It’s been a fun ride, but now it’s coming to an end.
The Good
The Media Channels and platforms course certainly had a wide variety of content and I learnt a lot. What’s even better is that I became genuinely curious about many things that were new to me. Since every lesson had a different topic there was only so much we could cover, though many of the themes did overlap. Now I can say I have a basic understanding of a good variety of topics and it’ll be easier to do further research on my own. I’m delighted.
Keeping up with the blog wasn’t always easy, but it was certainly worth it. Somehow I think I’ll even miss the practice of writing my weekly (or not so weekly) media stuff. I know there are many people who earn their living by producing content, for example by writing a blog, and twice as many people who don’t see that as a real job. Well it is one heck of a job and now I have experienced it first-hand.
..and the Bad
I chose Blogger because I thought it'd be easy since I've had a couple of blogs on this platform in the past. Turns out time had sugarcoated my memories but starting a new Blogger blog quickly reminded me of the truth. The user experience is terrible, there are countless weird bugs and modifying the look of the blog is an absolute horror. Also making the blog responsive is more a challenge than it seems at first glance. For example no one will see your embedded Youtube videos on mobile if you don't go to the post's HTML view editor and edit a certain class from the code. (For anyone who's interested, it's class="BLOG_video_class")
There are manyarticles on why Bloggersucks. For me it was a bad decision since I didn't have the time to put in a lot of effort in learning how to make things nice and pretty on a platform that I'm not going to use professionally, ever. So my blog ended up looking quite lame. If you want something free and neat go to Wix (or Wordpress.com, though I haven't tried that one myself so can't really vouch for it). But please don’t ever make a blog on Blogger. Just.. Don’t do it. If you already did, I'm sorry. I feel your pain.
Magical girl animation (mahō shōjo/majokko in Japanese) is a staple in Japanese TV programming that targets mainly female prepubescent viewers. When talking about the genre, there are two series that are often credited as the first: Mahōtsukai Sarī (Sally the Witch, 1966) and Himitsu no Akko-chan (The secret of Akko-chan, 1969), the latter being based on a manga that was published in 1962. Curiously enough both of them state the American sitcom Bewitched (1964) as their main source of inspiration. Sally was the first Japanese animation targeting young girls and she is the first example of the “Cute Witch” (魔女っ子, majokko) archetype (a young witch, often a princess of a magical kingdom, whose powers are of genetic origin), while Akko-chan was the first one to introduce magical powers gifted to an otherwise ordinary human who would use these powers to transform.
The 1970s continued with various majokko animations such as Mahōtsukai Chappī (Chappie the Witch, 1972) and Majokko Megu-chan (Megu, the Little Witch, 1974). In 1973 Cutey Honey started airing and it had one of the first female protagonists in an anime targeted at a male audience. She can be seen more as a superhero than a magical girl but she’s definitely the prototype of the "Magical Girl Warrior" (a subgenre that would later be cemented by Sailor Moon.)
Magical Angel Creamy Mami
In the 1980s series such as Mahō no purinsesu Minkīmomo (Fairy Princess Minky Momo, 1982) and Mahō no tenshi Kurīmī Mami (Magical Angel Creamy Mami, 1983) introduced heroines with the magical power to turn into older versions of themselves. Creamy Mami was also the first series that gave birth to a new subgenre, "Magical Girl Idol", where the girl’s secret identity is some sort of an entertainer (usually a singer). The 1990s marked an important point in magical girl history when Bishōjo Senshi Sērā Mūn (Sailor Moon) came out in 1992. The series was a global success and it triggered the first wave of cute action programs with female protagonists, such as Powerpuff Girls (1998), Totally Spies! (2001) and W.I.T.C.H. (2004, based on a comic that was first published in 2001) in the US and Europe.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica
In the 21st century we have seen the magical girl genre expand its themes to more mature and darker ones, such as death and the price of magical power. Examples of this type of shows are Mahō shōjo Madoka Magika (Puella Magi Madoka Magica, 2011) where all magical girls are doomed to become evil in the end and Mahō Shōjo Ririkaru Nanoha (Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha) that has overall a different tone, focuses much more on combat and is actually targeted at male viewers.
Magical girls have been criticised for many matters throughout the years, for example for being cash cows.
Something I learnt reading research papers on magical girls (linked in the source section at the end of this post) is that most if not all magical girl anime is actually comparable to a series of 25-minute long toy commercials. Anime is typically made at a loss of a million yen per episode and thus relies on sales of media or merchandise to make a profit. All those cute mascots that accompany the magical girls on their adventures? Merchandise. All those detailed magical trinkets that give the girls special powers or help them transform? Merchandise. The writers, directors and producers form a committee with the sponsors who make the merchandise, and more often than not the toy is designed by the sponsor company before its appearance in the animation. In the case of Pretty Cure their transformation and power-up trinkets are all merchandise, and these toys are the only part that’s CGI-animated in the transformation sequences. This way the original form of the toy can be respected meanwhile it is integrated into a scene that repeats in every single episode when the girls go through their metamorphosis.
Animation-wise I also learnt that these transformation sequences were originally meant to save time and effort in the production, since they were repeated so many times during the series. However nowadays its treated more as an opportunity for the animators to show off their skills and grow their portfolio. The transformations of the complete team of the girls in Smile Pretty Cure! lasts over three minutes and consist of 10,000 drawings, whereas roughly 3000 drawings are typically required to animate a single episode.
Then there's the feminism controversy.
Though it can be stated that magical girl anime has reflected the empowerment of Japanese women throughout the years, these girls are still way more fantasy than fact. The heroines are portrayed assertive, active and self-reliant but are often nevertheless sexualised in various ways and subjected to the ‘male gaze’. For example the transformation scenes showing the girls changing clothes (and in many cases naked) is a staple in the genre, but the tastefulness of it seems to vary depending on the show. It can also be noted that as opposed to the transformations in series like Power Rangers the magical girls usually seem to go through a “make-over” rather than a “power-up”.
As an example see the transformation of Vivio, a 9-year-old girl who’s a character in the series Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha ViVid (starting at 0:30). The camera swipes over her behind and chest way more than any other body part, and though she transforms to an older version of herself, it’s still a child that we’re talking about. As mentioned earlier, the Nanoha series is mostly aimed at a male audience.
This blogpost talks about something that’s called internalised misogyny (regarding magical girl anime). That would be when women oppress themselves and their peers: it’s not out of spite, it’s just an inevitable reflection of the society and culture we live in. Women might reject the frilly, colourful and pretty magical girls because we’re “meant to like” things that are traditionally labeled “feminine”, while in reality there’s no shame in liking “girly” things if you just genuinely find them nice.
So I wanted to make magical girl designs for three women that had some historical impact in the real world.
In visual terms there are certain tropes that repeat in the magical girl genre, like bows, frills, lace, bright colours and colour-coding the characters if they’re a team. Magical trinkets and motifs such as hearts, stars, wings, wands, gemstones, cards, brooches and so on are also something you’re very likely to find in this type of shows.
I started my process by researching each woman's background and also looking into their wardrobe. The challenge was to respect their personality and fashion choices while making the outfits loyal to the genre. My first thought about Tarja Halonen in a frilly dress was rather funny to be honest, but I didn't want to make the characters a joke, so I had to integrate I also wanted to colour-code them like a true magical girl posse so they would look good when fighting against evil forces together. Red, green and blue are a very common combination for team. (Even more common would be to go for pink instead of red, but I just saw red more fitting for Frida. More on that later.)
Frida Kahlo 1907–1954
Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter who went through a lot of pain and suffering during her life, and has famously portrayed this in her paintings. She had polio when she was 6 years old and that left her right leg thinner and shorter than the left one. When she was 18 she was in a bus accident that nearly killed her and left her recovering in a full body cast for a long time (this was also when she seriously started painting).
These incidents had an effect on many things in her life, including the way she dressed. There were various clothing choices she would make to hide the state of her body, such as handmade shoes with wedged heels with the right heel higher and long traditional Tehuana skirts and blouses (so she not only hid her legs but also wore these blouses with a square shape to put emphasis on her upper body and head). Other prominent features of her style were bold colours, a lot of patterns, rebozo (traditional Mexican shawl), jewellery indigenous to Mexico and her signature hairstyle composed of braiding and flowers. Topping everything off with her unibrow and slight moustache that don't really fit any traditional beauty standards for women we could say that she had a very iconic look.
In my initial sketch I drew her with a long skirt, true to her style. I changed my mind when going through her numerous self-portraits and realising she really portrayed herself very raw in her art, without hiding literally any part of her body. I thought that attitude might carry on to her magical girl form, so in the end I went for a short skirt.
Her right leg was amputated later in life and she had these special boots made for her complete with a prosthetic leg. I thought these boots already scream magical girl as is so I drew inspiration from them directly, exaggerating the bell part.
Frida is often pictured with a red rebozo, red lipstick, red flowers in her hair etc, so that seemed like a natural colour choice for her outfit. Red's also often viewed as a colour of passion, love and courage, which are themes at least her paintings transmit to me. Her magical item is the brush wand. She was the first of the magical girls I drew, so I also spent the most time on her. Once I had the process down, drawing the others didn't take so long.
Tarja Halonen 1943–
She was Finland's first female president 2000-2012 and she was known for paying attention to human rights, gender equality, democracy and civil society. She's a feminist and served as the chairperson of SETA (Finnish National organization for Sexual Equality) in the 80s. This sparked quite some rumours about her being a lesbian, which she has denied. According to an article by Helsingin Sanomat Tarja states that when she was considering becoming the chairwoman, she asked herself if she's really so pathetic that she doesn't have the guts and courage to stand up for gay rights, when those people suffer discrimination every single day.
It wasn't that easy to find information about Tarja's style. I went through a myriad of photos from various articles and the Independence Day Reception and drew inspiration from the clothes and dresses I saw her wear. According to an article by Yle at some point she was criticised for the way she dresses, but it's not really elaborated how, just stated that she was told to dress more modest. I didn't really see it fitting to make her outfit outright revealing but I did make the other side of her dress hem quite short. Regarding the colour of the dress in various photos I've seen her wear quite a lot of green. It goes very well with her hair and I think it also transmits a cool but lively close-to-earth vibe. Her magical item is the Grand Cross of the White Rose of Finland.
Nina Simone 1933–2003
This woman was singing about how Black Lives Matter even before the movement existed. According to her an artist's duty is to reflect the times.
She started out as a classical pianist and began playing at nightclubs when she wasn't accepted to study in Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia (which she later on realised was because she was black). Just playing the piano didn't cut it for the clubs and she was required her to sing as well, and to hide this from her religious mother she took on the stage name Nina Simone (she was actually born Eunice Waymon). She mixed a wide range of musical styles and didn't really start singing politically until she wrote the song Mississippi Goddam (1964), that according to her own words just "burst out of her" after the assassination of Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963. She became involved in the Civil Rights movement and wrote even more songs that criticised racism but also promoted black self-love.
For me designing Nina's dress was the trickiest out of the three women, and I had to look for a lot of reference pictures. The details are quite directly inspired by her several outfits, for example the sleeves are a frillied-up version of a blouse she had on in some pictures. To me the most outstanding part of all of her outfits was her bold hairdos and different types of hair accessories, so of course I had to include those.
I was hesitating between white, black and blue for outfit, but went with blue in the end. There are many photos of her wearing black or white dresses (and other outfits, for example netted jumpsuits) but I was more convinced of making my third design with a more traditional magical girl colour after all. Blue can be seen as the colour of inspiration, peace and intelligence, so I think it suits her quite well. Her magical item is, surprise surprise, the microphone.
In the name of art and human rights, we'll punish you!
All of the illustrations were drawn entirely in Procreate.
This is also something rat owners joke about a lot, but I must say I sure prefer the faint clinking sound of the drinking bottle than my rats starting to passionately redecorate (read: destroy) their cute little cardboard box houses at 6am.
I'm sorry
And to conclude this mini-series of rat memes of course we must end it with something addressing the current world situation. Stay safe everyone!
Since seeing various meme posts from my marvellous classmates I also wanted to make one. And what could I make it about other than rats.
True story, actually works.
All rat owners will know what this is about. Cleaning and decorating their cage is all fun and games until you put the ratties back in and they start to redecorate, because you clearly have no idea what you're doing.
This has happened to me too many times. It's an interesting experience to wake up in the middle of the night with a rat on your face. They are very intelligent little creatures and can learn to open their cage doors among other things, so you gotta be careful or they'll outsmart you...
And since this is also me, there'll most likely be a part 2 in the near future. Stay tuned for more rat. 🐀
Since following the story of Seraphine (that I talk about in this post) I had an interesting revelation: virtual inluencers are a thing. Of course I already knew Seraphine is not the only one of her kind, but what I wasn't aware of is that there are so many of these non-human influencers with insane amounts of followers on their social media accounts. Inspired by this I actually made a short presentation about virtual influencers for Finnish communication class, so I thought I might say a word or two about them here in this blog as well.
So we can agree that an influencer is someone whose opinion is valued by a group of other people, and this is where influencer marketing draws its power from. Usually when we follow someone on social media we get a peek into their life and might even converse with them in the comment section or through direct messages. This creates a feeling of knowing them on some level, so it's very easy to trust their opinion as if it were a friend's. When an influencer tries a product and then shares their experience with us, it feels way more genuine than watching an advertisement. Even if they only picked up the product because they're being paid for testing it.
What on Earth are virtual influencers then? Simply put they're digital characters that are created and managed by brands and individuals. Many of them are CGI-created and closely resemble real humans (sometimes so much that it gives you the creeps), but that's not always the case as some of them are also very cartoon-like. As regular influencers, apart from working with different brands they make posts about their everyday life: they have their own drama and some of them are also vloggers or even artists on the side.
One of the most famous virtual influencers right now is Lil Miquela (pictured above). She started on Instagram in 2016 and back then no one really knew who had created her and why. Now it's public knowledge that her creator is Brud, a startup company based in Los Angeles. Brud's website is hilarious by the way, it's just a short and simple Google Docs document. Here's a video about them and their virtual influencers (yeah, Miquela's not the only one):
The video's from 2019 but the information still holds true for the most part.
Miquela has worked with various big-name brands such as Moschino, Prada, Calvin Klein and Samsung. Currently she has 2.8 million followers on Instagram and 560,307 monthly listeners on Spotify. (Yes, she also makes music!) On her Youtube channel she's got 248K subscribers and there you can find her music videos, vlogs and even some interviews. To top it off she's also on Twitter, TikTok and Facebook as well. Talk about social media savvy.
Another virtual influencer I find quite interesting is Imma, who was created by the Japanese company Aww Inc.
According to Yumi An Anzai, a director at Aww, Imma was originally intended as an art project rather than a marketing tool. She just happened to attract a lot of attention and the market followed. I personally think she looks eerily real. Just look at this video of her "living" in Ikea Harajuku.
Even though virtual influencers are occasionally referred to as "AI influencers" and for example Miquela defines herself as a "robot", the fact is that there's no AI or robotics involved in their creation.. Yet. There are studios that have claimed to be working on it, so perhaps in the future these influencers will be even more human-like and require no help from real humans to produce their content. Time will tell.
I am one of those people who can immediately tell when a blood vessel breaks in their eye. To me this happens when I spend a lot of time staring at screens and frankly, it feels quite disgusting. Like someone poking a needle in my eye. Since starting my current studies I’ve also had a twitch in my right eye at least once a week. That’s also rather uncomfortable. I know both of these things can be signs of stress, dry eyes and not taking enough breaks. Nowadays we spend a lot of time sitting in front of a screen, be it a computer, tablet or a phone. The current world situation has normalised working and studying online and many of us also rely on different kind of screens during our free time. Various pastimes that were paper-based in the past are digital now (ebooks, games etc).
So please, dear reader, take this opportunity to stand up, shift your gaze away from the screen and relax your eyes by looking into the distance. It’s also a good idea to blink (might seem obvious but we actually forget to blink enough when staring at a screen for a long time). While you’re at it go ahead and stretch those shoulders a bit. You could even do a jumping jack or two. If you're a coffee kinda person, pour yourself a cup of that hot elixir of life. Tea also works, or just plain old water. Take a moment for yourself. You know you deserve it.
Impostor syndrome is not really a mental condition despite its name. Psychologists would rather call it the impostor phenomenon and it is defined as the constant gnawing feeling that your success is due to luck, not because of your hard work, talent or qualifications. On top of that you're also worried that other people (for example your workmates) will find out you're a fraud and actually not as capable as they thought you were. It can be a real problem in working life and it seems to affect all kinds of people from diverse backgrounds, no matter their age, gender or occupation. About 70% of people experience these feelings at some point in their lives according to a review article published in the International Journal of Behavioral Science.
Mike Cannon-Brookes is a 40-year old billionaire and the co-founder and co-CEO of Atlassian, an Australian company that develops products for software developers and project managers. Their products include for example Jira and Trello. If you check his biography on the official blog of Atlassian, it says he "was a driving force behind Australia getting the world's biggest lithium ion battery". While this might indeed be true, he has a very interesting story behind it, as you can see if you watch his Ted Talk on How you can use impostor syndrome to your benefit. The video is almost 14 minutes long but if you suffer from said syndrome and have a bit of time to spare, I'd definitely recommend watching it.
When talking about creative work I feel it complicates the concept even more. Art is something very subjective, what is "ugly" for one is "beautiful" for someone else. In one of their recent articles Yle interviewed six Finnish professionals about their experiences with impostor syndrome regarding their work. Actress Krista Kosonen confessed that, despite having confidence in her professional skills, every time she starts a new job she experiences feelings of insecurity. She says that acting is difficult as hell and she never gets how to do it well the first time. With every new role she has to start from zero again. If you think about it being an actor is, in fact, being an impostor of sorts.
Blogger Jenni Rotonen with her blog Pupulandia is not the only one who doubts her skills once in a while. Being a blogger is something that many people still don't consider a "real job". Rotonen says part of the reason might be because there's no official education on how to build a business around your social media channels. She states that it's very common for people to think that someone without an official title cannot be as capable as someone who has completed studies on the matter (whatever it happens to be). The truth is knowledge and professional skills can be acquired through other ways than higher education as well.
The key for someone who struggles with impostor syndrome could be accepting it in the first place and questioning one's own thoughts. Perttu Pölönen, who is a professional speaker among other things, tells Yle the biggest help for him has been trying to turn the impostor thoughts into a source of inspiration and empowerment. He says instead of comparing yourself to others you should focus on looking up to the people who you think are better than you. When you look up to someone, you want to be like them and they inspire you to reach your goals. Surely this is a better point of view than seeing everyone else as competition and getting discouraged because you feel you're not at their level.
I guess in the end no one really knows what they're doing all the time, however professional they might be. And that's the beauty of it really. What would life be without a little challenge and surprise?
