Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
- 74
- 1
What is this place?
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a
court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to
optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
The weekly Culture War threads host the most
controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are
appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy;
if in doubt, post!
Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts.
You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.
Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
New post guidelines
If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it.
A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts
such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a
submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).
Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or
significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.
If in doubt, please post it!
Rules
- Courtesy
- Content
- Engagement
- When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
- Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
- Accept temporary bans as a time-out, and don't attempt to rejoin the conversation until it's lifted.
- Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity.
- Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
- The Wildcard Rule
- The Metarule
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I think it's mostly a labor-saving measure, although modern AI art will help a lot with that.
I play a lot of AVNs, and I see that the quality of 3D art is a smooth slope. Anyone can set up a content pipeline with some mildly customized assets and start churning out a new render for each line, the biggest limiting factor is probably their GPU. Getting the renders to look good and not uncanny probably doubles the work, getting the animations to look good probably quadruples it.
2D art required a real artist to even start making something. That's why most, if not all, 2D VNs stick to blurred backgrounds and a few posed images of the characters for the majority of the scenes, with only the pivotal scenes switching to a few full-screen drawings with the characters in more dynamic poses. Animating 2D art is much, much harder. Tools like Live2D and Spine are incredibly labor-saving, but the barrier to entry is super high, as you can't just draw the key frames and hire some lesser artists to do the in-betweens. You have to know which scenes can look good with Live2D, how to break down your first key frame into pieces and rig them to make the animation. And it still won't let you do something like this, the vast majority of Live2D animations looks barely better than Saturday morning Hannah-Barbera classics.
In a couple of years AI art will help a lot. Right now, there's not enough LORAs or what's their name that let you churn out images in the style you want and almost everyone uses the one that has the same energy as polystyrene moldings. It forgets tiny details between different drawings, so animations are right out. But all of this can and will be fixed. I'm reasonably sure Disney is currently busy making AI tools that will let it go back to lavish 2D animation and open-source tools will catch up with Disney a few years later.
More options
Context Copy link