The technical term is “ontological shock”; I love it. Sort of keeps you on your toes mentally. And you get the satisfying feeling of telling people “It was like the world and I had a chicken death race, and the world chickened.”
You don’t “design” props in a live-action show. Generally you pick them out from a selection of existing objects, since you’re not a wizard.
But in animated things, everything is designed beforehand. The animators don’t design everything on the fly as they’re penciling in walk cycles, stuff is drawn up first, all of it.
And, yes, you can get an Emmy for doing an exceptional job.
Some of the props in live action shows are designed by the production staff — particularly in science fiction shows (they didn’t just find a bunch of phasers lying around in the Desilu studios warehouses, for instance, or pick sonic screwdrivers at the local hardware store — though after the original prop kept on breaking they did eventually buy a bunch of sonic screwdrivers at the toy store for one of the Doctors).
I get my Sonic Screwdrivers by mixing vodka and orange juice and then shouting a lot.
Doctor Lantern
I get mine by taking a Sonic Orange Slushie and mixing in Vodka…
Notebooked
I get mine by mixing vodka and orange juice, then putting it on a treadmill cranked up to top speed.
Of course, it’s a friggin’ mess, which I think makes it even more accurate.
tahrey
Amateurs.
6oz discount store orange juice
6oz discount store vodka
4 to 8 drops blue food colouring
1 freshly pureed wild hedgehog (starved for at least 24 hours beforehand)
a dash of sriracha
a scoop of ice
Put all ingredients in a large cocktail shaker and shake well, then strain into a pint glass. Garnish with a sprig of parsley and a red & white striped hi-top sneaker.
DarkVeghetta
^ then serve to your worst enemy and tell them the recipe. Enjoy seeing them pass out as puke gushes forth from every orifice. Add skunk for added hilarity.
I remember reading (back when the show had just recently gone off the air, if you can believe that) that the original Star Trek’s prop guy, Irving Feinberg, actually made a lot of those props out of balsa wood and crap out of his junk drawer.
“Even back then, most television shows had prop budgets of hundreds of dollars per episode,” he said. “Mine was tens of dollars.”
Thus the Christmas-tree-light control panels and the guys behind the walls pulling the doors open.
You can totally design props for live-action. It’s not going to be real common for modern-era kind of stuff, but if you need a phaser or a sonic screwdriver or a mind-wiper, you can’t just buy one. Someone’s gotta fabricate that stuff, and someone’s gotta design it in order to do that.
John
(oops, distracted by cheezburger, Makkabee said what I was going to say already)
Depends on the budget. Sometimes you can commission a set of futuristic looking armor for your space marines. Sometimes you’re stuck with hand-me-down Starship Troopers uniforms.
Ivan
Is that the “Bug Planet” movie? If so, I want to see more of that uniform Mrs. Sheen was wearing in the shower scene.
Chace957
the former Mrs. Sheen wasn’t in the shower scene. That was the redhead. Mrs Sheen however can be seen in birthday best in Wild Things…
I’ve never really thought about animation having prop and set design before, but it makes a lot of sense. Maybe it’s because people tend to talk about character design a lot more.
Hmmm, as an animator who has also worked in live-action, gotta disagree with you there. The first point is pretty much a matter of nomenclature: In animation we don’t really talk about “prop” design. We’d talk about art direction or production design, which is more all-encompassing than just the objects that the characters are directly interacting with.
And in Live-Action, production design (again, that or art direction are the preferred terms) is an intense process, not just for science-fiction as others have mentioned, but for historical shows (“Vikings” and “Game of Thrones” have to build pretty much everything you see on the screen from scratch), but also for contemporary settings. A show like “The West Wing”? You have to research the White House in huge detail and reconstruct it. A show set in a more normal office? Decisions have to be made about how that office looks, and why, and it usually needs to be built from scratch so that it can be a set in a soundstage.
And finally (I know I’m being anal), here are the categories for animated work at the Emmy Awards:
Outstanding Animated Program
Outstanding Voice-Over Performance
Individual Achievement in Animation
Outstanding Short-format Animated Program
Only four awards.
Josh
Blasphemy! You’d think this wasn’t based on a real show! :O
You’re obviously unfamiliar with the standard four-point Standardised Difficulty Grading structure, as introduced in seminal puzzle game “Lemmings”.
1/ Fun
2/ Tricky
3/ Taxing
4/ Mayhem
Thus this is Taxonomy at the third level of generalised difficulty. Presumably the preceding episodes started out with some Fun Taxonomy, before proceeding quickly to Tricky Taxonomy. By the end of the episode in question, we can assume things had fully progressed to that most difficult of situations: Taxonomic Mayhem.
Much as I wanna violently shake her for her ‘sciencet propaganda’ jab, I do kinda gotta feel bad for Joyce here…I mean, even if it’s a stance based in ignorance, it can’t be easy seeing your perfect, stable little world come crumbling down around you.
That said, this’ll probably wind up being good for her if Dorothy’s the one to talk her down rather than someone still very far inside her comfort zone. Yeah, if she learns to accept it, this could be a sign of positive movement for Joyce, but still, I can’t help but feel for her a little.
Well, yeah, we should feel bad for her. After all, it’s not really Joyce’s fault that she believes all this stupid crap. She never really had a choice. It’s her parents, and her pastor, and whatever other authority figures she’s had, that have taught her that evolution is a lie, and gay people are abominations, and premarital hanky-panky will get you damned to hell for all eternity. This is all she’s ever known, and now that she’s finally learning that not everybody thinks like she does, it’s going to be hard for her.
Joyce (and individuals like her) are not going to abandon their core beliefs based on a rational argument, especially if the argument is presented by someone who lacks the ability to comprehend human emotions (as opposed to dinosaur hunting patterns).
Frankly I don’t feel that Joyce’s views on science should be shaken at all, as opposed to her feelings about homosexuality and pre-marital sex. Joyce can always stick her fingers in her ears during Dina’s rants about common descent, or how the scientific term for a theory is not the common term for a theory. But she can’t stop viewing Dorothy, Ethan and Joe as people she sees everyday. Ethan and Joe are both Jews, and Dorothy’s an atheist; according to Evangelical core beliefs, even if Ethan never finds a boyfriend, Joe stops fooling around during college and marries a nice Jewish girl and Dorothy becomes head of the CDC and cures cancer, they are all going to Hell. Who cares about dinosaurs? Joyce’s real crisis is that the “sinners” aren’t evil people.
The kindness that Ethan, Dorothy, Billie, etc., have shown Joyce are making her question her core beliefs. Dina’s rants shouldn’t be having any such effect.
174 thoughts on “Pick up”
Jen Aside
“LIKE OMG I DIDN’T REALIZE THE WORLD WAS FULL OF DECISIONS AND TEMPTATIONS AND EVIL AND SHIT”
I mean stuff
JA
I know right? It sucks when reality crumbles and then shatters the bubble you’ve encased yourself in.
Jenny Creed
The technical term is “ontological shock”; I love it. Sort of keeps you on your toes mentally. And you get the satisfying feeling of telling people “It was like the world and I had a chicken death race, and the world chickened.”
Kernanator
Is it freakout time now?
Neospector
Oo, I love freakout time. You can shout “HABABABABABAGEBEBEBEBEBE!” all you want and no one looks at you funny.
GrrArg42
***BEE DOE BEE DOE BEE DOE***
Geminia999
Prop design in an animated show? Is Dexter and Monkey live action!
David
You don’t “design” props in a live-action show. Generally you pick them out from a selection of existing objects, since you’re not a wizard.
But in animated things, everything is designed beforehand. The animators don’t design everything on the fly as they’re penciling in walk cycles, stuff is drawn up first, all of it.
And, yes, you can get an Emmy for doing an exceptional job.
Makkabee
Some of the props in live action shows are designed by the production staff — particularly in science fiction shows (they didn’t just find a bunch of phasers lying around in the Desilu studios warehouses, for instance, or pick sonic screwdrivers at the local hardware store — though after the original prop kept on breaking they did eventually buy a bunch of sonic screwdrivers at the toy store for one of the Doctors).
Makkabee
pick up sonic screwdrivers at the hardware store
Icalasari
The SONIC hardware store
felonius
I get my Sonic Screwdrivers by mixing vodka and orange juice and then shouting a lot.
Doctor Lantern
I get mine by taking a Sonic Orange Slushie and mixing in Vodka…
Notebooked
I get mine by mixing vodka and orange juice, then putting it on a treadmill cranked up to top speed.
Of course, it’s a friggin’ mess, which I think makes it even more accurate.
tahrey
Amateurs.
6oz discount store orange juice
6oz discount store vodka
4 to 8 drops blue food colouring
1 freshly pureed wild hedgehog (starved for at least 24 hours beforehand)
a dash of sriracha
a scoop of ice
Put all ingredients in a large cocktail shaker and shake well, then strain into a pint glass. Garnish with a sprig of parsley and a red & white striped hi-top sneaker.
DarkVeghetta
^ then serve to your worst enemy and tell them the recipe. Enjoy seeing them pass out as puke gushes forth from every orifice. Add skunk for added hilarity.
Animal
I remember reading (back when the show had just recently gone off the air, if you can believe that) that the original Star Trek’s prop guy, Irving Feinberg, actually made a lot of those props out of balsa wood and crap out of his junk drawer.
“Even back then, most television shows had prop budgets of hundreds of dollars per episode,” he said. “Mine was tens of dollars.”
Thus the Christmas-tree-light control panels and the guys behind the walls pulling the doors open.
Rowen Morland
And we love them for that.
Eric Burns-White
Or, occasionally, by saying “wait, McCoy needs some kind of medical scanner? Um… well, this salt shaker looks kinda weird. Let’s go with that.”
John
You can totally design props for live-action. It’s not going to be real common for modern-era kind of stuff, but if you need a phaser or a sonic screwdriver or a mind-wiper, you can’t just buy one. Someone’s gotta fabricate that stuff, and someone’s gotta design it in order to do that.
John
(oops, distracted by cheezburger, Makkabee said what I was going to say already)
(but at least I can haz cheezburger)
Jake
Depends on the budget. Sometimes you can commission a set of futuristic looking armor for your space marines. Sometimes you’re stuck with hand-me-down Starship Troopers uniforms.
Ivan
Is that the “Bug Planet” movie? If so, I want to see more of that uniform Mrs. Sheen was wearing in the shower scene.
Chace957
the former Mrs. Sheen wasn’t in the shower scene. That was the redhead. Mrs Sheen however can be seen in birthday best in Wild Things…
davidbreslin101
I’ve never really thought about animation having prop and set design before, but it makes a lot of sense. Maybe it’s because people tend to talk about character design a lot more.
Animal
One more reason you’ve really got to hand it to those South Park guys.
SalmonLeap
Hmmm, as an animator who has also worked in live-action, gotta disagree with you there. The first point is pretty much a matter of nomenclature: In animation we don’t really talk about “prop” design. We’d talk about art direction or production design, which is more all-encompassing than just the objects that the characters are directly interacting with.
And in Live-Action, production design (again, that or art direction are the preferred terms) is an intense process, not just for science-fiction as others have mentioned, but for historical shows (“Vikings” and “Game of Thrones” have to build pretty much everything you see on the screen from scratch), but also for contemporary settings. A show like “The West Wing”? You have to research the White House in huge detail and reconstruct it. A show set in a more normal office? Decisions have to be made about how that office looks, and why, and it usually needs to be built from scratch so that it can be a set in a soundstage.
And finally (I know I’m being anal), here are the categories for animated work at the Emmy Awards:
Outstanding Animated Program
Outstanding Voice-Over Performance
Individual Achievement in Animation
Outstanding Short-format Animated Program
Only four awards.
Josh
Blasphemy! You’d think this wasn’t based on a real show! :O
Hinoron
DOA; Fun AND educational! ^_^
Bizze
“Emmy? BAH! That’s the Golden Globe of TV awards!”
-Calculon, paraphrased
Count Dracula
I have to agree with Walky about Taxing Taxonomy. Carolus Linnaeus would classify Taxing it as Craptacular.
Count Dracula
Well I messed that up royally, and there’s no delete button, so feel free to point and laugh.
Mr. Random
Hah Hah. Hah Hah.
Yotomoe
Count Dracula made a clerical error on a webcomic. Let’s all point and laugh at his humiliation.
Aizat
Damn you, Yotomoe and your Grim Adventures references too.
Yotomoe
I’m just glad you’re around to get ’em.
Daeva
Dracula don’t do clerical work. Dracula scrape and lick! Blaghlaghlaghlaghl
showler
I do not say Blaghlaghlaghlaghl.
Roborat
I got that one, Yay me!
Tenn
I’m not even sure what part you messed up, so I’ll just point at myself.
tahrey
You’re obviously unfamiliar with the standard four-point Standardised Difficulty Grading structure, as introduced in seminal puzzle game “Lemmings”.
1/ Fun
2/ Tricky
3/ Taxing
4/ Mayhem
Thus this is Taxonomy at the third level of generalised difficulty. Presumably the preceding episodes started out with some Fun Taxonomy, before proceeding quickly to Tricky Taxonomy. By the end of the episode in question, we can assume things had fully progressed to that most difficult of situations: Taxonomic Mayhem.
LittleWyvern18
“evolution probably happened”
dat science propaganda
Yotomoe
Dina was a bit more forceful than that…but no more than Joyce was.
asdsadafa
C’mon Joyce, you don’t need your friend. You and Ethan are going to make it. Also, once you go Jew nothing else will do.
Yotomoe
Once you go gay, you’ll have to stay.
DrunkenGator
Once you go red, it’s all in your head…
Yotomoe
Once you go dork, he’s the only one you’ll pork.
DrunkenGator
Once you’ve gone putz, you’ll realize we’re all nuts.
Makkabee
Once you go plaid, it won’t be just a fad.
Plasma Mongoose
Once you renounce God, you end up kneeling before Zod. 😛
Yotomoe
Once you go Yotomoe you’ll say “No mo’ fo’ me”
andiemus
Once you go Herc, the rest just won’t work.
Charlie Spencer
Once you go hick, no one else does the trick.
Crumplepunch
Once you start rhyming, I question your timing.
Notebooked
Once you don’t stop, I blow my top.
Roborat
I think you won.
Totz the Plaid
Truth.
tahrey
Once you go Brit, all else is shit.
Roborat
One you go otaku, there is nothing else to mack to.
I wanted to play too.
AHR
Well I guess we know Walky is fundamentally wrong.
Daeva
Much as I wanna violently shake her for her ‘sciencet propaganda’ jab, I do kinda gotta feel bad for Joyce here…I mean, even if it’s a stance based in ignorance, it can’t be easy seeing your perfect, stable little world come crumbling down around you.
That said, this’ll probably wind up being good for her if Dorothy’s the one to talk her down rather than someone still very far inside her comfort zone. Yeah, if she learns to accept it, this could be a sign of positive movement for Joyce, but still, I can’t help but feel for her a little.
spaceinvader42
Well, yeah, we should feel bad for her. After all, it’s not really Joyce’s fault that she believes all this stupid crap. She never really had a choice. It’s her parents, and her pastor, and whatever other authority figures she’s had, that have taught her that evolution is a lie, and gay people are abominations, and premarital hanky-panky will get you damned to hell for all eternity. This is all she’s ever known, and now that she’s finally learning that not everybody thinks like she does, it’s going to be hard for her.
leor613
Joyce (and individuals like her) are not going to abandon their core beliefs based on a rational argument, especially if the argument is presented by someone who lacks the ability to comprehend human emotions (as opposed to dinosaur hunting patterns).
Frankly I don’t feel that Joyce’s views on science should be shaken at all, as opposed to her feelings about homosexuality and pre-marital sex. Joyce can always stick her fingers in her ears during Dina’s rants about common descent, or how the scientific term for a theory is not the common term for a theory. But she can’t stop viewing Dorothy, Ethan and Joe as people she sees everyday. Ethan and Joe are both Jews, and Dorothy’s an atheist; according to Evangelical core beliefs, even if Ethan never finds a boyfriend, Joe stops fooling around during college and marries a nice Jewish girl and Dorothy becomes head of the CDC and cures cancer, they are all going to Hell. Who cares about dinosaurs? Joyce’s real crisis is that the “sinners” aren’t evil people.
The kindness that Ethan, Dorothy, Billie, etc., have shown Joyce are making her question her core beliefs. Dina’s rants shouldn’t be having any such effect.
John
Walky kind of put your cute little problems in perspective, didn’t he, Joyce?
Yotomoe
You could have had spiders.
JBO
Yeah, I mean Alien Ace Action was from the same season like Taxing Taxonomy and had waaaaaay better prop design!
Totz the Plaid
AAGH! Now I have one more episode to conceptualize!
…but one less since Willis has his own ideas for “Taxing Taxonomy” and I don’t want to step on his toes…
Aagh, it’s all evened out?
Kam
Willis! you must create these cartoons! your fanbase demands it!
Osaru Sensei
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/DexterAndMonkeyMaster
Emoroffle
Ok where is Dina? Joyce needs an edge pushing.
timemonkey
Dina never appears when you’re looking for her.
Lokitsu