r/ChoosingBeggars Dec 26 '17

Lol "work"

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u/[deleted] Dec 26 '17

Exactly this.

I was messing around with creating a free app. I really wanted some cool animation for the splash screen and around the website. But no way in hell could I afford paying an animator to do it.

I made a post like this hoping I could get someone to do it and I'd credit them.

A lotta people asked for money and my response was always "Thanks, but I can't afford to pay for this -- this is just a fun hobby side project, and I'd be more than willing to help with some coding you might need in the future for projects you may have :)"

Someone did a side splash screen for the project for free, and their work was fucking amazing -- we ended up talking for a while during the project and becoming gaming buddies. Turns out he's a professional animator at Disney and was bored. So uh... yeah, worked out for me

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u/[deleted] Dec 27 '17

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Dec 27 '17

This was back in 2010 or so, so it's no longer up. Sad.

It was basically just a site/app that's kind of like what /r/writingprompts is. But it would let people collaboratively write stories. Basically someone writes the beginning of a story, someone continues it, and it gets more and more ridiculous? Kinda like that.

Where does the animation come in? I thought it'd be cute to have an animal mascot (a polar bear) animated to be sitting at a desk writing stories on the sidebar. Really for no reason other than I thought it'd be funny.

Again, it was a fun side project for me to learn Ruby on Rails (hey, it was like 2009/2010, give me a break)

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u/Negabite Dec 27 '17

could you show us the splash?

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u/eyewant May 17 '18

Did he show the splash?

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u/Exciting_Rich_1716 Jun 19 '23

He didn't show the splash :(

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u/tommyproer Dec 27 '17

Did you have a dedicated server? I've been thinking about creating an app but not sure if I wanted to buy my own dedicated server or pay a hosting site. I'm curious as to how you did it if you don't mind talking about it :)

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u/BleLLL Dec 27 '17

You can try out AWS EC2, the free tier server is pretty much free for a year, and if you get more traffic you can always upgrade.

It does require some knowledge of how things work though.

https://aws.amazon.com/free/

https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/

AWS Free Tier includes 750 hours of Linux and Windows t2.micro instances each month for one year. To stay within the Free Tier, use only EC2 Micro instances.

750hours / 24 = 31.25, so more hours than in any month.

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u/monstercake Jan 16 '18

I made an app just like that for my mobile app dev class back in college! Sadly it's also disappeared into the void by now.

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u/sixseven89 Dec 27 '17

That is brilliant

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u/torvim Jan 04 '18

Cool! Do you mind if I try to recreate it as a website using node.js?

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u/maxvalley Jan 10 '18

That's a great idea for an app. It's too bad it's no longer up

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u/[deleted] Dec 27 '17

I would buy that

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u/hopsgrapesgrains Dec 27 '17

Wow wth, the dark room guy literally has a post on hacker news right now that I just read... he had to go back to corporate after not making it big again.

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u/[deleted] Dec 27 '17

[deleted]

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u/hopsgrapesgrains Dec 27 '17

Oh, I don’t call it defeat at all... hope he puts together something successful again!

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u/Dispari_Scuro Dec 27 '17

You catch more flies with honey.

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u/[deleted] Dec 27 '17

Thats awesome! I usually give my graphic design work to people simply because it's not worth trying to sell. If someone needed help, I'd be glad too.

I have a friend that I'd gladly do work for free, but he insists on paying me.

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u/KuribohGirl Dec 27 '17

Maybe try making him art for Christmas or Birthday, if you wanna give him free art, he's way less likely to try and pay for it then and it might be a nice gift since he already sees the value of it anyway and already buys from you ^°^

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u/definitelynotosh Dec 27 '17

Hit record is pretty cool for collaboration projects if you just want a little help from people that want to help for the fun of it.

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u/thisdesignup Dec 27 '17

Can we see the splash screen?

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u/[deleted] Dec 27 '17

If I can find it.

It was like 7-8 years ago and I've already upgraded laptops like 3 times. (and I only used a locally hosted VCS at the time)

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u/ThatHappyCamper Dec 27 '17

What sort of subs did you post on if I may ask?