{"id":45,"date":"2013-10-10T20:06:18","date_gmt":"2013-10-11T03:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joesays.ca\/?p=45"},"modified":"2013-12-29T17:29:48","modified_gmt":"2013-12-30T01:29:48","slug":"on-the-internet-no-one-knows-youre-a-dog-or-if-youre-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joesays.ca\/?p=45","title":{"rendered":"on the internet, no-one knows you\u2019re a dog. or if you\u2019re not."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you\u2019ve not already met Greg Mutt,\u00a0 I\u2019d like to introduce you.\u00a0 Greg is, by current standards, a rather minor and somewhat passe brand of youtube personality.\u00a0 I first met him a few years ago,\u00a0 shortly after seeing Avatar (relevance TBA) and cannot remember how or why I stumbled upon his posts.<\/p>\n<p>On a whim,\u00a0 I happened to look him up the other day and was gratified to see his posts were still active (does anything <em>ever<\/em> get removed from youtube?) and moreover that there were fresh comments only a couple of months old,\u00a0 meaning that he was still being viewed by new and appreciative eyes.\u00a0 I\u2019m glad to see that.<\/p>\n<p>Before I go on, I invite you to treat yourself to a few moments of levity and view Greg\u2019s review of the film Avatar, which is what first made me a fan of his.\u00a0 More on why I think this is a very interesting bit of video below the link.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-o9Fod9KigU\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Fun, right?\u00a0 And if you saw Avatar, (who didn\u2019t?) cannily on the mark.<\/p>\n<p>But Greg\u2019s post has a subtle, subversive sub-layer that is even more interesting.<\/p>\n<p>First, if you hadn\u2019t already noticed, Greg\u2019s not human.\u00a0 He\u2019s a hip, adolescent, thoroughly anthropomorphized canine cartoon character.\u00a0 Yes,\u00a0 a toon.\u00a0 But he\u2019s as far removed from Huckleberry Hound as James Cameron\u2019s Na&#8217;vi are from Steamboat Mickey.<\/p>\n<p>Now,\u00a0 my knowledge is by no means current but I do have some background in filmmaking and computer animation, and to my somewhat-educated eye this is a pretty goddam well-executed piece of CGI artistry.\u00a0 Everything about Greg is incredibly lifelike and natural: his expressions, his body language, his physical appearance (watch his ears flap when he shakes his head).\u00a0 All in all, he\u2019s a marvel of CGI.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s the delicious irony of this piece: Greg\u2019s youtube film critique \u2013 substance aside \u2013 shows a mastery of CGI that is equal to or even surpasses that shown in Cameron\u2019s supposedly genre-stretching feature.\u00a0 In a piece of\u00a0 online fanspeak.<\/p>\n<p>I ask myself: who would go to such lengths to produce such a sophisticated piece of work for such a lowly purpose, and I conclude that it must be an inside job.\u00a0 Maybe a rogue unit inside Cameron\u2019s camp like that cowboy team who shot up ILM way back when \u2026 or, who knows?\u00a0 But I think it\u2019s a great post-modern comment on A level filmmaking which still resonates today, and I applaud the work for its skill and its audacity.<\/p>\n<p>Sadly,\u00a0 I don\u2019t hear much from Greg anymore.\u00a0 I\u2019d really love to know how he\u2019s doing.\u00a0 And what he thought of The Avengers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you\u2019ve not already met Greg Mutt,\u00a0 I\u2019d like to introduce you.\u00a0 Greg is, by current standards, a rather minor and somewhat passe brand of youtube personality.\u00a0 I first met him a few years ago,\u00a0 shortly after seeing Avatar (relevance TBA) and cannot remember how or why I stumbled upon his posts. On a whim,\u00a0&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-raves"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joesays.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joesays.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joesays.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joesays.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joesays.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/joesays.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96,"href":"https:\/\/joesays.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions\/96"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joesays.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joesays.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joesays.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}