Flash Extensions

While making these daily movies I've been carefully naming all my library symbols (as always) as well as layer names and good house-keeping stuff like that. But I ran into problems when I decided that I'd combine all these movies into one file and release them on other sites as one big movie.

As you may know, putting two movies together can cause library conflicts. For example, when I make a movie, all my fades to (or from) black are done by tweening the alpha value of a black rectangle. So usually, one of the first library symbols I create when I start a new movie is a black rectangle, saved as a Graphic type and called _black.

Why use an underscore in the name? Cos it always appears at the top of the library.. so it's always accessible. You can do this with any frequently used symbol, so you don't need to go searching for it.

Now when it comes time to combine two movies I'd do this:

1. In movie2.fla, select the entire timeline of frames and layers
2. Go to Edit > Timeline > Copy Frames.
   
3. In movie1.fla, (the one that already contains a whole movie) I paste it all into a new scene using Edit > Timeline > Paste Frames.

OK so one small problem is that I get a warning pop up saying "Library Conflict". Flash has detected a _black symbol in each movie, and is asking me if I want to replace one _black with another _black. No problem, cos they're the same thing anyway, but what if one movie has a symbol named BG that's completely different to another movie's 'BG' symbol? Or 12 completely different movies each containing their own completely unique 'body_1' symbol?

Now we finally get to the point of this article! Today I came across a bunch of Flash Extensions thanks to Bleego's blog article on the subject. He has written an article on an alternate way of staggering tweens and in it, mentions David Wolfe; another of those generous Flash community gurus who provides freebies to hungry, non-coding animators.

At David's extensions page, I discovered 'libAppend', a Flash extension that allows you to add prefixes and/or suffixes to library items. I've installed it now and I have no more library conflicts when combining movies, because I simply select all the library items in movie 1, and rename them all with a prefix of 'movie1_'.

Well that's just one little extension I was really pleased with and just had to tell someone.. but there's a whole bunch of awesome stuff available, not only on David's site (Timing Chart - OMFG!), but a few others as well (links below).

In the past I've been nagging macromedia (and more recently, Adobe) about making the Timeline easier to navigate for those of us who have long scenes or movies.. specifically timeline markers, keyframe navigation and jump-to-frame input fields. My Yuyu movie is one big long 6000 frame scene (necessitated by the limitations of Streaming audio), and while I was animating it, navigating the timeline was a nightmare.

So worth a big fat loud mention is Dave Logan who has created a couple of excellent timeline navigation extensions, among some other lovely little gems. I've installed his SkipAround, KeyframeJumper and LabelJumper extensions and now I really feel like making a huge movie now (all in one scene, of course!)

Dunno if it's even possible, but anyone out there feel like making a 'export all FLAs in a Flash Project as one .swf' extension for me? :D

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Thanks again to Dave Phillips (no relation) for his contributions to the list below. At these sites, there are usually instructions for installing included with each one you download - it's the same process for most extensions and pretty straight-forward stuff.

• Jarrad Hope - the camera guy. I mentioned him in a previous Woodenblog article and you absolutely must get his reanimator.camera
  
• David Wolfe - as mentioned above
  
• Dave Logan - as mentioned above
  
• Animonger - lots of lovely extensions and custom panels for character animators
• Guy Watson - Flash guru himself. His extensions page has 2 or 3 extensions you might find useful.
• CHF's plugin forum - great resource, including learning how to make your own extensions. I've read many posts over there where someone requests and extension and someone else will make it. Gotta love community huh?
  
• Adobe Flash Exchange - some free and some for sale. Even just window-shopping, my jaw drops.
• Extending FlashMX 2004 - Written by community gods Todd Yard and Keith Peters, this book is quoted (by Warren Fuller of Animonger.com) as the bible for anyone learning JSFL (the language with which you create Flash extensions).
  

If you have anymore extensions, or links to, please feel free to comment on this post. However, don't link to every single resource or extension you find.. just the good ones please :)

Simple Lighting Effects

If you've been using Flash for a while then you may have moved on from the 216 Websafe palette of default colours. It's quite easy to mix your own colours, but beginners might asking where to start.

My advice would be to start with one of the default colours.. that is, paint your character or element with a basic palette of the default colours, and then adjust each colour in turn.

I'm going to show you how to mix a tone, or shade of an existing colour. This will help you liven up an image or a scene as you'll see in the example images.

The Brightness Slider: By far the easiest way to mix colours is to use the Brightness slider of the HSB mixer (Hue, Saturation, Brightness). You'll find it in the context menu of the Color Mixer panel (Window > Color Mixer):



You can still mix colours with the RGB sliders (Red Green Blue), but it's much easier to mix tones and shades of an existing colour with the HSB sliders.



So let's say you have a character painted with some of the standard colours. There's nothing stopping you from sticking with those default colours if you're happy with them. It certainly saves a lot of work if you can get something working from the Web 216. But suppose you now want to add lighting effects to this character. You want dark and light versions of all the colours of the character's palette. Here's an example of a character painted with a few of the default colours.. right now, he's fairly cartoony:



So to start by mixing a darker tone for his skin, we select that colour first, then bring the Brightness slider down until we're happy with the tone.



See the preview showing the two colours at the bottom? This is where you should be looking as you slide.. trying to visualise how the tone will look on the character. When you're happy with it, paint in the tone with the brush tool (you might wanna put the Brush mode on 'Paint Inside') and fill it with the paint bucket.





So adding tones to the other colours now.



And finally, add some sparkle with some bright highlights. Instead of mixing darker colours here, use the base colour and move the Brightness slider up.



OK so his hair's a bit greasy, but using only the Brightness slider, there's so much more depth in this image.

Audio in a Flash movie

Audio sends the appeal of any movie through the roof.. provided it's done carefully. You can do a mediocre job of it and still make a crap movie slightly better, but with some experience you'll learn what works and what doesn't, and that good audio will put your work ahead of the rest.

Back when I was earning a regular salary, I had little trouble paying for the sounds I needed at broadcast quality. Partly because I always got good sound effects any time I'd paid for them, and partly because I never wanted to use audio that could have been heard elsewhere (like ripping it off from a game, movie or television).

Paying for sounds is more difficult for me these days, because I don't have the security of a 9-5 job with a regular salary.

So my attempt to secure a sponsor for the sound effects on Animotd fell short today. I've been spending way too much money lately on sound effects and about a week ago I contacted a certain online sound effects website and asked if they'd like to sponsor the remainder of the Animotd movies. That way, they get some advertising and I can finish the movies in style.

They finally replied today to say they weren't interested, so a little disappointed, I've decided to get creative and record as much of my own sound effects as possible from now on. I have a pretty huge library from all the years of buying from that site* though, so I'll be falling back on those now and then too.

*If you're wondering why I haven't named the sound effects site in question, uhm.. it's because I'm hoping they change their mind :)

Ninja Audio: apart from the massive explosion (which I originally bought and used for the 'Sore Tooth' clip), the Ninja clip audio was recorded in its entirety on my Sennheiser e815s microphone here at home. Here's a list of the sounds I recorded for the Ninja clip:

• Various skin taps, pats and brushes
• Paper "wibbling" sound (originally recorded for the News reader clip)
• Torch clicking on/off (my fingernails clicking)
• Lifting the bomb (rattling my Wacom pen)
• Bomb wall-mount (tapping a stone candle-holder on the brick wall next to my desk)
• Bomb activate bleeps (DTMF Signals generated in Audition)
• Door open & slam shut (my office door here behind me)
• Security guy dialogue (my 'old security guy' voice)

So while that's a relatively small movie, I proved to myself that I could have been saving a lot of money all along by recording more of my own sounds. If you're desperate, want to save money or even just want to get creative, I suggest you get hold of a good microphone, a good sound editing program (Audition highly recommended) and you'll save yourself wads of cash while boosting the entertainment value of your movies.

For anyone interested in audio setups, my mic plugs into an EDIROL USB Audio Capture
UA-25. I'll be giving that a massive workout now that I've decided to stop buying (or at least try not to buy) audio anymore.

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Today's Animotd has confused a few people. "I don't get it" is a common one.. but there's not really anything to 'get'. Just like there isn't anything to get with 'Idiot' and 'Green Cat'. Some days I'll start on a movie and seemingly of its own accord, the story will chuck an about-face, going off in a completely different direction than I'd set out to go.

In 'Brisk Walk', his face was to fall off (cos of that violent up-down head action), and then he was going to slip on his own face, like a banana skin. But as I started work on the walk cycle, I just started animating his eyes flopping about. So I created the little office scene at the beginning and it was finished.

As I was testing the movie, my iTunes was on shuffle and an old 80's song came on that I hadn't heard in years. It seemed to fit (even though the walk cycle doesn't quite fit the beat), so I put it in there :D

If you have Flash MX 2004 (or Flash 8), the rough walk cycle can be seen in the FLA here (click image to download):

Frame by frame action

There's a common misconception that Flash is a limited animation tool.. i.e. it's a tool that's limited. Sure, it's perfect for the 'Limited' style of 2D animation, and it does have its limitations, but in my opinion more traditional animators (especially all of those who are now out of work) should be picking up Flash and pouring their frame-by-frame skills into it. When it comes to the frame-by-frame style of 2D animation, Flash is capable of a hell of a lot more than people give it credit for.

For those people new to Flash - and the beginning/aspiring animators amongst us - it's important to understand that it isn't some magical program that animates for you.. however it does have tools that can make the process easier or quicker. Just like a pencil though, it requires commitment and patience to develop skills.

Flash is very well suited to frame by frame animation. If you're a traditional 2D animator and you disagree with me, you're wrong (I smile in your face, cos it's my blog). The reason I say this is purely from personal experience. Anything I did on paper throughout my years at Disney (both character and effects animation), I can do with Flash quicker, cheaper and easier.

The difference between what I was doing at Disney and what I'm doing now is that I'm using a Wacom tablet and drawing directly into the program with Flash's Brush tool. The other big difference is that I now have complete control over the colour-styling, the compositing, the layout, the cleanup and inbetweening, backgrounds.. the entire process.

The huge benefit of having worked in a high-pressure production environment is that it forced us to work fast at high quality. The studio found ways to streamline production, each department created workflow improvements and individuals developed their own personal methods of speeding up. The pressure was a huge pain in the arse, but looking back, I owe a lot of my speed and quality to my colleagues and mentors over the years.

So all that streamlining and high output at top quality has taught me to find quicker ways of doing stuff. Instead of spending 3 weeks on a waterfall, there are ways to create something stunning with just three drawings. This kind of mindset is very well suited to Flash, because when you come across any limitations, you'll find ways to make it work.

So now you're probably saying 'ah well it's alright for you Phillips, ya smarmy bastard.. having worked for an animation studio, you probably find Flash easy'. But to that I say "Pokies". It doesn't matter where you're at with your animation experience or career.. picking up Flash isn't going to be easy. Everyone's first efforts are awkward and to some of us, embarrassing.

Don't be discouraged if your earliest efforts look like shit.. everyone cuts their teeth on bad drawings and bad scenes. These bad bits are essential for improvement, cos each time you do a drawing that makes you vomit, you learn something. This is why looking back on your early work almost invariably makes you cringe.. simply because you've come so far.

I suppose you could say that if you're working toward improvement, you're looking for flaws in your work.. working towards mistakes and learning not to make them.

Staggering Tweens

This article assumes you have a working knowledge of Flash.. basic tweening, working with the timeline, etc.

In traditional animation, a stagger between keys is achieved by moving forward, then backward, then forward then backward, and so on. This is used to show something under strain, like someone lifting a heavy object, or pulling a rope in a tug-of-war. It's usually done on 1's (single frames) to show a vibrating kind of movement.

I've used this lots of times throughout all my Flash movies.. the first time that comes to mind is when Bingbong sees the Faeries dancing. Another one is Bigfoot's mouth as it calls for littleFoot.

Flash 8 has the Custom Ease window which allows you to control the timing of a motion tween (it can't be used on shape tweens). First, looking at a standard motion tween, you can see how it's the same drawing going from low squashed, to high stretched. If you've never used Flash before, this is the basis of Flash as an animation program. You can "slide" objects around the stage, or scale them over time like the swf below:

Note: the above .swf is Flash 8. If you can't see it, you need to update your Flash Player

The above movie is looping, so it appears that he's pulsating.. but basically this is a tween from one scale value to another over 20 frames. So we have a gradual and even movement.

The Custom Ease window in Flash 8 can be accessed by first selecting the tween in the Timeline, and then, in the Property Inspector, click the 'Edit' button. You'll see the following:


Click thumbnail image to see full size

The line represents a linear, constant movement between the two keys. Note the frame numbers at the bottom of the graph.

This gives you excellent control over the timing of your tweens, whether it's a ball rolling to a stop, a firefly tweened along a path, or even a camera pan or zoom. Clicking anywhere on the line creates a point that has tangent handles, with which you can curve the line.

To create a staggered tween on singles, you would first add points (by clicking on the line) at every frame along the line like this:



To remove points, click a point and press the Delete key on your keyboard.

Now to stagger a tween, you need to zig-zag the progress of it. In other words, you want it to go forwards, then backwards, then forwards, then backwards, etc. Do this by dragging the points up and down, so you have something like this:



See the percentages on the left? They represent the progress of the tween, so you're going forward, back, forward, back.. on 1's (single frames).

The staggered tween above is a fairly mechanical one.. you can see it's quite consistent all the way to the end keyframe. You can vary this for effect. For example, the stagger below is very violent:



It might help to think of this like a seismic graph.. The more distance from one point to the next, the more aggressive the movement.

The next image shows a stagger that starts off violent, then gets more gentle towards the end:



You could do the opposite of this, i.e. start gentle and become more jagged towards the end keyframe. Then again, you could do something completely random, like this:



The great thing about all this, is that there's still only two keyframes in the tween! You haven't added file size to the movie, and you haven't drawn any extra poses.. So here's the same .swf you saw earlier, now with a stagger:


Note: the above .swf is Flash 8. If you can't see it, you need to update your Flash Player

This guy's really distressed now.. he's screamin his arse off!

ps. you can download the FLA of the above example here. Custom Easing is available in Flash 8 Professional only, so you won't be able to open this FLA if you're using MX 2004 or earlier.

Flash Movie Clips and DVD

For nested animation cycles, Flash animators have grown used to working with Graphic symbols instead of movieclips. That is, when you create a walk cycle, you'd put it inside a Graphic symbol and tween it across the stage. We don't use movieclips for two reasons:

1. Previewing purposes - because within the authoring environment, when you scrub the root timeline or press Enter to see the playback, any animation nested within movieclips cannot be previewed. So if you have a walk cycle within a movieclip which is tweened across the stage, you'll only see the first frame of the cycle sliding across, unless you test the movie (Ctrl + Enter). That's when you see all the animation working properly.
   
   
   
2. Video Export purposes - because when you export to *.avi, *.mov or even an image sequence, only the first frame of movieclips are exported. So again, you only see the first frame of the movieclip sliding across the stage.
   Actionscript doesn't export to video either, so things like the vCam (see yesterday's article) and actionscripted particle effects won't export.
   

So the reason animators nest their animated cycles within Graphic symbols is because they can be previewed from the authoring environment (by scrubbing the main timeline) and they do export to video formats and image sequences.

Along comes Flash 8 with amazing new Filters (blur, drop shadows, glow, etc) and we all want to use them.. but wait, they only work on movieclips!

That's when we turn to a lovely little program called SWF2Video. It acts as a kind of Flash Player that captures and renders the frames of the movie as they play. This means that anything goes.. actionscript, blurred movieclip animation, vCam.. all can be exported to video formats and image sequences. Which is exactly what you need in order to put your Flash work on a showreel DVD, or to create stuff for broadcast.

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As you may have already seen, today's Animotd #11 is a bit gross.. not for the kids (at least those kids who wanna grow up to be weight-lifters). As usual, download the rough FLA by clicking the image below:

This file is MX 2004, but the finished Animotd is Flash 8

You'll also notice the format of Animotd has changed from a calendar to a countdown of 30 shorts. As I said the other day (see post below), when I've finished this 30, I'll get back to work on Brackenwood.

vCam HUD

How to make a HUD (head-up display) with the vCam.

The vCam is a fantastic time saver, but many people have asked how they can add visible elements within the camera, such as playback controls, a watermark or subtitles. As the vCam moves from one part of the screen to another, your subtitles might be left behind as if they're part of the background. The immediately obvious solution is to tween the subtitles at the exact same speed and distance as the camera. But there's an easier way.

If you haven't already got the vCam, download it now from Sham's original article on the O'Reilly website:
Actionscript for non-coders - A Virtual Camera

OK, suppose you have a scene in which two aliens are discussing which is the best way to destroy the planet below. The vCam moves from one to the other as they engage in a heated discussion. Pretty simple scene if the dialogue is in English, but if it's an alien language we might wanna add subtitles. Here's how (instructions given for Flash 8):

• Open waterfall02.FLA, the file you downloaded (above) and you'll see the following image:
  
  
  
• Open the waterfall02 Library (press F11) and you'll see the vCam. It's a movieclip called camFrame.
• Double click this movieclip and you'll go into Symbol Edit mode, where you can view the guts of the vCam.
• First of all, you'll notice the camera has some simple graphics: a border, centre point, a faded white area and a little colour icon. These graphics don't show up when you compile your .swf. Why?
  
• You'll also notice in the timeline that there's some actionscript on the top layer. Select that frame now and press F9 to open the actions panel.
• Go down to line 19 of the actions and you'll see the following code:
  this._visible = false;
  This line of code makes the graphics within the vCam invisible.
• Change the code so it reads:
  this._visible = true;
  

Now if you test the movie (Ctrl + Enter) you'll see all the graphics of the vCam showing up and moving with the camera.

So this means that in order to add subtitles, watermark, or playback controls that move with the camera automatically, you just need to do replace the default camera graphics.

As you can see in the image below, I've removed all the graphics except the border, and I've added a line of dialogue. I've also adjusted the actionscript inside the camera so that visible=true.




Now when I test the movie, this subtitle moves along with the camera because it's part of the camera.

You will need a separate camera symbol in the library for each subtitle you want.. so right-click the camera movieclip in the Library and choose Duplicate. You can create as many cameras as you like, and rather than manually aligning one to the the other, you can make use of the 'Swap Symbol' function in the Property Inspector.

Here's the FLA for the above example (Flash 8 only, sorry).

btw, please drop your thanks for the vCam to Sham on his blog.

30 days: 30 shorts

After talking about my Animotd project with some people, I've decided to make this a "30 days: 30 shorts" thing. Why 30? I dunno.. my fav number has always been 3 so I was thinking of making it 27 days: 27 shorts.. but nah, that makes it sound like I don't quite have the steam to reach 30.

Anyway, I'll be altering the calendar setup so that it's a 30-block countdown kinda thing. At the end of this 30, I'll get back to work on the next Brackenwood installment. When that's finished, I'll do another 30 days: 30 shorts. Hopefully I can alternate between Brackenwood and shorts until I die or my right arm shrivels up and crumbles away.

Incidentally, for the next 30 I may start taking email suggestions for the shorts. Don't send me your ideas yet, but do write em down. I'll ask for them later :)

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Already getting a lot of positive feedback about releasing the Animotd FLAs, and it's great knowing that people are hungry for more. One or two requests have come in for specific Animotd roughs but unfortunately I saved over the roughs for the earliest October movies, so they're irretrievable.

Once again, I won't be releasing the FLAs for every Animotd, but I'll try to offer some interesting ones, or ones that demonstrate a range of techniques. Today's is the "stinky toe" animation and the FLA can be downloaded by clicking the image below:



Once again, this is a Flash MX 2004 file. The finished movie on the site was created in Flash 8, and uses the blur filter for the green gas and the blurred background.

The FLA contains a lot more drawings, and the finished movie is around 15 sec (I think).. I put a black background in there so I wouldn't have to draw his chair :D

Occasional rough FLAs

Just the past few days I've been thinking about releasing the FLAs for some of these daily movies. The only sticking point is the fear that releasing them would enable content thieves to publish them on their own site.. so I figure that releasing a stripped-down rough version of the FLA (i.e. before I do all the cleaning up, colouring and effects animation) would be best. That way, people can download and learn from them.. and it's better learning from rough work anyway.

When working on simple Flash movies such as these, I usually overwrite the rough FLA as I go, so that there's just one clean file at the end. But for the past two or three movies I've been saving the rough separate so that I can release them here.

I won't be releasing the roughs for every single animotd movie, but when I do, they'll be released on the day that same animotd is released. So, as the 'sneeze' clip was released today, you can download the "sneeze" rough FLA. Just click the image below:



I've saved this one as Flash MX 2004, so you don't need to have the very latest Flash to open the file.

After stripping everything out of it (audio, etc) and leaving just the rough animation, you'll see there's not much to this one.. it's just a few drawings. Hopefully though, as time goes on and these movies get more complex (and they do!), you'll see more drawings, perhaps a rough background or two and maybe some rough effects animation.

If you'd like to work over the file yourself, feel free to clean up the drawings, play with the timing and adjust the frame-rate. Even throw in a completely different character in there if you like.. whatever you do, I'd love to see it, so upload to some webspace and post a link on the Brackenwood Forum.

Nose Hair

'Snake' is an Australian comic strip created in about 1974 by Allan Salisbury (aka SOLS), and when I was ten or so they had me creased up in stitches laughing. No disrespect to SOLS, but most of the jokes fall pretty flat nowadays. Just like dad's worst jokes though, you gotta laugh, then groan.. then laugh at how bad it was. 'Snake' and some of its spin-offs are still going and they appear daily in newspapers across the country.

Anyway I have this memory of one particular strip.. there was a guy at the wishing well. He's bald, except for one single hair coming out the top of his head. He flicks a coin into the well and says "I wish my hair would grow long". Then POOF! that one hair on his head is now really long. But it's still the only one on his head.

I remember just about pissin my pants with the gigglings as a ten year old.

So back when I was running the FX dept at Disney's Sydney animation studio, I told a mate about that particular strip. So he came back with a strip of his own: the bald guy says "I wish I had more hair" and POOF! suddenly he has thick hair all over his body except his head.

We did a few more each and stuck them on the wall. Soon enough, about 5 or 6 of us were doing these comic strips and drawings, all hilarious variations on the "I wish I had more hair" theme. I kept them all (about 30 of them) and I have them here at home, tucked away in a drawer somewhere.

While coming up with ideas for the Animotd, I suddenly remembered one of my own contributions to the "hair" wall, and decided to animate it. It's my favourite animotd so far, you'll find it on October 15 :)

Actionscript cameras

I've been using Jarrad Hope's actionscript camera quite a bit lately, especially for these daily movies. I thought it'd be well worth mentioning here because I highly recommend it to any Flash animators who want to create camera moves (pan and zoom) quickly and easily.

Almost anyone who uses Flash regularly for animation has heard about the actionscript camera (called the vCam) created by Sham Bhangal. It's basically a library symbol with all the actionscript contained within. It acts like a viewfinder.. you tween it around the stage like any other symbol, and when you compile your .swf the camera pans and zooms have been magically created. It really is as simple to use as it sounds. There's no tweening background elements to simulate camera moves.

Sham's Flash vCam is fantastic and it's free, but it lacks rotation functionality which is THE top feature request from users. The original vCam v2.0 announcement came up in Sept 2005, and on the progress of vCam 2.0, Sham posted an update last February.

If you want a virtual Flash camera like, RIGHT NOW and you want your camera to have blur and rotation, I fully endorse Jarrad Hope's reanimator.camera. It was once priced at around USD 15.00, but the 'Buy Now' button has been recently replaced with a 'Donate' button. The camera, and the other things on his page are now free.

The reanimator.camera works identically to Sham's vCam, in that it's a library symbol that you can tween around the stage like a viewfinder. The main differences are the Filters and rotation functionality. It's compatible with Flash 8 only, and on installing the camera (through Flash's extension manager) you'll get a new item in the Flash 8 Commands menu.



When you select this menu item, a new camera appears in the library. You can then drag it out onto the stage and go crazy with it. If you apply any blur to the camera symbol itself, the entire scene will blur. If you have Flash 8, I recommend you download it now and try it out. Drop Jarrad a thanks comment in his feedback form while you're at it!

tops!

Fourth AnimotD is up.. it's one of my favs so far. But this blog is gonna get pretty boring if I only talk about my daily movies, so better start mentioning other stuff. It's just that the daily movies are consuming my thoughts lately.. day and night.

So anyways! In other news, a production company in LA wants to discuss the Brackenwood Feature film. We've even got to the stage where we're talking budget.. but this kinda thing has happened so often over the years that I've learned not to get my hopes up. I'll just keep working steadily on the outline and putting new eps on the net.

Also spoke to Lee Miller today about some more music. If you haven't seen his name before, check the end credits of 'the Yuyu' movie. More importantly, listen to the end credits. If you haven't heard his stuff before, head over to his site and hear some samples.

Speaking of talented English bastards, Sham Bhangal helped me iron out the glitch in my Animotd calendar today. Thought I was going to go insane when I was uploading it all though.. huge exercise in trial and error cos of certain intricacies of directory structure and shite. Well.. ok maybe it's just me who finds it all so intricate. Just grateful it's done now.

urk! slipping

I worked my arse off today.. We had visitors at our house yesterday and I didn't have time to create a whole animotd (animation of the day) episode, so I lost one of my six buffer days. GAH! shite.

I've just finished yesterday's work, and despite being 2am I'm gonna rough out today's work before I go to bed. Hopefully I can finish it in the morning, then do the catch-up episode in the afternoon.

I'm really loving this daily movie thing, and each time I finish another I feel enormously... uhm.. enormous, and can't wait for everyone to see it. Today's was like that.. I finished it and watched it for the first time which is always a buzz.

I'm glad I haven't run out of ideas yet.. I currently have a list of about 15 animotd's on a notepad next to the computer.. and last night as I was falling asleep, I thought of a new one that was funny enough that I laughed myself awake. Dwelt on it a bit so it would still be there in the morning, and had a bit of a giggle in the dark. Now I have it on the list :D

Jeez blogs are weird aren't they? It's like I'm writing cheesy crap in a diary that I know people will read.

Animotd - Daily Movies

Yesterday I posted the first daily movie at Bitey Castle. Today I posted the second. Tomorrow I will post the third.

I have a bunch of daily movies already made.. I could just release them all at once, but then I'd have no safety net. Gotta keep up that daily thing.

Anyways, these movies are something I've always wanted to do. It's quite a personal challenge to commit to a movie each day. For that reason, I've set limits on each movie. It must be less than 10 sec long, and under 200k. Other than that, it's no holds barred.

aylo.. spose it's time.