Journal entry: Nov 27, 2009.
Day 35. I’m nearing the summit of this huge mountain. The world is watching and failure is not an option. Why did I choose an old friend as my climbing partner? True to his nickname, Ed “Halfs” Boa is barely competent and I find myself doing twice the work just to ensure we both get to the summit alive, sane and on time.
Now and then his talent shines through and I’m reminded of our successful early years together. And yet in the back of my mind, I’m dreading the next time he stuffs up and almost kills us both.
Most of the time Boa coasts along with an agenda completely different to mine. He seems oblivious to how hard I have to work, even though I’m constantly explaining my concerns and providing potential solutions that I hope he deems worthy of implementing. But his responses are few and nothing I suggest seems important to him. He resists change and it appears that he will always prefer the most difficult way of doing things. Occasionally he implements his own ideas from which he thinks I will benefit. Unfortunately he does so without consulting me and seemingly with no thought for how I work. The result is a more difficult climb as I attempt to grasp his new way, before falling back on the older methods that work.
When this expedition is over, I know I’ll be amazed that I managed to survive the ordeal with Halfs at my side. Others will be amazed too. The unfortunate thing is that by choosing to work with him, I’m giving the mountaineering community a false sense of his competence. He’ll share the glory on our return. He’ll be invited to speak at conferences, to teach young climbers. Thousands will want to work with him and many will be happy with his performance but anyone with real experience will wonder why I chose him.
All the same, I’m proud of how my inventiveness is born from his uselessness. I’m always discovering creative new ways to streamline our process or pre-empt disaster. Perhaps each expedition with him is making me a better climber.
At the end of each day though, exhausted from the fight, I can’t help but dream of better. It’s too late to turn back now but next time, unless Halfs changes his ways (can miracles really happen?) perhaps I’ll choose a new climbing partner. I have interviewed others and one in particular has accompanied me on some shorter expeditions. She makes this guy look like an ape.
Is this a huge extended metaphor for Flash vs. Toonboom?
Is this a huge extended metaphor for Brackenwood Blog vs. the Daily Crumb?
maybe its the work of writing the script? who knows. nice read though
the best memories are shared with old friends
ya, something tells me it is about the Flash/Toonboom question. I would say go with Toonboom, my understanding is you don’t want to abandon your flash fan base, but I know I would be fine with you changing mediums. also, have you made any toonboom animations that can be viewed online?
yeah, actually there are. Some of the latest dungeons & dragons shorts, and the cartoon ‘bad drawing’ were done in toonboom.
Whether this is a metaphor for Flash vs. ToonBoom or not, why can’t you use Toonboom and convert the movie into an FLV? It seems to me that you could show the movie both on NewGrounds and Youtube then. Also, doesn’t ToonBoom export to SWF anyway? Am I missing something? I don’t get the issue here.
yes, the issues you are missing:
1. FLV file size is unreasonable for NG, which has a file size limit. There’s no way Waterlollies (10 minutes) in a FLV could be considered a reasonable download. – - – note: I could be wrong, but AFAIK, NG doesn’t do FLV anyway.. you can import video into your FLA and export SWF, but again, file size is the killer.
2. ToonBoom’s best effects are stripped from a SWF, even simple stuff like masks (cutters) highlights and blur are bitmap effects and will not export to a SWF.
3. (not too important, but a bit of a sticking point) – ToonBoom Animate + Pro have no text tool. Titles, credits, etc must be either hand-drawn or imported from another program as images. I wrote a tutorial on how to import text into Animate here:
http://betterflashanimation.com/2009/09/24/text-in-animate/
Ok, thanks for explaining.
There could be another option though, depending on if you think it’s worth it. You could make the movie in ToonBoom and convert it to FLV, then make a preloader container in Flash that streams your FLV from a remote server. That way, you’d only be uploading the SWF to NG, which doesn’t actually include the movie.
The problem with this is obviously the hosting issue. You could solve this by using Amazon.com’s Simple Storage Server (S3). They are very cheap, and we use them for banner campaigns at my work for streaming video.
I’ve done some math, and here’s my conclusions: Your most viewed movie on NG is The YuYu (Awsomeness!), with 3081192 views total. The file size limit on NG is 10 MB. 10MB * 3081192 = 30090 GB. The price for outgoing data transfer at Amazon is $0.100 per GB, and there’s no minimum fee. You only pay for what you use. This means that since 2006, when you uploaded The YuYu, until today, the total sum would be 30090 * 0.100, which is $3009 for four years, if the YuYu were actually 10MB in size. If you think that’s a fair price, then maybe it’s worth the text issues in ToonBoom?
Thanks man, greatly appreciated. Only problem there is that on NG you can’t have a container stream a remote file. As for the cost of hosting, that’s not an issue because the Biteycastle server is dedicated.
Seems to me that NewGrounds should be bending over backwards to accommodate you. You are the unrivaled king of animation in this format, and with the multi-millions of views you’re generating, NG should be hosting whatever you want/nesting all the containers you feel like!
Sometimes our oldest of rock climbers can provide a better “prize” at the end, as you know that you did most of the work. A cold reminder that you still pulled through even though you did most the work.
Other’s who have a common history with boa can also appreciate how you managed to complete the task so vast and so inspiring. Giving young rock climbers as myself hope that Boa could somewhat preform to the at least half the expectation and performance he did for you.
Alas at the end of the day, your new partner will eventually pull through as your hard training and efforts will pay off near the end of “Your greatest climb” and without you realising it. You’ll have to thank boa for the frustration of the earlier climbs.
It’ll be thanks to him you reach the top, and you know you would never of done it without him.
Sentimentality is a trap in which we may mistake fond memories for love. But as a neglected child may nonetheless idolise his father, it is natural that he may eventually seek and find a more worthy mentor elsewhere.
To say I could never have done it without him is to say that he was my only hope, when really, there are others with whom I could share my professional experience and desire to conquer new peaks.
As I wrote, the memories of our successful early years are fond ones, but as I outgrow his way of doing things and he refuses to grow with me, I have no choice but to seek out those whose goals reflect my own.
Alas, if only Ed “Halfs” Boa could live up to the achievements of his big brother Fred “Scat Fee Fet” Boa or to the mass appeal of their father Hot Pops Hoed Boa
indeed. One can only dream
If only someone would convince Ed’s parents to help him. It is hard to change someone after they stay the same for such a long time.
Oh well, Ed “Halfs” Boa can still help beginners grasping the concept of climbing, but there must be a time in a climber’s career that he must go on and find a more competent partner if he wants to climb higher montains. The mountaineering community will respect his will to furter his career and will still never forgot the mountains he climbed with Halfs.
Also, Ed Boa … Halfs … I’m pretty this is just a coincidence that you can unscramble Adobe Flash.
Seriously, I love your work, and I really don’t care the file I see it in. If Toonboom can help you do even better stuff, then I’d gladly watch a FLV.
Correction : pretty sure
In flash’s defense, its not necessarily made for large-scale animation projects. Its more tailored for small scale web applications.
Sure, it’s not made for large-scale animation projects, you’re right. But it IS capable of great things, which is why we use it for animation and fell in love with it in the first place.
The animation community is a significant wedge of the Flash user base and our needs are relatively minor, compared to those of the Flash developer community. A lot of time and money is poured into the app dev side of Flash and while that’s understandable, we would like to see a proportional amount of attention directed to our changes and feature requests. I know for a fact the folks on the Flash team DO care about the animation community and it even frustrates them that the higher-ups don’t see our requests as necessary.
So we’re not at all lamenting what Flash was made for. Only how much better it could be with a few small changes.