jimmy Urine). It would have supplied nice ironic tension because it’s not intentionally about the Apocalypse, and it’s from the point-of-view of two bratty entitled lovers, which is an interesting lens through which to view John of Patmos and his God. But Fuck Everything already has a perfect video, and who knows what kind of headaches it would cause me; even if Jimmy isn’t a copyright maximalist, his songs are distributed in a system that doesn’t recognize Fair Use, and YouTube’s ContentID would surely block even its first upload. I did start making an edit with it, but got frustrated (as one does) and that anxiety contributed to my consideration of an alternative song.

Fortunately I’d already compiled a list of old gospel songs that might work, and the top entry proved a good fit. I found it on the wonderful archive.org, where I always go a-hunting in my research phases. I worried that straight-up gospel wouldn’t be ironic enough with the animation, but When The Fire Comes Down had its own irony, contrasting a cheerful jaunty melody with horrific subject matter. Everything fit right away and I banged out this edit in a single day. Thank you, Internet Archive!

Mystic Symbolic: The Colorifying

MysticSymbolic has a long way to go, but continues to improve! We now have a rudimentary mandala generator, a Randomize Colors button, and an easier-to-remember work-in-progress URL: mystic-symbolic.art

Though primarily a collaboration between me and outstanding code genius Atul Varma, we now have a “team” including Dave Weaver of Webaissance, and my old pal Maneesh Yadav, who will hopefully dial in the colors. I’ve always scorned work-culture ideas like “team” and “meetings,” but I must say these are making the project better.

Speaking of colors, I am amazed at how well purely random RGB colors are working. I assumed unrestricted random palettes would be 90% horrible, but in fact they are 50% tolerable, and sometimes quite lovely. All the color combos below were generated randomly.

Moar Mystic Symbolic

I continue to design and upload more symbols for MysticSymbolic, finessing most, deleting many. We now have a “Randomly invert symbols” toggle, which I recommend to get a nice balance of black and white. I also recommend a complexity setting of 2 (the slider goes from zero to “bonkers”).

Sometimes I take screenshots and name them. Here’s my latest gallery:

Continue reading “Moar Mystic Symbolic”