Posts tagged work
New Work: Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier
After powering through it this weekend, I got my review of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier published in the Financial Post! Fans of third-person shooters might enjoy it heartily.
Read/Review: “Wolves” and “The Mire” by Becky Cloonan
I don’t really remember when I first came across Becky Cloonan’s art. To be honest, it probably came from seeing her work with Brian Wood, one of my favourite comic writers; their work on Demo really inspired me as to what indie comics could be.
Recently, she’s been putting out her own comics; one called Wolves, and the other called The Mire. I picked up both at TCAF 2012, and was fortunate enough to get them signed by her. I sat in one a writer’s panel the next day, and got to hear Becky talk about her perspective as both a writer and artist, and it was just interesting to hear that point of view.
I really liked her books; hit the “Read More” link below to read what I thought in detail. If you enjoy what I’m writing, give me a like, reblog, Facebook like, or recommend me to a friend! You can also follow me on Twitter.
Klout is stupid, and you shouldn’t care about it.
On my way back from NYC at the end of April, I picked up an issue of Wired. Being one of the few print magazines I actually read, I flipped through it on the plane and ended up settling on a feature about Klout. The tagline read to the effect of “why you should care about Klout,” and one of the main anecdotes had to do with someone not getting a job because their score was not high enough.
This freaked me the hell out.
Klout, for the uninitiated, is a social service that rates you on your expertise by running your follower count, follower “interaction” and other statistics through its magical algorithm. Through a system that’s a mystery as to how it works, you are assigned a score between 0 and 100. You can increase your score through people giving you “+K” in a variety of topics that you’re supposed to be knowledgeable about.
However, in my experience, the only people I know who care about Klout just end up begging for it, anyway.
In theory, it’s supposed to be able to weed out who is influential and knowledgeable about topics, in order to make them easily accessible to users who’re looking for experts. However, I find that by letting users themselves influence the score, it falls prey to the same pitfalls as Metacritic: a game-able system that treats every person as equal, when their experiences are anything but.
Through incentives like their “perks”, Klout encourages users to get as high a score as they can in order to benefit from site partners. In turn, companies use those people who might be influential to the public (people who have high follower counts) to potentially get good press. They contact and give freebies out to people with high K score in the hope that they’ll pass on the kind words to their followers; by using Klout and having a high score, you are essentially putting yourself on a list to be bribed by companies.
By trying to put a quantifiable score on how helpful someone is, you’re attempting to distill down a large human interaction into a number that has no context. When the site tweaked the algorithm, people went bananas about losing K. Especially if companies are starting to actually rely on this for a baseline of how great someone is, would you want a mystery equation determining if you’re going to get a job or not?
My main problem is simple: Klout is a system that is used heavily by marketers under the guise that is it a legitimate and genuine measure of how influential someone is. However, it is starting to be taken more seriously by people other than marketers, and may well one day influence my life. If I am to be judged, I would like to be judged on my merits, as a person.
I do not want to be deemed unimportant or not worth talking to because I decide to take a week off from social media (hah, like that would ever happen) or I’m not getting RT’d enough by famous people.
When I look for an expert on a situation, I look to a number of different factors. I judge how they write, how well their typing is, what their personality is like when answering questions, how open they are to discussion and the quality of their research. I like people who are cordial, to the point and have discussion chops.
I want them to be knowledgeable because they genuinely are, not because they’re trying to get free stuff from a company, or just trying to stroke their ego.
To be honest, I just don’t have time for that.
And in my last little bit of TCAF news, my final blog post (including five profiles of some lovely creators I met at the convention) went up yesterday on Torontoist!
With that, another FCBD/TCAF weekend ends, and my bookshelf grows exponentially. I learned a lot this weekend, and managed to meet some great people. The whole convention weekend is turning into one of my favourites of the year, because I can just let my hair down and hang out with a bunch of people who are just as passionate as I am.
I always usually pick up a book or two that I wouldn’t normally have bought, and this rule kind of exploded this year. I’m currently working through Natalie Nourigat (pictured)’s Shifting Gears, because it shows a time in her life that I’m kind of going through right now myself.
And that’s where I feel the real strength in comics is: connecting with people’s experiences and lives, and enriching them in turn.
New work: Torontoist exclusive!
Photo by LODOE-LAURA HAINES-WANGDA
I haven’t done one of these in a while, but I thought it was worth pointing out that I got a great exclusive in Torontoist on Wednesday because I found out where Toronto’s Silver Snail comic shop will be moving. This has been a story that people have been curious about ever since the store announced they would be moving, and finding out the final location due to just overhearing something was lucky.
See, this is the type of journalism I like doing, and don’t mind busting my ass for. Even if it’s just simple “Here’s what’s happening, here’s what the people have to say,” it didn’t strike me as difficult to do, nor did it seem like pulling teeth.
I cared about what I was writing about, and it looked like it didn’t turn out too badly. Give it a read!
I like when apps look sexy.
This is Paper by FiftyThree, a new notebook/sketching app for the iPad that makes use of a great interface and some cool gesture-based controls to consolidate a lot of its actions.
Because of these gestures, you’re left with a relatively clean workspace to play around in; pinching in “closes” your book, and you can rewind time with another two fingers. Once you get the hang of what does what, it feels smooth, responsive and, well, easy.
The drawing interface is simple, as well: you’re given one pen for free and can pay $1.99 for the others, and a small (if limited) amount of colors. I don’t think this is supposed to replace some of the more robust apps out there, but just supplement them. This is meant to take on the road and have in order to bust out a sketch or a written note on the fly instead of creating a masterpiece.
That said, you’re really going to want a stylus if you’re planning on doing anything that requires precision or tact. I found it a bit weird to get used to with my finger, and I guess the sensation just wasn’t there. While I haven’t had the guts to pay for any of the other tools yet, the inkwell pen is fun and responsive, if not a little tough to get bigger globs.
I found out my efforts at writing came out better than some of my other attempts on other apps, but maybe that’s just the pen tool I was using.
All in all, though, I love this app just because of the way it works.
- The notebooks are customizable with different textures and your own pictures. The “space” notebook above was my own creation
- By releasing it free with micro-transactions, it allows for different people to buy in to what they want to use
- It has dedicated sharing options for Tumblr
I can’t stress how much I find that last point interesting. When fans are snapping up domain names for “ask” sketchblogs as fast as characters are created or artists are posting quick doodles, apps need to be able to accomodate that. Tumblr is huge in the art community for the potential for sharing and the friendliness of posting images.
With this app, what’s to stop a comic artist at a convention from live-posting images to kill time, or an ask blogger from pumping out images from his/her queue on the go? What’s to stop me from taking notes in my lecture/meetings and actually have it look and feel effective?
Evidently, not much.
Paper by FiftyThree is free on the Apple App Store. I recommend it.
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Station ID: February 19, 2012
Name: Matt Demers
Age: 22
Height: 6’3
Weight: 210
Always looks for work, ideas, collaboration and new readers. Give me a follow, reblog and show the love.
Recent Stuff:
- Featured on a podcast
- Launched Toronto Type
- Hit 27 live viewers on 8 hours’ notice for Smite Club VI
School: One month to go at Ryerson. Bachelor of Journalism, here I come.
Work: Intern at ScribbleLive. Video games for Financial Post. Campus blogger for Ryerson Student Life. Comic books (formerly) for ComicVine.
Portfolio: See the sidebar, dorkus.
Side Projects: League of Legends play-by-play for Smite Club. Architecture/signage photoblog at Toronto Type. Nerd columns for Nerd Girl Pin Ups.
Ideas: Comic book titled “NTO”. Comic blog/vlog series called “ComicsMatt.com”
NTO: Heavily influenced by Brian Wood’s DMZ, NTO takes part in the near future, where cities have become densely-packed, apartment-heavy skyscrapers. Telling the story of one man’s climb from the depth of the city’s Bowels to the upper echelons of Halla, it chronicles ambition, loss, sacrifice and an attachment to humanity. Pseudo-sci-fi without delving into Cyberpunk. Inspiration for art style can be found here.
Status: Looking for an artist and finishing a concrete pitch. Will pay. Serious about this turning into a webcomic/print combo.
ComicsMatt: Partly inspired by Heidi MacDonald’s The Beat, DC Women Kicking Ass and my own recent departure from ComicVine, ComicsMatt is an idea for a comics/nerd blog and personal brand site based on my interests and passion. Columns, vlogs, reviews and interviews.
Status: Tumblr seized, but not fully conceptualized.
Interests: Comic books, hip-hop, making music on my iPad and Ableton. League of Legends, Mass Effect, web comics and journalism. Podcasts. Pro wrestling. Sleep, stir fry and shadowboxing. Cartoons and kung-fu movies.
Twitter: MattDemers
Photos: MattDemers on 500px and Instagram.
YouTube: AtMattDemers
Tunes: Last.fm and SoundCloud (empty for now)
Steam: DemersMR
Gear: iPhone 4s, Nikon D40, iPad 2, FlipCamera HD
Any questions? Send them my way.
New contribution to the Financial Post!
It was lovely waking up to news that the Financial Post’s Top Video Games of the Year post had been published. Since I’ve done a couple reviews for them this year, I was invited to contribute, and did with three of my favourites: Bastion, Skyrim and Fractal: Make Blooms, Not War (the latter of which I’ve written about here before).
As I’ve gotten older I found that I’ve lacked a lot of the time for video games that I had during my youth. This is compounded by something I’ve called “the WoW effect”, which has actively kept me from getting addicted to a certain game like I could in the past.
I used to be able to hunker down and play games like Dragon Quest VIII (one of my favourites) for hours and hours, but since I’ve finished my time in Azeroth, that simply isn’t possible. Now, I’ll get bored of a play session (but not necessarily the game) a lot quicker now, and may take month-long breaks from the game with little reason.
It’s kind of disheartening, because this used to be my absolute passion in life; I’ve since shifted towards comics, but a little part of me will always stay with gaming. It also keeps me from actively getting good at games that require it, like League of Legends, or fighting games where you need intense practice to succeed.
If you like video games, do yourself a favour and check it out!
I made another video rant. This time, on the upcoming election, and why you should vote.
I’d really appreciate you watching it. Thanks! :D
Yesterday I did a rant for the Ryersonian, my school’s newspaper. We do a live broadcast every Wednesday and Friday, and they needed a little opinion piece to flavour things up. I’m actually quite happy with how it turned out.
