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Speaking of the most Canadian thing you've ever seen...

Moose are one of the few animals I've ever been in the presence of that legitimately feel prehistoric; in that everything back then was just a little bit too big and a little too strong and was just that much deadlier than their descendants. Moose are just pure muscle and fuck-you-up-itude.

I love them so much.

From a very very safe distance.

Oh yeah, the video was just so this technically qualified to post in the Cool Videos thread since I couldn't be bothered to find the photos thread

The snow plow one is my go-to for anyone that's like "A moose is just like a big deer right? Big woop."

But watching a Moose just run through a couple feet of water like it's nothing is also a new solid contender.

TIL Jimmy is basically the man in Panama Hat.

I doubt it, they've got a lot of early concept stuff in here that's like ISS 2.0 in style, and then slowly they added in more and more of the skyscraper look. So I reckon it's probably just a side effect of them wanting to keep the skyscraper feel, but also incorporate the random module's sprouting off the sides ala the ISS, but then also keep it symmetrical. (Also, in universe Talos I started as an ISS-esque station that was then built on and added to by it's various owners over time).

But yeah, now that you mention it, there is a distinct Serenity-ness to the silhouette. Missing the engines tho.

Pretty much par for the course for Serenity then.

I have a huge love for "Art of..." books, but A) They're bloody expensive and B) I've been crazy fucking broke so I haven't been able to indulge. (I think the last one I got was the art of Weta Workshop for a birthday or Christmas like 3 years ago... (Which, it's a nice double book set, but it's almost all finished coostume and prop pieces, which sort of defeats the purpose for me.)

So anyways, got a bunch of Chapters gift cards this year and said fuck it I'm gettin me some Art books. The 2nd one was only available online so I have to wait a couple weeks for it to be delivered but in the meantime I managed to pick up...

This book is STUNNING. Not just in terms of the actual art and the printing, but in terms of being as much a 'making of...' as it is an art book without getting in the way of the art is FANTASTIC. Pretty much every page has a one or two sentence blurb talking about the thought process behind the development of this set or prop or character, what inspiration they were pulling from, why they designed it the way they did from a game mechanic pov, what emotions they wanted to invoke in the player, or how they approached the development of the universe, that are all deeply informative and transparent in a way you rarely see. And then on top of it all every page is filled with just, goddamn, gorgeous concept art and development pieces; I don't think I've seen a single still from the actual game in here at all; and they do a lot of progress comparisons showing the iterations and how things changed over time as they found the tone of the universe that are always interesting.

I mean, I was probably going to love this book regardless, what with my well known love of Art Deco and Sci-Fi, and specifically slamming Deco and Sci-Fi together in a particle accelerator and rolling around in what comes out the other end, BUT, this book is thus far surpassing all my expectations. The universe as seen in the game is fascinating and the universe as presented in the book with all the stuff we didn't get to see is even moreso, and the sheer amount of absolutely stunning design work that went into every single aspect of what did and didn't get put into the game blows my mind. 10/10 Would recommend.

Now the long laborious wait for the other book to come in, which is one I've been wanting for a very very long time now. UUUGGGGHHH.

EDIT: One of my favorite pages I've found so far. Just such an amazing little nugget of design theory, with references and everything.

Nothing like firing two fire extinguishers directly into your audience in the name of science.

Going back to the youtube algorithm conversation for a sec. Achievement Hunter just did a 5-10 minute segment on their podcast going into why they're making the choices they're making to appease the algorithm and being WAY more open about the business of it than most creators ever would. So if that's something that interests you or you're curious to get a peak behind that particular curtain, it's worth a watch.

Starts around 58:40.

Ugh. My hometown went from zero roundabouts to like, IDK even know, I think there's like 6 of the fuckers in town now, in like 3 years. For some reason the city planning office just got a massive hard-on for roundabouts a few years ago and there's been some massive construction work being done around the city for the past couple years, so they've just been shoving them everywhere they can. One of them (the largest, of course) is a 3 lane roundabout IMMEDIATELY after the off ramp from the highway, immediately turns off into another roundabout on one of the exits, and is a major thorough fair for 3 different industrial areas. And HOLY SHIT does everyone hate them.

It doesn't help that, as per standard Red Deer construction procedure, the intersections are done exactly enough to be functional and then basically abandoned. No signs, no crosswalk markings, no directions, nada. In a city that has had exactly one roundabout, in it's hundred and some year history, for all of like a decade or something. Oh yeah, it's going about as well as you'd imagine.

To be fair, it's only slightly worse than the little shitstain nothing of a town out in the middle of nowhere that decided to replace every single intersection on it's main drag with one lane roundabouts. Literally all they did is take their 4 way stops add a barely visible, barely raised, circle in the middle of it and called it a roundabout. So you have this 3 block long strip with 8 different roundabouts one after the other for absolutely no reason, it'd be hilarious if it wasn't so flipping annoying.

The billionaire/old system thing is still very much alive, I /still/ have filmmaker friends that desperately feel the need to move to LA to make it big as a director.... and I'm like, dude's no.... the opposite of that, other way guys. But eh, what are you gonna do.

I think there's still a pretty big divide between the "filmmakers" I know and the "content creators" I know, the filmmakers still think of everything in terms of government grants and corporate funding, where as that just /doesn't/ exist for online creators, even ones working in narrative formats, and the most filmmakers will stoop to like, Kickstarter in terms of public funding, but there's still this weird, uppityness about "Filmmakers vs Content Creators" from the "Filmmakers" I know that's just bullshit, and becoming more bullshit every year.

So anyways, a lot of online creators are adopting the Patron system because it's their only option right now. Youtube CLEARLY gives zero shits about creators so relying on them is tantamount to suicide, but the only other option, really, is do what Roosterteeth did and diversify your revenue streams 10 years ago so you have a solid base now, or Patreon.

It definitely works for some, but again, that just adds a whole other thing where now you have to convince people to give you money directly, and you have to have to good enough perk rewards to make it worth it for the 99% of people that aren't going to be convinced to give you money just out of their charitable willingness to support an artist. And Patreon is basically useless for finding new audience, so you're still relying on the algorithm to get new audience to hopefully funnel the 2% of them or whatever the latest stat is, to Patreon.

As for the actual question.... I think the online creator community in general is getting more on board with the Patron model, Youtube just launched a Twitch subscription like service so you can subscribe to channels you want to support for like 5 bucks a month. But even then the people relying on that are mid level creators, the guys that are already big have sponsorships out the wazoo and diversified income from merch and other platforms, so they're fine; and the really little guys don't have a big enough audience to actually make enough from Patrons to even remotely support themselves, so it's just the people that have a large enough audience to drive that 2% to Patreon and that's enough to make it a part-time or full-time job, what have you, and even then, by the time you reach that level, you've probably started off-setting that with sponsorships anyways.

AND, the really fun part is that a lot of these creators are solo creators still trying to do what they want to do and make what they want to make, while still balancing the algorithm and the perks and the and the and the and the.... so for the most part (Unless they're just the shitty money hungry fame whore creators*) it's still this crazy blend of independent actual artists visions caught up in this clusterfuck of trying to survive.

*I have a theory these people are still what the majority of people think of when they hear Youtuber. Which is a shame.

Youtubes actually a really bizarre example, because while the old school systems were just trying to optimize for what got people in the door, full stop. Youtubers have this whole other layer now, where they have to optimize for the algorithm. They're trying to figure out what is the best way to stay in the light of the algorithm, and sure part of that is just getting eyes on content, but it's also getting people to interact in comments, motivating people enough to actually subscribe, getting people to hit the bell so they can be notified when a video goes live because maybe sometimes it's hard to know if youtube is actually sending out the notifications to subscription boxes, and mostly producing enough content at a fast enough rate that the algorithm doesn't forget about them but still producing high enough quality that they don't lose the audience.

It's like the entire phenomenon of film and music Teague was talking about, condensed into this little hyperspeed simulation bubble. Either you figure out what works and keep riding that wave until you burn out, or you fall off your board and tread water with whatever audience you managed to build up, and that can all happen in like, a year. It's crazy.

EDIT:

And oh yeah... about the actual thing. I've had pretty much the same opinion that the studio-system-movie was a dying breed for a while now, at the rate budgets keep increasing and the increasing rise of streaming platforms and people looking elsewhere for content (Youtube), it's only a matter of time until it can't sustain itself, and either the system falls back to the more-lower-budget-projects or the entire thing collapses under it's own weight and Netflix swoops in to pick up the power vacuum.

I've pretty much just stopped caring about almost everything coming out of the big studios, partly cause I just don't have the time or the money to bother, and partly because there are so many more interesting things happening in smaller indie levels (Youtube, podcasts, web series stuff). And honestly, my life has gotten so much better since I did. Let them fall, there's more than enough other stuff out there, something else will fill the pop culture void, just like something else was there before, and just like something else will be there in 50 years.

EPISODE 15!