“You think this is going to be a movie about two nerdy young women who are eager to assimilate to be accepted by their peers. What it really is, is the story of two very smart young women who are unapologetic about their intelligence, who go through a transformation to realize that they have misunderstood their peers to be one-dimensional when actually everyone around them is also very smart. They’ve just been living their lives differently.” –– Olivia Wilde on pushing back against the stereotypical “boxes” of teen movies with Booksmart (2019).
When I first saw this on the list, I thought, What kind of question is that? Of course everyone’s seen A Tell Tale Vlog! But then I re-watched it again and actually paid attention to the view counts, and was stunned to note that most of the episodes have significantly fewer views than the Shipwrecked channel has subscribers. And I feel like a lot of those views are re-watches (I’ve probably watched the whole thing at least 20 times myself), which basically means that hardly anyone has seen it, and I’m just delusional. So if you’re one of the vast majority of people who hasn’t watched ATTV, allow me to encourage you to click here.
This was the first Shipwrecked project, the thing that started it all, the spark that ultimately ignited Poe Party. It’s the first time we get to see Sean Persaud as the perfect brooding writer of POE-ms and Sinéad Persaud as the perfect sassy lady ghost, ghost lady. Seriously, the acting is beyond incredible. I believe most of it was improvised, but don’t quote me on that. Regardless, it features some great lines, including this absolute zinger:
I didn’t realize quite how underappreciated this series is, but please do yourself a favor and watch it, especially if you’re a Shipwrecked fan who somehow missed it. The Persauds are utterly incredible, as always. It’s mostly the two of them vlogging in character, but the series also includes some other stuff. Poe and Lenore each do a “Draw My Life” (remember when those were super popular? That’s how long ago this came out. Why do these videos still have so few views?) which are HILARIOUS. And there’s one episode in which Annabel Lee is introduced that is adorable. And it also includes the sketch of Poe buying girl scout cookies that really truly started this whole thing (I think they were going to just film that and then ended up randomly filming the vlogs that same day because they could, so why not?).
tl;dr ATTV is a fun, clever series that deserves more love and appreciation and views.
Please watch this masterpiece! Sinead’s parts were scripted but Sean improvised all of his with only The Raven poem as a jumping off point. Incredible.
I wrote a little about my Sketchbook Skool class the other day. Yesterday I had a chance to put into practise a lesson I picked up from Rebecca Green:
Art is not fragile. Nor do you only get one chance at it.
I watched in her demo as she changed her mind many times. Painted over previous sections, then coloured over them with pencil, then crayon. In her Q&A she said that changing her mind is her usual process and she can often just rework a section, without ruining the illustration. Additionally, when the materials do start to crumble, she just starts the final illustration again – now with more information about what she wants to do with it.
I started the final of this illustration yesterday, and it felt like my second pass with paint was an absolute disaster. Hence yesterday’s post. But I sucked it up and decided to push the piece as far as I could, in the hopes that I’d learn something from it. What I learned was that the second pass wasn’t a disaster at all. It just needed more. I layered and scrubbed and scribbled and scraped and smudged and painted over mistakes. It turned out really well!
Today I’m gonna have another go at the same piece. I probably won’t post it again, unless I learn something really cool. But there are some things I want to try. I want to change the drawing a tiny bit, and I want to test some different ways of handling the pencil textures.
I for one look forward to our new kitteh overlords.
