From the point of view of a indie game dev from Lappland, Oulu is the only possible move if you don't want to end up in Helsinki. The topic of heading here came about when we did the polar bear pitching thing and were offered this nice apartment to use for development and relaxation.
In a few weeks time we've got more things going businesswise than in the past few months in Tornio. It's so easy to go to a meeting when you don't have to drive 130 kilometers thru the wind and snow, in the dark. In Oulu, a bicycle trip is all we need. Great!
As we've got many friends who are based in Oulu, we have also had the opportunity to talk about the project to a few professionals who work on marketing and graphic design (the areas we need help with because it's more fun to code than do spreadsheets=). There's interesting stuff on the boil as always with a few additions to the hoodownr team in the near future.
As osuuskunta hastur, we felt like we need to make an entry to the Oulu scene and wondered what way should we go. A few weeks ago our graffiti artist Stig (of the hoodownr logo fame) got in touch and told he and his girlfriend Sofia Waara and another Swedish street-art dude Ruskig are coming over to Oulu to paint a bit and he asked me If we could accommodate them and find a wall and a bunch of paints. I said of course and set out to find a way for the street art jam to happen.
After contacting this local culture person/personality, Paavo Heinonen, I was informed that there actually is a street art project in Oulu, they've been negotiating with the city for a few years to get permissions to use public walls for street art. Things had moved on a snails pace tho. Mr Petteri Parhi from the street art group figured that the time to get this thing really flying is now and so we flew!
Petteri cleared permits for the walls and I called a few sponsors (RealDeal & Geezers.fi) that kindly helped us with cans and cans of paint. By thursday everything was ready and it started to snow really heavily after few weeks of no snow. How's this going to work out now?
Luckily, the snowfall stopped by saturday morning and the guys rolled their sleeves up and powered by veggie pizzas, did the basecoat and got sketching. Ubercoolness and underground manouvers were performed and we took turns babysitting the artist's kids. Despite popular belief, street art is fun for the whole family!
The weekend was really great, hard work but so much fun hanging out with our friends, painting and non-painting. There's still over a few hours of footage to edit to get a video out but I'm hoping to finish the jam vid by the weekend. Anywayz, million thanks to Realdeal + Geezers, check their stuff out on the web and buy some shit, you know you need it! =)
Next weekend is a different kind of jam with Pete and Photoshop/Illustrator and digital media that will hopefully grace your screens any day real soon now(tm).
keep reaching up,
Sami
Hastur
 |
| pram-a-lot! used for transporting toddlers not paints! |
 |
| us geezers got the real deal! Paints galore! |
 |
| work in progress shot. Stig and Sofia in action! |
 |
| the logo! |
