No Media Kings Updates

On Escaping the Youth Demographic

2008-07-19T12:55:47Z

I turned 36 earlier this month, which makes it half my life that I've been an anarchist, a vegan, and a DIY culture maker. I was exposed to these philosophies through punk music and zines in my teens, and it's a bit of an aberration that the ideas I encountered in a youth subculture are still relevant to me at this time in my life. But they introduced me to ways of thinking about the world and empowering practises that are still true and useful to me now, and I'm grateful I encountered them.

And so while I don't care about whether I'm old or not, I do care about youth subcultures...

Will Wright References My Trip to Liberty City

2008-06-16T11:20:41Z

Pretty nuts: that goofy Grand Theft Auto 3 video I made five years ago for my zine has been watched by the guy who designed SimCity, the Sims and the upcoming Spore. He actually mentioned it last week in a rather brilliant-sounding videogames-as-art speech.

That video (part of my Pleasure Circuit Overload series of vids about videogames) has gotten a ridonkulous amount of attention for what it is and it seems to keeps bumbling into places it doesn't belong. (CTheory? The New York Times? Whaa...?)

But just so my head doesn't inflate too much -- I didn't win the Shuster award for best comics writing I was nominated for last week. My new pal Cecil Castellucci won it for her excellent P.L.A.I.N. Janes graphic novel about a clique of nerdy girls transforming their town with art-terrorism.

Undeterred, I'm diving into researching and writing a new comics project, Time Management for Anarchists: The Comic. Which is gonna be drawn by Marc Ngui, the genius behind the My Trip avatar skins (pictured below).

It seems random, but everything in my life connects if you have enough time and graph paper to map it out.

Top: Canadian Tourist skin. Middle: Attack Mime skin. Bottom: Street Priest skin. Created by Marc Ngui for My Trip to Liberty City.

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Free Artsy Games Released

2008-05-18T19:32:56Z

The second round of the Artsy Games Incubator went terrific: all five of us ended up with videogames you can download and play: check out Mouse Police, Bungee Fisher, Cupcake Challenge, Albacross, and my own Baby Runs This Mofo.

It's a good excuse to interview one of the founding sponsors of the AGI project, Jon Mak, a Toronto game designer who Newsweek dubbed a "wunderkind". His abstract videogame Everyday Shooter came out for the PS3 and now it's available on the PC -- if you'd like a chance at winning a free copy, leave a comment in response to the MP3 interview I did with him below. In it Jon explains why Guitar Hero is fun despite being a sucky game, that he learns best through failing, how he made ES while working part-time for money thanks to context switch, & how the work gets better the more you take away.

Selling Your Wares: 16 Tabling Tips

2008-04-28T21:14:47Z

Locus is a collaboration between two small independent publishers in Melbourne, aduki independent press and Vignette Press, run by Emily and Lisa. They got together to run market stalls (and now also a blog) because they knew doing it with a friend would be more enjoyable than going it alone. They were kind enough to share their advice on selling indie books and zines.

Doing market stalls probably won�t make you rich or sell a truckload of books. Our best market day ever made about $750, mostly we make a lot less than that. Beer money, really. But even if you don�t sell a lot you�re still spreading the word and marketing your product, which is important in the long run. We learned what kind of markets work for our particular books and what sorts of places just don�t. The only way you can figure this out for yourself is by getting out there and trying different markets. Here's some tips for running a successful market stall.

Read on...

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Who Pulitzer Prize Winners are Reading

2008-04-17T18:58:17Z

Me, it appears.

2008's Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction, Junot D�az, was asked what he was reading for pleasure and he named my and Salgood's graphic novel Therefore Repent! "It's completely nuts," he said, which is pretty close to what the Quill and Quire guy said ("unhinged"). Seems there's a literary consensus on that. When my reader poll came out in favour of Lilith being actually daemonic and not just crazy, I committed to doing something over-the-top fantastical in contrast to my more muted stuff -- nice to hear it's working for people. Junot sounds like my kinda booknerd!

In other flattering news, I've been nominated for the Joe Shuster Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Writer award. Unlike some of the other talent there with a dozen or so comics to their name, I have only TR! and one other strip that appeared in the Beguiling-produced Comic Festival. You can read it on Salgood's site.

Also: Chicago launch of Therefore Repent! next month!

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Hang Out With Game Makers

2008-04-08T11:20:10Z

The last round of the Artsy Games Incubator was really good -- we had a longer run (meeting weekly for six weeks) than the first round, and we all ended up making videogames worth showing. So we're doing an open house at the Mobile Experience Lab at 52 McCaul St. (3rd floor) on Wed. April 23rd at 7pm, where there'll be short presentations of the games we made using accessible tools. It's a great time to find out more about future rounds of the AGI, and we're also inviting people in the indie games community at large to bring their games-in-progress to demo -- and no, you don't have to identify as an artist. Admission: a game-in-progress, or a snack for the snack table. For a taste of what's to come, check out some of the screenshots.

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Strange Grange

2008-04-02T11:51:46Z

For those who�ve attributed my recent silence to Sidney, she�s only part of the cause. I�ve also been doing a gig for OCAD recently � The Mobile Experience Lab was looking to showcase some of the cell phone technologies they�d developed over the past two years in public spaces. I started as a consultant on narrative and then I was kept on to implement the scenarios I�d written. It was a lot of fun working with a bunch of talented folk to figure out how to make these whimsical and odd things happen on John Street. They�re hoping to launch it this summer, funding and situation willing. Below is some documentation we got during the alpha and beta testing.

http://nomediakings.org/writing/strange_grange.html

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How To Get a Book Deal Without an Agent

2008-01-21T23:34:21Z

I published my graphic novel Therefore Repent! in Canada in August, and IDW (who put out 30 Days of Night) just released it in the US last week. I just got a copy of their edition and it looks great: they used a slightly thicker cover stock and a slightly lighter ink, but it's otherwise pretty much identical to the Canadian edition. Even though I'm best known for writing articles on do-it-yourself publishing, I've learnt a lot about publishing with other companies too. So today I'm going to answer one of the questions I get asked the most:

"How did you get a book deal?"

Read on...

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Videogame Ninja Leaps into Real Life

2007-12-18T17:16:54Z

I recently produced a promotional video for some friends of mine who have a game called N+ about to be released. Based on their free Flash game N that they developed independently in 2004, it�s coming out soon on Xbox Live Arcade as well as the PSP and Nintendo DS. It�s a great game, and it was a good opportunity to work with Craig Macnaughton (my co-producer for Infest Wisely) again � he did an amazing job pulling together what was a complex shoot with effects and stunts. Click through to check out the 3 minute vid.

http://nomediakings.org/vidz/videogame_ninja_leaps_into_real_life.html

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Signs of the Apocalypse

2007-11-22T16:01:55Z

Both critical raves and good sales? Eerie. Therefore Repent! got a starred review in last month's issue of Quill & Quire, made the Best of 2007 list in this month's issue, and actually squeaked into the bestseller list for Canadian graphic novels last week. Salgood Sam has booked the Montreal TR! launch at the newly opened Librairie Drawn & Quarterly Bookstore (211 Bernard Ouest) on Saturday, December 8, 7-9pm. As I've been in the baby zone, he's been taking point lately with an audio ad and tabling at Expozine. All this and it hasn't even come out in the US yet! It's due to hit the stores down south in January via Diamond (# NOV073660) and the US publisher IDW has printed up a great looking 30 page sampler to promote it: drop a line if you want some for your store or your pals.

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Make Games Now

2007-10-10T16:16:54Z

A lot of artists I know have great ideas for videogames, but no programming skills. A lot of videogame makers I know wish there was more creativity and innovation happening in the field, but don�t know how best to foster it. I started the Artsy Games Incubator to try to address both issues.

We just had our first prototype set of sessions, with four of us meeting once a week for four weeks, and I kept notes. Using point-and-click game creation tools we made games and game elements for the sessions and invited feedback and discussion from the other members. It�s based on the writer�s-circle model that I�ve also used for movie making, but I wasn�t sure it�d work for games � but when the other members were playing and talking about my game Space Invader I was getting feedback as useful as I did with those other groups.

There�s going to be another iteration, so whether you�re a Toronto artist looking to get into the next group in January or an interested party who would like to get involved in some other way (Metanet and Queasy sponsorship are what made starting this possible), read more about it here:

http://nomediakings.org/artsygames/

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