Keyframer

Click the image to see this year’s holiday animation. Have a great holiday season everyone!

[ UPDATE: The great peeps at Adobe have my source file and have reproduced the issue. They are actively working on fixing what has been deemed a "bug" (thanks Jen!). ]

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So last night I was working on this year’s animated holiday card and noticed Flash was unbearably sluggish. While inside a graphic symbol, anything I selected caused Flash to hang for 3-5 seconds before becoming active again. Selecting symbol on stage, selecting keyframes in the timeline, anything I touched caused this weird unforeseen hesitation in the program. Each time this happened I thought Flash was crashing and I was about to lose my work. I quickly saved my doc as a copy and deleted unneeded Library items and did a Save & Compact. This brought the file size down but the lagging didn’t go away. I realized at this rate of production, my holiday animation would be just in time for Christmas 2010.

I saved the file down to CS3, launched Flash CS3 and after opening the file in question, I noticed the lag was completely gone. I have successfully narrowed down the issue as a CS4-related problem.

My next step was to return to CS4, copy all the frames of my animation and paste them into a new CS4 file. Same lag issue continued. Next test I created a new CS4 document but this time chose AS2 (instead of an AS3 doc). Problem solved! The lag went away and Flash CS4 was responsive again!

As a beta tester I never noticed this in any of the builds. AS3 files use the Flash player as the stage to provide real time feedback as to how the contents of your document will look when published. I believe there’s a serious refresh bug (memory leak?) going on here that needs to be patched. For now, if I don’t need to use any of the AS3 related features, I will be working with AS2 docs or CS3. Hope this helps anyone else experiencing the same issue.

:p

It’s pretty much official: I will be a speaker at FITC Toronto in April. This will be my first FITC event I hear nothing but great things about it. Let me know if you plan on being there.

Sad news yesterday for many Adobians. I know many Adobe employees personally and professionally and while I know of only 1 individual who has been confirmed as “laid off”, my heart goes out to all the rest who find themselves at home today wondering about the state of our economy. Hurry Obama and get in that office!

A quick little frame-by-frame animation with the help of the Cintiq.

Allow me to put art and animation aside for a moment. There’s a different feeling shared across this country today. It is palpable. It’s inspiring. Last night America came together as one and elected Barack Obama as our next President. I don’t know what to be excited about first. On a fundamental level, i am thrilled to finally have such an articulate and inspiring leader for our country and as impossible as we all thought it would be to have such a leader, it is just as provocative to think that our children will live their lives knowing this is nothing beyond the ordinary - which is how it should have always been. We’re finally here.

-C

Wacom Cintiq 21UX

After years of wanting a Cintiq, today Christmas comes early for me. My Cintiq arrives via UPS and their tracking application says it is on time for delivery. My first experience actually using one was about 5 years ago at a Flash Forward in San Francisco where I sampled one at the Wacom booth. The love was instantaneous and undeniable. So why did I wait all this time to get one? Well price was probably the biggest hurdle since the Cintiq was over $2500 US at that time. It’s not that I felt they weren’t worth it (they are), I simply didn’t have $2500 in loose change in my pocket.
Recently Wacom dropped the price for the Cintiq 21UX to $1999 US which is a great price, and to be honest, the Cintiq is worth every penny even before the price drop, but for me, there was always something more important to put that kind of money towards (mortgage, kids, food, bills, etc). The reason I bought the Cintiq now is because I recently saw an advertisement from a Facebook user for the sale of a used Cintiq for $1400. I answered his ad by calling him directly and asking him about it. After a short conversation I learned that the seller actually knew me from attending one of my conference sessions a year ago and he had bought my book (small world). The transaction was made and the Cintiq arrives today and I’m pretty darn excited about it (thanks Justin!).
I plan on blogging about my entire Cintiq experience in time - especially compared to regular Wacom graphics tablets that I have been using since the dawn of time. Stay tuned.

When HTCIF was released in August of 2007, the companion website was supposed to have a community forum for anyone to post questions and comments about the book. For various reasons the forum was never launched and I’ll admit I dropped the ball with my publisher on this small but important detail. So this is my official apology.
As some of you already know I am currently updating the book every moment I can remain awake, and last week finally addressed the forum issue with my publisher. I suggested we use the Keyframer forum and they agreed. So here is the official link to the HTCIF forum. Incidentally, this is the last week of production and my diet has dwindled down to as much candy as I can steal from my kid’s Halloween stash.

Just playing around with CS4’s Bones tool. This is a basic example I am currently adding to the book using a character design by SUNCHIRP from the keyframer forums

Adobe Flash CS4
On first launch of Flash CS4, you’ll find what I regard as a smart and mature interface. It is amazing to think this is the same program as version 3 when I first discovered it.  There are no major changes to the interface in Flash CS4, it will still look familiar to you if you are coming from previous versions. What changed are several subtle refinements to the overall look and feel. Most notably is the new Properties panel – for the first time ever, it is vertical!

Personally this is a major improvement because I have never been able to find a happy home for the older horizontal Properties panel. I use a high a display resolution as physically possible (1920×1200 minimum) and docking the older Properties panel created a lot of empty panel space. Having it undocked forced me to constantly move it around as I worked. Now with CS4, the vertical Properties panel docks perfectly along with the rest of the panels.

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I get a lot of email on any given day - many asking me valid questions surrounding Flash. Typically I would respond by replying directly with the answer (or point them to the solution if I didn’t know it). Then a friend of mine (thanks Todd) suggested I blog them in a “Q&A” format for the benefit of all. So if you ask me a question, there’s a chance it could end up here

Tomorrow, September 23rd is when Adobe will announce the next incarnation of its Creative Suite 4. Once announced, the NDA will be lifted and those of us who have been working with CS4 products the past 6 months will be able to blog freely about them. So stay tuned for Flash CS4 feature reviews here on keyframer

In my new position as Art & Animation Director for Acclaim, we just launched a brand new game for Facebook called Prize Potato! As a Facebook user I have been quite disappointed with the majority of FB applications simply because all too often there isn’t any actual game-play involved nor are there any prizes. Prize Potato will change all of that and should raise the bar for all future FB applications. If you don’t have a Facebook account, now may be the best time to get one. You can win an iPhone, PSP, Rock Band and maybe even tickets to the Playboy Mansion Pajama Party! These are real prizes

Mike Zummo, Acclaim’s multi-faceted game producer and director interviewed at GDC (Austin, TX) this week by www.freetoplay.biz:

Three months ago I blogged about my wicked cool experience with Dell when they replaced my out of warranty laptop’s LCD display after it developed some annoying lines across it. Well, last week the replacement screen began exhibiting the same behavior, only this time worse. The vertical lines were bountiful and some were even blinking. This was so not good! I went back to Dell’s vertical line site and left a comment about my issue. The following day I received an email from a Dell representative who put me in contact with another Dell representative who shipped me yet another brand new LCD display to replace the replacement. The latest display arrived within 48 hours and the installation was pretty straightforward (I love taking things apart anyway). The most amazing thing is the 2nd display was 2 weeks out of its 90 day warranty, but Dell honored it anyway. I didn’t have to pay a dime, not even shipping.
It seems a small portion of Inspiron owners with this display issue are having a hit or miss experience with Dell. But from my side of the bench it is clear Dell is trying to do the right thing on a virtual grass-roots level by responding to people leaving comments on the site.
Thanks again Dell.