Bug hunting

You've probably noticed I've got a new chat box which I discovered after checking out the blog of a Woodenblog visitor. It's from CBox.ws and so far it's working nicely. It's got a very easy-to-use Admin control panel which include moderation options and spam control. As you can see, it's also fully customisable to the look of your site/page.

I've wanted a chat/shoutbox for a long time but never found one I liked, so this is an experiment that I'm happy with so far.

Crash [of] Course - followup

While trying to track down the bug and hopefully prevent it happening again, I think I've managed to pinpoint the cause, along with steps to reproduce. This is a habit I've developed from being a Flash beta tester over the last couple of years, so the steps below will give the development team something to go on.

OK I notice the crash happens rarely at the start of a day's work but it's reproducible almost 100% when I've been working for a longer period of time. This leads me to believe that the memory taken up by my History panel may be part of the problem.

The crash occurs when I've created a shape tween and I start to move vector points around using the sub-selection tool. Each time, the crash occurs when I then scrub the timeline on the shape tween.

So in summary:

1. A full History panel
2. Shape tween
3. Sub-select tool, moving points
4. Scrub timeline
5. CRAAAAAASH!!

Possible prevention:

• Clear History panel before tweaking the vector points in a shape tween.
  
• Lower the number of Undos in Edit > Preferences > General. The higher this figure, the more memory used.
  
• [Workaround?] Avoid having vector points visible when scrubbing the timeline. To hide vector points, switch to a tool (brush, selection, paint bucket) other than sub-select tool.

Another annoying little occurrence that has become more frequent just lately is a delay of about 1-2 seconds after I press Ctrl+Z (Undo). This probably also has something to do with my maximum undos (currently set to 100).

However, I discovered that the delay is eliminated if my Library is closed! Not just minimised or tucked away.. I mean CLOSED completely). That's kinda understandable I guess, seeing how my Library for any major project contains thousands of symbols. Now I keep my Library closed all the time, only pressing F11 when I need it.

Therefore, it's probable that the contributing factors for the delay are:

• High number of maximum undos (and full History panel)
• Large Library is open.

I can't say whether or not Adobe would see these little grievances as worth, as epic-scale animation projects like these have the minority of Flash users.

OK here y'are! As you can see below, the storyboard is pretty much complete. Just a few layout, timing tweaks and scene juggling to go.


-lollygraph! Now with Audio thingy.

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 same old question..

.. I ask myself the same question on every project these days. "Am I putting too much work into this drawing/effect/scene/movie?"

Usually the answer is something like "yes you are, but a movie is immortal", so I press on. This week I finished one of the monster scenes in Waterlollies. It's a water effect that's on screen for all of 1 second (!) but the pencil mileage was excruciating. I don't want to show the finished effect, but here is the linework from about 12-15 frames (below). Incidentally, linework is about 20% of my water effects, the other 80% is reflections, refraction, highlights, etc.. this particular scene was incredibly time-consuming.


Water linework - click to see larger

It does hurt to work on something for so long, only to miss it if you sneeze or blink. However that's the nature of animation, especially effects. Bad effects animation is always distracting, whereas good effects animation passes by barely noticed (it's never the effects animator's job to upstage the characters, only add substance and realism to their world). All the same, it's certainly encouraging to know there are people out there who pause my movies to look at these tiny details that I've taken the time to include.

The graph!



OK so there's still a bit of work to do on part B, but I've started on part C. Nathan McCree has also begun to work on part B so I'm really looking forward to hearing what he does with it. Did I mention how amazed I am at his work on part A? Can't wait for you to see/hear it :)

Extra, extra!
I added a few extra scenes to part B (hence the little incomplete bit on the graph) and I imagine I'll be tweaking and adding bits to part C as I go. For this reason, the July 22 deadline is looking unlikely. Before you kill me though, just think.. if you kill me it'll never get done! Besides, you can't kill me.. I have a mouth to feed!

Just keep an eye on the blog and hopefully the updates will keep you interested until the movie's release.

and again..

Waterlollies
As promised, here's an updated graph of Waterlollies progress.



almost 2/3 finished. Nathan McCree will start on Part B's music soon and the scripted portion of the movie is being worked on by the best people in the business (in my opinion). I'm warming to the idea of bringing in experts in various fields to help complement my future work.. getting it all done by July 22 is still a bit daunting but even if we're a little late, I've a feeling it'll all be good when it's released.

SCP
So what was the freelance job that kept me off Waterlollies for month?
It's a karaoke-style singalong for kids on the Kelloggs Rice Krispies website. You can see the finished product: click here.







The ad agency is Biggs|Gilmore. Working closely with their team throughout the entire project I created the animation from the ground up, i.e. design, storyboard, animation, effects, to go with the song.







All throughout the project, this was a very satisfying assignment and the people at B|G were a dream to work with :D

And one other..
Another job that I worked on before this that I'm not sure I can show yet, but it was another really enjoyable project for a well-recognised company. When they asked me to work on it they said they'd need something "similar quality to the 30 daily shorts". That got me interested right away cos the 30 days was probably the most fun I've ever had animating.

Anyway, the project came and went and I thoroughly enjoyed it and the people were great to work for. I can't wait to show it here sometime in the future. I'll post here when I have the link.

Until next update, gnight!