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stry-someone-to-remember-you · 3 years

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Plan(ed) to Have Something Ready, By The Ball Drop &/or Tomorrow!!! If Everything Works out...

Hey Everyone,

HAPPY NEW YEARS EVE!!!

Wow, this is the second message without any art added or anything... LOL... Seems odd really to do this without having something up by now... By the way, yes the current avatar pic is related to the comic as you’ll come see soon. It’s and early sketch so some kinks aren’t worked out in the current image. But it was the one I was ready to have when I made this blog so there was at least something...

So as you probably can see by this title, I do plan on having something posted... I just don’t know to what extent. Due to some family drama, and continually piling on work I wasn’t able to get my Christmas Pic out to you guys, which was just a static scene with a few of the characters to get us started here. But... well family got in the way, continually decorating till Christmas day... a lot of things going on, bickering (though we all love each other) it’s just... you know life. I fully expected this as well, which is why I promised something before New Years, but didn’t specify as to what.

I postponed that idea to be released today or tomorrow, after seeing how I was completely unable to get to the work by Christmas Eve. But, by the looks of the progress I made on it and my families continually need of me till we get some things done in this house (that always has something to be done in it... LOL, at least things are coming fairly together). So lets just say, I may not have anything out by tomorrow. But with hopes I want to have something out. So We’ll see. I could release early the character sketches. But I want to keep this blog clean as possible, so I feel releasing the character profiles, cards and blogs together prior to the Prologue, would fit better and keep this page having a cleaner look to it at the start.

Maybe even by midnight tomorrow PST I could have something... But that again depends. I need to clean stuff for the internet/cable guy and I’m seriously allergic to dust... So the next few days I may be in an almost sickly comatose state regardless of the precautions I take. If dust gets kicked into the air at all and isn’t properly vacuumed up, than I’m often sick for days... I feel like all I’ve been doing the whole month is cleaning or working story wise on this comic... Mostly cleaning if you ask me, but at least after Saturday things should be more relaxed and I can have a better work schedule planned out. So yeah, that’s my life...

But DIDNT’ WAN TO LEAVE YOU HANGING with this Negative Nancy Talk ;D ;P ;D lol....

I want to tell you what I have so far:

I have the Christmas Image at least with the basic building blocks to complete it. Like I’ve drawn where I want things, but not detailed anything... So that’s why it may be a day or so... Technically its a Happy Holidays and New Years piece, but with the Christmas Tree in it I have the habit of calling it such...

I may have plans to detail it a bit more then I plan on having the comic, but that also depends on things. I may just leave it in the same style and not fully decked out to make it easier to finish...

~Several Characters for the beginning have their final forms created. These are major characters that will be scene in the prologue. I’m just having to figure out out little things with background characters in some instances.

~The prologue is almost completely written out. I had a change of heart a week ago on some things and had to change it around, which is why the written format for the prologue isn’t complete as it initially was. I just felt some things didn’t fit, so I added and took away some things so it flows better and also works both fanfiction wise for the story, but easily mixes for the Ask AU... I also have at least the beginning portion of the Intro script written, the parts unaffected by the changes. However, parts of the intro will be written out, depending on the questions you ask the characters in this prologue so these portions I’m leaving open on purpose. It’s the plot driven portions I’m mentioning that I’ve changed slightly. ;) I have fun plans for the prologue. Remember this story has a clear direction I’m taking it with plot. But the Ask portion will be a part of it, I have such a fun way of Ask’s being tied into the plot driven story, and it will change depending on the context, person and setting which makes this really fun to plan out.

-With that said, here’s an early heads up, that for Ask Questions, I will allow any sort of asks, but if it has potential to spoil a part of the story, then I won’t answer it. Alongside this, I’ll allow Anon magic to a small degree. I won’t include Asks that like spoil something for a character, or tell the character where someone is, give away what someone else is doing to another character, etc... Unless it may fit the context, but generally I won’t use these types of asks. I will allow Anons to appear occasionally rather then just be unseen voices, as I have fun ways of incorporating Anons into the story that also works with different points in the plot. I will accept things like... say a dog or cat to appear for ex. amount of asks. I already know who they’ll be and have been planning out their designs, but I may draw the line at other animals (e.g. horses, fish, racoons, squirrels, lizards, etc.) Although, I do really love rabbits, I chose to make it concise to just two animals that if asked could appear. It’s not because I can’t draw them but I don’t want things getting out of hand. Types of anon magic I’m not going to use if put in the Ask portion, are things like giving people certain powers or items that may completely effect the tone or plot of the story, accept maybe if I did a non-canon AU to this au for fun one day. I will go more in depth in the general rules later. In no way is this to discourage anyone from asking such things. I may set reminders at times if I get to much of something. But, in general I’ll do what I can to make this a fun Ask blog all the same.

~The Larger Summary, I promised like a trailer would be in the comic form I have rendered the Script for, and have two slides so far drawn out, just not completed. (for the time I didn’t have around the Holidays compared to normally I actually surprised myself with this)

~The story itself is really coming together, I already have a starting and stopping point (which I had prior to this blog) as it will have several Acts and Arcs, some which have greatly changed and take on new depth since the point I started this blog. The themes and story in general are drawn out pretty well. I don’t have all the chapters I’d want fully written. As I have my plan, but I also want to get the prologue in first, just to see if there’s anything I should change with my concept. It’s just a precaution, something I’ve learned well when taking on something new. So I don’t have things that are written in stone and hard to change if the form I’m hoping to take doesn’t work out and needs to be retooled or something. But these are minor and shouldn’t change the overall scope and plot I’m taking this story on either.

~I’ve created several of the character bios, many in fact are already written in true Henry Stickmin fashion. But as I took inspiration to make this into a AU as well, I will possibly make both the bio cards and show a static shot of the characters alongside it or something... It’s an idea, but I want this to also be the easier comic. But, considering that I’ll always have a static shot I use as reference for any character I make, this is what makes this more realistic to occur as well. ~I’ve nearly drawn out all the characters for the intro portion. And already know how I’ll handle Anon’s in the story. In the Prologue itself, I’ll actually have you Anon’s being referenced as audience members in a conference of sorts. Think of it like those conferences when a new Apple or Microsoft product is first advertised as something new to the news conference, those big rotunda’s where someone's being interviewed and presenting the hot new item. Think of the opening to the prologue being something like this scenario. So the questions directed at the character in there, who... *cough* I will introduce later after I fully render both their character profile and have their character bio(s) fully done. Which considering how fun and easy it’s been to do this so far shouldn’t be to long now... Although to keep from getting questions to soon on them, I may hold off on posting the Characters and Bio’s till I have that Intro/Trailer completed... I’m still considering which to do first actually. But top on my list out of all of these is having my cover art for the top completed. That’s something I admit though I have the layout I have hardly started on and should focus on first.

~I’m also taking close looks at how to properly make the rules for this group. When I posts either the Character Bios, Holiday Pic, OR the Trailer Comic... Maye even just the cover art... Then I will try to have out an official Rules list. The one I have on the group posts is just general stuff... But I’m reconsidering some rules I already wrote... Basically keep things family friendly, be kind an courteous, nothing vulgar or disturbing.

I may change this from a PG-13 comic to maybe PG-15. I’ve realized recently, there are some points that some characters do swear... sometimes more then once. I’m not someone who talks with vulgarity myself, but I sure can write characters with it.... Let’s just say I’m going to see if in those scenes I might just bleep out words and see if the dialogue still comes through. But, I dunno... LUCKILY, we don’t have to worry about many of those scenes till way further into this comic. So lucky for either of us, this isn’t a major concern at the moment. And on the plus side it’s not the crudest words I could have chosen so... it may still work as a PG-13 work... I’ll make this decision soon as possible.

Another reason for the sudden change, came as I realized as the story goes, and even in early chapters there will be scenes where blood is shown and physical mortal danger and peril is experienced by the characters. I do have heavy theming sometimes, later on it may seem constantly about. As this story is heavily Drama/Mystery and some suspense based. As the story progresses it will become less Drama/Mystery and more based around the drama/suspense itself. This will obviously be some more intense scenes that showing less blood would allow me to make PG-13, however I also don’t want to undercut the certain tones using representations of a mortal wound would bring. I also want to look at things like these future scenes realistically. Which is why I’m mostly considering changing this story to a PG-15 or at least more certain I am. I just don’t want people shocked that I’m doing this. I don’t feel this story will be R, there was a time where I heavily considered it. But for once I decided no, I didn’t want that. I just didn’t want to open the door for scenes I didn’t intend to have in this story. There will be heavy themes that my have TW for some people. But I didn’t want some TW’s that having a R rated story could potentially have. I mean certain themes people are free to write fanfictions for, and depending on the content can make art for. But again this will be family friendly group... As You can see I’m considering more then a little here when it comes to the official rules. These details will be followed up on the official rules post.

~~~~~~

Now I apologize for the length.

The structure of this and the previous Authors Notes will probably fall under their own category for length. I’ll work to make sure posts in the future won’t be so long and hard to read. It is early morning for me when I woke to write this, and I found once much of the day passed that I still wanted to include the stuff I did into this update.

I have more to tell you, but I think this post has spurned the energy in me out. Anything that I missed in this post, I’ll try to remember to update in the next post (hopefully after I get some art on here). What I can’t do at the moment is promise dates right now till I’m more certain of schedule to work on this or can promise that my general allergies won’t cause me to delay this at all. But I can confirm that I should have several things coming out this next month, including the comic Prologue I hope. Depending on the traction the comic and fanfic gets, I may try to work on it quickly, or take my time with it. I may do a mix of both as my perfectionist self won’t let me just shoot something out without giving it my all first. I’m shushing that side slightly so this comic will be easier on me then the more detailed one I have planned. All the same, I’m planning to work on this one more at the moment till I can get an idea of my work flow. Sometimes the easiest route of work is better for planning, rather then diving head first into the deep end right away. You don’t learn to swim by jumping head first into the ocean. Piece of advice that it took years for me to learn myself ;). Anyways, I figured since I did promise something hopefully by today or tomorrow, I’d give you a formal update... Also... Well I can’t promise that updates won’t be like this in the future. I’ll try to keep them concise. But as people who know me, well have learned when it comes to personally talking I tend to write or talk out epistle. So... When I give updates, I may have lengthy ones... I’ll try my best to keep this side of me out of updates, if I can help it. Anyways Happy New Years Everyone!!! I hope everyone's Christmas and Holidays were extra special, despite the state of the world!!!

HAPPY NEW YEARS EVE AND DAY!!! Sincerely, <3 (Mod) Sweet Heart Blaze

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ntrending · 6 years

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Our brains can't quit our gadgets—that didn't happen by accident

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/our-brains-cant-quit-our-gadgets-that-didnt-happen-by-accident/

Our brains can't quit our gadgets—that didn't happen by accident

Google and Apple are two of the biggest technology companies in the world. They’ve made their fortunes—and gained global dominance in the process—by encouraging us to spend as much time as possible on our smartphones, laptops, and other devices. But in the spring of 2018, both companies announced plans to help users spend less time glued to their screens.

In May, Google announced it would be making over its entire suite of products, with many changes made in the name of moderation. “Great technology should improve life, not distract from it,” Google said in its announcement of a new Digital Wellbeing initiative. The upcoming Android P software update will introduce dashboards that give users daily insight into the amount of time they spend on their phone, including data broken down by specific apps. It will also allow users to set limits on how much time they get in a given app before the screen goes greyscale. YouTube, which is owned by Google, will soon have “custom breathers” that users can schedule at various intervals to remind them just how long they’ve been watching.

Meanwhile, Apple announced the iOS 12 will have a “Screen Time” feature, which provides similar tools. As with Android’s dashboard, iOS users will get more hard data on their usage and habits, as well as the ability to limit app usage, and customize notifications so that they are “deliver[ed] quietly” to the notification center instead of the lock screen.

Both of these initiatives sound great and they very well could help consumers take back their time. But experts in the field of addictive design are quick to note that the very companies offering Screen Time controls and Digital Wellbeing advice are the same companies that have spent decades commercializing our attention and advancing the real and vibrant field of addictive design.

Dramatic pauses

To see the success of addictive design, look no further than your home screen. Each month, more than 330 million people, including the president of the United States, login into Twitter, a social media app built around 280 character “tweets.” If Twitter’s only priority was ease of use, a user’s feed would load automatically. But instead there’s a short delay: The iconic bird logo flutters on a blued-out screen as you wait for the timeline to load. Even when you’ve entered the app, Twitter serves you an older version of your feed—roughly dated to the last time you opened the app—and users have to manually push a “See new Tweets” button or scroll to rise to see the most recent tweets in the semi-chronological feed.

Most people don’t consciously register this short delay. Others who do might blame it on connectivity issues. But user experience (or UX) designers say the delay is actually perfectly designed. For many users, the delay subconsciously creates a sense of anticipation. It’s not dissimilar to a slot machine, which is intentionally designed to run through a series of possible combinations (cherry, 7, bells) before finally delivering the gambler’s results.

This sense of anticipation has well-studied effects on the brain—at least in the context of casinos. Since the 1980s, scientists have known that the neurotransmitter dopamine is a sort of chemical reward for taking action, encouraging us to anticipate rewards. Gambling is known to trigger a release of dopamine as people put money on the table, unsure they’ll be getting it back. Nicotine and heroin are two common artificial sources of dopamine, which is thought to be a major reason why these substances are addictive for many users. Humans also get a surge of the good stuff from less contentious activities, like sex and exercise (there’s a reason they call it “runner’s high”).

Recently, experts have begun to argue that substance-free activities like gaming and social media can also create cycles of reward and dependence. Increasingly it seems everything from the colors of Candy Crush to the confidence boost of a new “like” on Facebook is subtly reshaping our brains.

Infinite content

Numerous other UX tricks serve the same purpose. Instead of automatically loading the newest content, many apps require users pull down to refresh their feeds. Loren Brichter, the former Twitter engineer who created the pull-to-refresh, which operates much like a slot machine lever, says he has come to see the dark side of his invention. “Smartphones are useful tools,” he told The Guardian in October 2017. “But they’re addictive. Pull-to-refresh is addictive. Twitter is addictive. These are not good things.”

Similarly, the creator of the infinite scroll has soured on his own invention, despite creating it with the best intentions. “Infinite scroll… is the ability to keep scrolling and never having your brain to have the chance to catch up with your impulses,” Aza Raskin tells PopSci. “What I thought was good user experience—you know, in the sense that, every time you ask a user to make a decision they don’t care about, you fail as a designer—in reality, it wasted quite literally hundreds of millions of human hours.”

Psychologists, neuroscientists, and others are still working to establish the biological mechanisms behind addictive UX, with research focusing on dopamine and other chemical processes. But the effects of addictive design are already clear.

Adam Atler is a professor of marketing at New York University and the author of Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked. “As to whether [addictive design] can be effective, the data are incontrovertible,” Atler told PopSci in an email. “We spend a huge amount of our time in front of screens, dominated by the time we spend on social media platforms and other social apps.” And even when we’re not actively looking at our devices, vibrations, dings, and lit up screens try to pull us back into this digital world.

The numbers vary widely, but it appears that on average we touch, swipe, or tap our phones more than 2,000 times a day, according to a study from consumer research company dscout. Some 81 percent of Americans admit to looking at their phones during dinner, according to a 2015 survey by Deloitte. We spent approximately 5 hours of every day on our mobile devices in 2016, according to a report from the analytics firm Flurry. And most of us don’t have to think too hard to recall a situation where we’d spent more time on our phone than we’d initially intended.

Variable rewards

One “dark pattern”, as UX designers call these subtle methods of manipulation, is based on a psychological concept called variable rewards. In the mid-20th century, B.F. Skinner, the legendary behavioral psychologist, found that pigeons would press a lever more often if food appeared irregularly, instead of on every push.

In the context of Facebook, variable rewards can mean the difference between your post being a well-liked hit, or an invisible miss. In the context of Twitter, it might mean the difference between a cornucopia of good tweets you’re excited to read and a session where nothing makes you laugh, cry, or retweet. Either way, the unpredictability itself is thrilling, earning it comparisons to slot machines, where players mostly lose but occasionally win.

It’s also unavoidable: Even if you went to LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter just to post your own content, you have to go through the newsfeed, as none of these sites load your profile page directly. This ensures you interact, however marginally, with the content people in your network have created.

Can’t not complete

Another way to play with users is to capitalize on completionist tendencies. While some people are content to leave 20 calls unanswered or 2,000 emails left unopened, data shows that lingering reminders of unfinished business are a good way to keep people interacting with an app or game. Unless you have modified your notification settings, Instagram will send you push notifications if someone in your network has recently joined Instagram, for example. This is rarely useful information, but the push notification is nonetheless sure to draw a user’s attention as it flashes across their smartphone screen. Even if they ignore the push notification, nagging reminders in the form of numbers in small red circles rack up until Instagram is finally opened and the notifications resolved. And, of course, people don’t typically just resolve the notifications and leave. They peek at their feed and like a photo or two.

Farmville, the Facebook-based game that was notoriously boring, capitalized on the same impulses, albeit with a side dish of social pressure. The game entails “neighbors” sending each other gifts or pitching in plowing the field. These actions send notifications to users and keep Farmville players in a “loop of reciprocity,” according to an essay by the game designer A.J. Patrick Liszkiewicz. Even if you were willing to break your social obligations, the notifications kept on coming.

Like so many features, push notifications were developed to do good. Blackberry, once the leader of the smartphone pack, started sending users notifications to their home screens when new emails arrived. Prior to this advancement, people had to manually check their phones for updates. At the time—2003, also known as the dawn of the UX revolution—Blackberry saw this as a net good. Push notifications would, in theory, reduce people’s time on their phones (much like the Screen Time and Digital Wellbeing services being promoted today) and save battery life in the process. Instead, Blackberry and its peers found that notifications pull us back in.

Autoplay all day

Once you’re there—phone in hand, swiping through an app—the cycle starts again. On Instagram, for example, you may get a ping notifying you your friend who hasn’t posted in awhile is suddenly back with a new photo. But on their way to look, users inevitable come across new Instagram stories, the short videos or passing photos that users transmit to their followers for 24 hours.

Stories live at the top of the app and reappears at various intervals throughout the Instagram news feed. Seeing what your friends are up to in near-real-time is a draw on its own, but UX designers have sweetened the deal with a small psychological trick: The circular buttons used to play the stories are highlighted in pink until they are played, when the circle turns white. The next time the app updates, played videos are gone, and ever more pulsating pink stories are waiting to be played.

The stories feature also has an autoplay function. While you might consciously click to watch a video uploaded by your close friend, the stories keep playing, until you’re watching videos by your enemies, distant cousins, and advertisers. Other video platforms, like YouTube and Netflix, work much the same way.

Moving forward

The strategies UX engineers use to keep us engaged may seem appropriate, even positive. After all, we want our social media, games, and other technology to be engaging and these designs help to ensure that’s the case. But increasingly, experts are urging caution. Unlike many other forms of entertainment—movies, for example—smartphones don’t have a finite end point. The credits roll after approximately two hours, but you can swipe, tweet, or play until you die.

Even more concerning, most of these clever UX efforts remain largely invisible to users. As a result, people are unable to make informed decisions about how they want to interact with social media. “Knowledge is a start, as it is with any self-control problem,” Atler wrote via email. “You don’t even try to resist what you don’t recognize as harmful.” But to truly improve our relationship with our most-used devices, Atler, Raskin, and others say the next step will be to put the phone down and devise a plan to replace these engineered impulses with healthier habits we’ve crafted ourselves. Whether that involves Screen Time, Digital Wellbeing, or throwing your phone in a river is up to you.

Written By Eleanor Cummins

#Technology

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viralhottopics · 7 years

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‘I’m like a secret assassin’: Poo Bear on writing for Justin Bieber, Skrillex and Sam Smith

The songwriter aka Jason Boyd has been writing hits for more than 20 years, but his collaboration with Bieber on Where R Now? made him an overnight sensation. It literally changed music, he tells Elle Hunt

You may not have heard of Jason Boyd, better but not widely known as Poo Bear, but youve heard him.

After more than two decades as a songwriter and producer of mostly R&B and pop, his fingerprints are on hits for an array of artists including Usher, Chris Brown, and Lupe Fiasco.

Peaches & Cream by the R&B quartet 112, which spent 25 weeks in the Top 40 in 2001, is one of his. So is Caught Up, Ushers fifth single from Confessions. And Work, one of Kelly Rowlands most successful solo works.

Poo Bear was 14 and still in high school when he co-wrote his first hit, Anywhere, for 112; he is now 38.

He considers his low profile the secret to his longevity; people tire of the same old songwriters and producers. It might not mean that your music isnt great anymore; it might just mean they might just be over it, he says. For me, it was a blessing to stay under the radar so they couldnt really get tired of me … Im like a secret assassin. You dont even know its like, oh, Poo Bear did that.

His star is in fact the highest its ever been, thanks to a boost from a musician whose own could not have fallen much lower. Poo Bear was instrumental in Justin Biebers turnaround from one of the worlds most-loathed celebrities to electronic dance music superstar, co-writing much of his 2015 album, Purpose.

Just weeks after Bieber brought his megatour-stroke-victory lap to Australia, Poo Bear is in Sydney for the world premiere of Afraid of Forever, a documentary about his career, produced by Red Bull.

Softly-spoken and earnest, with the trademark greeting happy birthday (because youre supposed to feel like that every day), he seems a little bemused by the attention.

Poo Bear: Ive watched songwriters, writers, producers, even artists that Ive written hits for come and go. Photograph: Dustin Downing

Ive watched songwriters, writers, producers, even artists that Ive written hits for come and go, he says, speaking to Guardian Australia at the Star casino on Wednesday morning. But to the world, it looked like Justin Bieber was my first success.

When Bieber and Bear were first introduced in Las Vegas in January 2013, they bonded over their shared love of R&B, with Bieber a fan of many of the artists Bear had written for.

Both were raised by single mothers in low-income, religious homes, and both entered the music industry at a young age. As Bieber once put it, they kind of just vibed on a personal level.

Poo Bears parents divorced when he was eight; two weeks later, a tornado destroyed the family home in Connecticut. He and his mother and brother spent nine months homeless before moving to Atlanta, Georgia, for a fresh start made possible by a donation of $4,000 from their church.

Bear signed his first record deal four years later. Bieber was the same age 13 when he was discovered on YouTube by his longtime manager, Scooter Braun.

Braun disapproved of Bear when he first started spending time with Bieber, concerned he was a bad influence at a time when the young singers star was already in a nosedive. (Bear did once characterise his early friendship with Bieber as making bad decisions with a minor smoking weed and getting into trouble.)

[Braun] did try to separate us, and that brought us closer. Over time, I understood it … This was a kid hed been raising since he was 13 if I was in that situation, I probably wouldve been a little overprotective too. (Braun is now Bears manager as well.)

Poo Bear and Bieber eventually collaborated on Journals, an unassuming compilation of mostly R&B singles released at the end of 2013. It was never intended to be a commercial hit, says Bear; Bieber was exercising some creative freedom and taking tentative steps out of child-stardom a transition to which Poo Bear proved crucial.

People always say, I wasnt really feeling Justin, but it wasnt really for them. It was always for kids and little girls. When Journals came out, it opened up the world to this other side of Justin that we never knew existed.

Most Top 40 hits are collaborations between producers, who make the beat, and top-line writers such as Poo Bear, who come up with melodies and lyrics. Photograph: Dustin Downing

At that time, Bieber was almost exclusively known for abandoning his pet monkey to customs officials, spitting on fans from a balcony, and urinating in a restaurants mop bucket.

Theres no time for failure; theres no money for failure, the producer Scott Storch, with whom Poo Bear collaborated closely between 2005 and 2008, says in Afraid of Forever.

Compared to the songwriting-by-committee approach and safer bets such as the Swedish hit-making powerhouse Max Martin Biebers insistence on working with the relatively unknown Poo Bear constituted a risk, and at a time when his future was at stake.

The foundations for Biebers comeback were laid in a whole campaign devised by Scooter Braun, says Bear: The [Comedy Central] roast and everything that was all Scooters idea.

Poo Bear and singer-songwriter Justin Bieber at Poo Bears Grammy Party at Serafina Sunset on February 10, 2017 in West Hollywood, California. Photograph: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images

But public relationships could only do so much: it would take a hit to cement Biebers return, and that pressure was on Poo Bear.

The breakthrough was Where R Now?, imagined by Bear as a piano ballad. Then Skrillex turn it into a movie, he says, almost with awe.

Skrillex and his fellow producer Diplo had heard the demo of the track, and expressed interest in it as a single for their upcoming collaboration as Jack .

In their hands, the wistful ballad became springy and cinematic, with a throbbing beat and a dolphin-cry chorus that was revealed to be Biebers voice, digitally manipulated beyond recognition, in a slick New York Times video about its production.

Its influence is inescapable now; in February 2015, when it was released by Jack with Justin Bieber, it was utterly new. It literally changed music, says Bear. It took a while, but it ended up catching on. It was played, oh my God, so much on the radio.

Where R Now paved the way for What Do You Mean?, the lead single off Purpose and co-written by Bieber, Poo Bear and just one other. It was an immediate hit the first number-one of Biebers half-decade career and introduced to the charts the Caribbean-influenced tropical house sound now so ubiquitous, even Ed Sheeran has dabbled in it. (Its like, out of all the people, I would have thought you would be somebody to do something different, says Bear, slightly accusatorially.)

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Two more number-one singles followed, while Purpose itself debuted at number-one on the US Billboard 200 album chart. It topped album charts in 11 other countries, and was nominated for album of the year at the 2017 Grammys.

Bieber was back.

It was done, says Bear. Nobody could take it away from him. I dont know about the rest of the world, but America loves redemption. They love giving people second chances.

With the momentum behind Bieber came unprecedented attention for Poo Bear, who gave the first extensive interview of his career to the New York Times in October 2015; at the time, he didnt even have a Wikipedia page.

At the same time, he is under no illusions that he is now a celebrity.

I like going out and having very few people coming up to me because they read the credits and they know, he says. I see my friends who have superstar lifestyles, and its great to have hundreds of millions of dollars, but at the same time, its a sacrifice of your own sanity.

He has, however, quadrupled his pre-Purpose fee in a bid to retain some exclusivity in the face of increased demand. Now he is working with Skrillex and UK singer-songwriter Sam Smith on projects that, he hopes, will throw out the sound he pioneered 18 months ago and which has been widely aped since. (He makes a conscious effort not to listen to popular music: its not inspiring.)

Finally, Ive reached a place where if Im working with an artist, they allow me to just do whatever I feel, he says. Growing up it was like, we want another Peaches and Cream. Then you realise … why would you want a 2001 Mercedes Benz when Im making 2018 Benzes?