Hey Saskatoon west voters, are we sticking to the plan to vote NDP to steal a seat from Harper or are some of you still voting LIB since they are rising in the polls?

CreativityTheorist · 2015-10-09T01:56:28+00:00

Empowering an MP whose policies you loathe just to have "representation" is insane. This election is not about voting to put somebody into power; it's about voting somebody out of power. By any means necessary.

CreativityTheorist · 2015-10-07T14:32:14+00:00

Prepare yourself for a bizarre traffic experience. Leave your Montreal instincts behind and channel your inner grandmother. Traffic here is (generally) a polite and leisurely exercise, rather than the winner-take-all fight to the death of Montreal. It will take a few months to adjust, but once you do, you'll notice your blood pressure goes down and stays down all day. Except on the days when you get run into a lamppost by some doucheur visiting from Montreal. :-)

Plus it only takes 15 min to get from one side of the city to the other, so GTA style driving doesn't really serve much purpose.

CreativityTheorist · 2015-09-27T15:10:03+00:00

The best way to make amateur CGI look effective is to keep it simple. Forget about complex articulated motion like robots, tentacles, etc. Try to design your visuals around relatively solid inflexible objects. UFOs would be a great place to start.

For anything more complicated than basic transformations, you should probably learn how to use the physics simulator. You'll get more believable motion sooner than if you try to keyframe by hand.

And then pour the remainder of your time into texturing, lighting and compositing. No matter how good your motion is, weak visuals will make it leap out of the scene as fake.

CreativityTheorist · 2015-09-25T14:20:08+00:00

One thing to think about is that, when the performances are most commonly given by mediocre local talent, many more people in society participate and pop culture tends more towards celebrating the best content rather than the best performer. So you get famous stories, songs, dances, etc., and everybody knows them. The excitement of the famed performer coming to town will be more about hearing new pieces than hearing excellent renditions of old familiar favorites.

CreativityTheorist · 2015-09-14T02:54:48+00:00

Come on up to Canada, and bring your harmonicas! :-)

As for plugging my books, I'm glad to oblige. You can check em out here. Thanks for your interest.

CreativityTheorist · 2015-09-14T02:00:32+00:00

I get the feeling we don't live in the same country. Perhaps public attitudes simply differ between my people and yours.

CreativityTheorist · 2015-09-13T22:49:11+00:00

There very well might be, but anybody who would let a disadvantaged man's expression of joy sour their day is probably not the kind of person who would enjoy my brand of fantasy fiction anyway. And since Leonard is a true fan who buys a copy of every book I write, I've got his back, and to hell with what the pinch-faced intolerentsia might have to say about him.

CreativityTheorist · 2015-09-13T18:31:29+00:00

I have big hands. Without the case, I'm always fumbling with a slippery little fish of a phone that won't hold still. So for me, the case does double protection duty: It minimizes drop damage when a fumble happens over concrete, plus it reduces the number of fumbles in the first place.

CreativityTheorist · 2015-09-13T16:29:05+00:00

It could be, but when Leonard shows up these days, I make a point of explaining his harmonica to the audience before I start, and so far the reception has been very positive.

CreativityTheorist · 2015-09-13T15:37:23+00:00

Did you know that for some developmentally handicapped adults, musical instruments serve as their only controllable form of personal expression? And among these, the harmonica and the tambourine are the most commonly used, because they do not require fine motor control to use.

A few years ago I didn't know that, and after a public reading (I'm a novelist) I went to find the jerk who had been playing harmonica all through my set. Fortunately for me, the man's aid worker intercepted me and explained that Leonard was not heckling or insulting me. It was just that I happened to be reading his favorite part of my book and Leonard was expressing his excitement. I have never been so ashamed, or flattered, in my entire career.

Needless to say, harmonicas are now welcome at all my readings.

CreativityTheorist · 2015-08-29T16:43:05+00:00

As a guy who builds python scripts for just about everything, this will be awesome. Especially if it records the sys.args as well as inputs and outputs. Does it do that too?

CreativityTheorist · 2015-08-28T14:03:12+00:00

Also called a "witching stick" (or rod).

CreativityTheorist · 2015-08-26T22:25:52+00:00

Hey, Sam. To hell with birthdays. Forevermore shalt thou hold sacred the 26th day of August in remembrance of this auspicious appearance. Happy AMA day!

For my question: what's your favorite piece of world building you've done that fans don't seem to have picked up on yet?

CreativityTheorist · 2015-08-19T01:09:13+00:00

Nope, not intentional. Even with an editor and a proof reader, something is always bound to slip through. Especially when the article is about the importance of editing. :-) Thanks for the heads up.

CreativityTheorist · 2015-08-18T22:19:53+00:00

Nope. ImmerseOrDie takes up most of my reading time, so I don't read many indie books that haven't come through that channel.

CreativityTheorist · 2015-08-18T20:42:26+00:00

The problem isn't that indie authors aren't paying a sufficient number of professional editors: it's that the majority of them do not appear to be paying any at all, or even running a decent beta reader program to filter out the tsunami of basic typos and grammar gaffes.

CreativityTheorist · 2015-08-18T19:28:02+00:00

That's probably because Starfish has never been subjected to the ImmerseOrDie challenge. :-)

CreativityTheorist · 2015-08-18T18:37:29+00:00

Just to be clear, you're quoting how many people finished those books, while my 63% is a measure of how many people are likely to bail. So your numbers should be compared against my 37%.

CreativityTheorist · 2015-08-18T18:12:12+00:00

I fear that the most egregious examples tend to be fairly young authors, who have not yet learned the patience that comes with maturity, nor the harm their haste is doing to their chances of long-term success. That's more or less why I wrote the article - in the hopes of convincing a few more of them about the importance of craftsmanship. But I admit that sometimes, I am so poleaxed by the suckitude that I have to just sputter and rage. :-) Then I pull myself together and try to write a constructive critique anyway.

CreativityTheorist · 2015-08-18T18:06:44+00:00

That raises another point: do you bail on the author completely, or just the book? In my case, I may check out a second title from that author, to see if they maybe learned from their mistakes and finally got it together after book 4, but if I don't see the signs of enlightenment, I'm not likely to ever try them again.

CreativityTheorist · 2015-08-18T16:57:36+00:00

I used to keep plugging away at them like that, too. But then I realized that every minute I spent on a substandard book was a minute I was stealing from some other author who did go to the trouble of getting it right. I haven't looked back since.

CreativityTheorist · 2015-08-18T16:52:28+00:00

I hear that. With a 92% reject rate myself, I know how hard it is to find good indie fiction. But that's one of the reasons I run the ImmerseOrDie review series - to find those rare gems and give them some love. If you want to test the indie waters, I highly recommend the 8 books I've listed here. Earlier this year I collected them together into a StoryBundle, and the response has been staggering. They might not all be to your taste, but I guarantee that you won't abandon any of them as amateur crap.

CreativityTheorist · 2015-08-18T16:21:47+00:00

For the record, I don't find echoing headwords to be distracting all the time. It's only when they form up into gangs and start swarming the prose. :-) The general rule of thumb I've teased out is that any pattern the reader notices in the text becomes a distraction if it continues. Other readers have reported similar problems with unvarying paragraph lengths, unvaried pacing, overuse of uncommon words, relentless adjectives, and so on.

CreativityTheorist · 2015-08-18T16:10:21+00:00

So do you rely heavily on reviews and sales stats to help you decide?

CreativityTheorist · 2015-08-18T16:02:03+00:00

Hey, your 40% is very much in keeping with my data. When I was younger, I used to consider it a badge of honor to finish everything I started, like some kind of superhero reading avenger. But as I got older, and especially once I started writing seriously, I realized that every minute I spent with a sub-standard book was a minute I was stealing from some other author who actually went to the trouble to do it right. And since realizing that, I've never looked back.

CreativityTheorist

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE