Crash [of] Course
A few nights ago, I lost about 3 hrs work when Flash crashed. I'm using Flash CS3 and I'd never had a problem with it until then. It's the most stable and powerful version of Flash yet so I still highly recommend it. I have a feeling it was a problem with my computer's memory though, as I've begun to get some "not enough memory" messages in certain other programs.
The most frustrating part of any crash is that I'm a compulsive Ctrl+Shift+S guy, and my drive is full of incremental saves from every project I've worked on since 'Bingbong of Brackenwood' (some of you may already know that I no longer have a Flash file for Bingbong.. I lost it in the Great Crash of 2002).
You never crash when you save frequently.. you only crash when you forget to save. Just like you never drop the tin cup, only the most expensive and sentimental china cup.
So anyway, so demoralised after losing 3 hrs work, I went and played WoW for the rest of the night.
Waterlollies Progress
Thanks to those extra scenes in Part B, I'm now well behind the original schedule. But all freelance work is gone, so Waterlollies is now full time (midday to 3am).
Part B is finally complete and now for the real hard work, Part C. This final chunk of the movie is the nightmare workload, with some multiple character scenes, more water effects including some underwater scenes and possibly the first glimpse at Brackenwood weather.
Here are some screenshots from Part B:
For Part B I've probably given more sneak-peeks than I'd like to, so you may only see one or two shots from the upcoming Part C.
Thanks for the continued support and the comments posted on recent Waterlollies articles. Reading those pages keeps me going :)
The most frustrating part of any crash is that I'm a compulsive Ctrl+Shift+S guy, and my drive is full of incremental saves from every project I've worked on since 'Bingbong of Brackenwood' (some of you may already know that I no longer have a Flash file for Bingbong.. I lost it in the Great Crash of 2002).
You never crash when you save frequently.. you only crash when you forget to save. Just like you never drop the tin cup, only the most expensive and sentimental china cup.
So anyway, so demoralised after losing 3 hrs work, I went and played WoW for the rest of the night.
Waterlollies Progress
Thanks to those extra scenes in Part B, I'm now well behind the original schedule. But all freelance work is gone, so Waterlollies is now full time (midday to 3am).
Part B is finally complete and now for the real hard work, Part C. This final chunk of the movie is the nightmare workload, with some multiple character scenes, more water effects including some underwater scenes and possibly the first glimpse at Brackenwood weather.
Here are some screenshots from Part B:
For Part B I've probably given more sneak-peeks than I'd like to, so you may only see one or two shots from the upcoming Part C.
Thanks for the continued support and the comments posted on recent Waterlollies articles. Reading those pages keeps me going :)
Labels: crash, CS3, Flash, Waterlollies
35 Comments:
i feel extreme sympathy for said crash, honestly.
but thanks for those screens
Get three of those drinking water bird...ehm thingys. Put one on shift, one on ctrl, and one on "s". Problem solved! No need to thank me Adam =]
Wow, your detail is incredible! I feel sorry about that lost, but who knows, maybe it's for the better of future good? With the effort you put forth, the attention to imagery, and careful thought, waiting will be more than worth it.
Kudos.
cant wait to see it, its looking great!!!
What rly pisses me off is Loss of Vertual Memory. (Damn Windows XP!) But I dont know if you've ever tryed Defragmenting Your hard drive, emptying your Inbox or Resetting Internet Explorer (Delete Browsing History) Clearing Out Unnessery Files, or switching the Internet off every time your not useing it? That always helps me every time I get those enoying "Low on Memory" messages.
But anyway, about Waterlolies... F*CKING HELL! IT LOOKS ... (is there any word(s) beter then amazing, brillant, incredable or outstanding???) They all look so real, I was looking at the way you blured the grass with Bitey in in the background. It looks like propper real, like a photograph! I always pause your work just to luck at the detail you put in, just to look at how it all works, how you do it...
Adam, egnor what I said about you putting too much detail when prowlies was the best... I dont want to stop you from what you do best.
Good luck with the rest of Waterlolies.
-Lawrence Cameron
I'll put it simply:
That is pretty amazing. Nice screenshots. I especially fancy the detail on bitey's furry legs! Waterlollies is going to be awesome man.
It must suck to lose 3hrs of work though. Happened to me a few times, losing stuff with crashes, but THAT must've made you angry. No wonder you played WoW all night after that ! :D
ALEX
You are a legend mate! And what's even better is you're Australian, who would of thought that one of the best flash movie makers of the web would be Australian. Keep up the good work, I know Waterlollies is worth the wait!
Waterlollies looks most glorious, i am proud to share the name Adam with you.
Amazing screenshots Adam! When I think that you can't get any better you always prove I'm wrong)
I wish you good luck, and again - don't think about the deadline, we all can and love to wait =P
And you are right about those godd*mmm crashes, they always happen when you don't press Ctrl+S... that so pissed me off!!! But now I press ctrl+s every minute +)
p.s. - You're the best Flash Animator ever!!!
Oh man, i can't sympathise with the specific event of losing 3 hours of movie work; but i know you're pain from losing work for something you worked so hard on, then just saying 'screw it' and playing a game XP (though, i'm a spider solitaire gamer myself)
those screenshots for Waterlollies look amazing, though. i have a feeling i'm gonna get really thirsy while watching this movie >.>
I came on here all... July 22nd eh?! where is it!! haha, but then i read why.. i nearly failed uni for the same reason so i will forgive you.. good luck ha
Nicola X
The shots all look amazing but the trophy shot has to be the screen with Bitey's foot behind the blurred grass...
Simply beautiful.
I can't even imagine how that's going to look in motion.
You, sir, are a genius.
Good god Adam, those screens are effing unbelievable. How do you get Flash to look so good? You really make the tool perform to its highest capabilities; what a suck about the crash! I'm glad you didn't break a window or anything. Keep up the awesome work. We don't even deserve to see animation this beautiful, we can wait patiently!
All the screenshots lool great, but the second one looks awsome, it is perfect.
Looks really nice
I guess this is the first time ill buy some movie treats for a flash!
It's odd, but... what I like most is Bitey's shadow on the grass. So many animators make that common mistake of having a staight-edged shadow that it's really refreshing to see someone do it right.
WOW! im really excited for WaterLollies. hat sucks about the crach though. The screen shots are AMAZING! the fur on Bitey...is so...fury! it looks so good! if yoy were to come out with a DVD or something, I would definitely buy it. Great job and good luck!
-Brent
Hey BGalloway, Adam's making a full feature lenth Brackenwood movie. Pluss he's making HD Tutorials for DVD.
Sorry about that crash, but I would love to say the screen shots look amazing and I especially love the 3rd one down. Biteys foot.
Thoose crashes happen far more often in flash 7 and 8. Had a huge problem with that, since when you're doing the most and best, and the most effecient work, you always forget to save, wich causes a crash.
Wet my pants again, and i'm dying of longing. Wish that there was like 20 adams, to produce the best quality movies on earth, faster than one adam can.
So well, if you feel a bit stressed, just Fok yourself :P
Would mate you if i lived in sydney.
Getting homosexual on you, too bad for my girlfriend :P.
WORK HARD, DON'T READ THESE COMMENTS!!!
Get stressed and deppresed, and i'll give you that z-o-l-o-f-t.
amazing screenshots
"You never crash when you save frequently.. you only crash when you forget to save"
you're so right :P
Adam, I live in New Jersey in the States and I feel a great loss of your unfortunate crash. I have complete confidence in you that you will keep everything together. In living in a life which I thirst for that "something special", your work has given me hope and belief in greater things. I truly love Brackenwood and all of its entirety. Thank you for your dedication and sharing such a gift known as Brackenwood. Can't wait till Waterlollies premieres! I will try to muster up what I can for donations.
A Very Appricitive Fan,
Michael P. from the States
It is true! Not just because the program wants to fool. The memory gets fucked up and windows finds it best to crash a bit, to not fuck up the rest.
If you save often it wont crash, if you don't you'll just put extra pressure on the ram, and it crashes.
Argh, I know the feeling- I really do. Yesterday my home computer's hard drive broke. Totally. The BIOS didn't even recognize it. I had lots and lots of hours of code on that drive, and now it is forever lost.
However, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger right? I have now created a schedule to make weekly backups on stuff on my work computer.
By the way, even though you're probably cursing like mad over this loss - it could be worse. Your hard drive could crash or your tablet could break.
I'm not saying that this loss wasn't bad or anything, I realize that three hours of work is a lot when you're animating.
So, with that being said I'd just like you to know great I think this movie looks and how awesome you are for making it. As I've told you in previous comments, don't listen to the people that are rushing you - thinking that they are your employer or something. You're doing a great job and all great productions, be it games or movies, get their release date pushed - right? :)
Hope that I didn't step on anyones toes here, got a bit carried away. :)
Cheers from sweden
brackenwood weather :O
Oh no! 3 hours of work lost! Ouch, serious ouch. It's happened to me before, though not so close to the finish line.
Ah well, on a good note, those screen shots are incredible! The close up on bitey's legs are awsome, I love the blurred fore-ground grass. Oh and I agree with esn, it's nice to see a real good shadow.
All the best!
- Sketch
We dont need no education !
Dweee de doot de doot, Dree de doot de doot.
*ahem*
Love your work! Love the detail and love put into each frame. Keep it up Man! Whoo !!
...
Not the most elegant comment I would have liked to put :p
Screenies look great Adam.Congratulations.
I have been having the yuyu desktop wallpaper for ages now. I use it at work and also on my home PC.
It's simply great and gets me in a good mood every day.Looking forward to an update on your work. Maybe will replace the wallpaper with something from the Waterlollies.
Keep it up.
Apok.
Wow I'm really lookin forward. ;)
Hate when that happens, i had a total lost of everything that was in my pc last year, of course i didn't had any backups so i lost a "movie" i was working for the last 4 months :(, and everything else.
Anyway, about that crash and saving.
Long ago you posted something about a program that create macros for any program, QuickMacros.
Then you should add the saving macro to any other macro you use regularly... like the paint bucket, or the brush, you can still save manually, but that way you get an extra safety net.
And about waterlollies, everything is looking amazing, onirically real!!! I know it will be the next best flash movie!
So, much luck to you! and hope this post was of any help!
P.S: My english is not very good, so i hope you can understand what i posted :P
ugh.. sorry to hear about the crash.. don't give up now though when you're so close! :D ..Can't wait to see the finished product!
-evan
Hi Adam.
I don't know nothing about Flash, but there may be an auto-save feature hidden somewhere in the configurations. That would just be logical. This feature exists in Autocad (and other CAD/CAM/CAE softwares), and can be set either on a time base (save every x minutes) or after x percent of the file has been modified. IMO, every advanced softwares should have an autosave feature. If Flash doesn't, then ask for it!
Don't give up and keep up the good work, and take all the time you may need to create your next masterpiece. I enjoy all your work!
JSV
Hey, Adam, I may know how to fix your low memory problem.
Go to Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance Settings > Advanced
There will be a virtual memory box. Click "Change." You will want to make it "Custom Size," and set both boxes to 2-3 times the amount of RAM you have and click "Set".
thanks markham, and thanks everyone else who has offered advice. While trying to pinpoint the cause of the crash, I managed to reproduce the bug several times.
It will be the subject of my next blog article (along with the graph of course!)
Thanks again for the comments and suggestions.. glad you're all liking the screenies :)
hi,actually i dont have much idea about a flash crash but what can i say is i know one good data recovery centre where they care for everything. Click this sites www.hdrconline.com i this will help you in some case. I'm sorry that i dont have answer .
Cheers
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home