Yesterday after work, 11pm, I hurried over to Brutopia where Laura, Carolina, and Jessie were, with a bruburger with my name on it. The kitchen closed at 11, but they got there earlier and ordered one for me. I was absolutely drenched in sweat, a film covering my entire face. That was just from heat. The bruburger, some how, wasn't all that satisfying or even exceptionally tasty, which is incredibly disheartening because it is usually such an experience to eat. The pint I had after was disappointing too, as it just kinda filled me and made me gassy.
After Brutopia we headed over to Jessie's new apartment to see it and to hang out a bit. She has a really nice little studio apartment less than a block from school. I literally have to travel farther from my bus stop to get to school than she does from the foot of her building. And she works across the street from her building. Amazing. It was cooler in her place, with the windows open and a fan going, which was nice.
Laura was intrigued by the reflections of the windows and the lights outside and all the mirrors in Jessie's apartment, so she pulled out her camera and started snapping. Jessie then started taking photos of Laura. Carolina and I talked to one another while being photographed like zoo life.
Jessie gave Laura and I little Zhuzhu cell phone charms, to match the plush remote/cell phone holders we have, as well as Laura's wallet. It's now attached to my phone and clinks around when I'm talking on it. It's pretty girly.
Carolina, Laura, and I left to catch the bus but were fairly early as Jessie didn't have any Internet to check the times on. We sat at Timmie's and had some Ice Caps, discussing pay phones mostly.
When we finally got to our place, after convincing Carolina to come over instead of going home, Carolina mentioned that she had to show us this pigeon advertisement. Laura responded by asking if was an ad for pigeons. "Pigeon tips?" This was around 4am, and Carolina was supposed to catch a bus to work at 7, and still intended to go home to get a lunch and change clothes. We spent the next few hours, until 6 something, discussing Pigeon Tips, a mini-show for pigeons, by pigeons, featuring pigeon reporters, giving fashion, travel, mating, safety, clubbing, etc. news and tips to pigeons. Inspired greatly by the old Body Break clips and the Eye on Springfield bits from The Simpsons, we envisioned this preposterous undertaking and what it would entail. I whipped up a splash screen for it in Photoshop, carefully choosing appropriate fonts and colours. After much more brainstorming of reporter names and possible stories to cover, Carolina left so as to make it to work on time, and Laura flopped down on the bed and tried to get to sleep, occasionally looking up to see what I was doing. What I was doing was this:
My first efforts at animating in After Effects, and only my second time using it at all. After I was done I went and flopped onto the bed beside Laura, to slowly fall asleep in the 9am sun.
The music for the animation I actually added after I got up, around 1:40pm. After I got up, and both Laura and I still thought that Pigeon Tips was absolutely brilliant, and not sleep deprivation induced nonsense. Mind, we came up with it at a time I'm usually still up anyway. Anyway, I searched through Creative Commons licensed music banks and found so many great songs before stumbling upon this one, which was perfect. For a while I was fairly certain I wanted to use a different song for every episode, but the song I used was just so good for lining up animation with. Most of the animation was actually already pretty well lined up, but I tweaked it to fit just right. We'll probably still use a different song for every credit roll or something.
This evening I went to the second Montreal Indies Meetup, still without a proper name. There were some new faces, but most were from the last one. An organizer of a yearly event in Boston actually came up to give us some info and to talk about HTML 5 game development. Quite a fancy little group we've got going, with International speakers coming to talk. This one didn't last nearly as long as there were fewer games to demo. After two hours or so the crowd had already dropped by about half. At this point I (and this isn't something that happens very often, so it was kinda weird) wasn't "feeling it" any more, so I decided to go see Jacob who was a few blocks away.
The lucky bastard has air-conditioning in his apartment. We went over to St. Laurent and ordered some burgers from Buns, went two doors down and I got a slice of pizza, then back to our burgers. It was all very delicious. We finished our night by going to Bifteck for a pitcher and some pool. Jacob also thought my Zhuzhu charm was fairly girly.
One of the things that Stephen and Nick (and myself) are hoping to get out of the indies meetups is an organized shared workspace or co-working space. I was telling Jacob about this and an idea I had for the subscription model for being part of it. When I got home I also discussed it with Laura, who told me my prices were naively low. I'll use variables here instead of actual prices, as I really don't know what it would cost. The idea would be to rent out a floor of a warehouse building or something. People could either be permanent members, regular members, or visitors.
Permanent members pay a certain fee (F) for a permanent setup and as a result guaranteed space. The fee is, of course, based on rent (R) and number of interested parties (P), about F = (R/P)/2
Regular members pay about half of the permanent fee (F/2) which simply allows them access whenever they want, as long as there is space available.
Visitors pay a fee (V) each time they visit. The visitor fee would be something like V=F/20
Costs to consider would be rent, Internet connection, cleaning, furnishings, security (if none is included, though I think we'd be looking for that). I was also thinking that there would be a kinda of core of people entrusted with the keys, and at all times at least one of these trustees is there, monitoring entry and whatever. They could work at a desk near the door. Monetary compensation for them would be nice but doubtful.
Having a scan card system would be pretty awesome, but definitely would be a while before it would be a reasonable purchase, let alone warranted.
I'm so glad that most of the projects my friends and I think up have nothing to do with making money. Sure it means we're starving artists, but it also adds a level of sincerity and passion to our work.