No Rest for the Wicked. Ten Days left until my personal deadline.

Got the scene done that I'm using as the 46x46 icon, so that was pleasing.

I was so dead-tired (only got four hours of sleep), I just knocked out simple stuff, like quick stills and tweens.

When I get back from helping my friends move, I'll crash for the night if I don't have any energy left to knock another dent in ZOA. As for right now, I'm going to watch Tropic Thunder with a friend who hasn't seen it yet before I gotta take it back to Blockbuster.

Also, Tits.

I'm beginning to feverishly worry that I won't reach my deadline before Christmas.

My backup deadline is before 2009...I really, really don't want my Flash test to be my only '08 submission.

But the only reason that it's taking this long is because I'm not rushing it. I'm being meticulous enough that it won't be utter shit.

...but it's looking like I'm getting too meticulous...I'm sure when I become experienced, I'll be able to shit one of these out in half the time I've spent, but I know too little.

I switch it up when I get fed up with the frame-by-frame bullshit by doing the complex still's like below.

At least I still have a little over a week...I might have a trick up my sleeve to cut corners without dicing up the quality of the flash.

...We'll see...

Film at Eleven.

Gruuuuuuuhhhhhhh.....

Frame by frame is such a pain in me assholes.

Must....work....onnn....only.......fif teen......days......left.....

Fifteen Days left until deadline.

Fifteen Days, and yet it takes every ounce of strength left in me to keep me from adding more scenes. Already, filesize issues are becoming a concern again, but I guess I'll worry about that AFTER I compress the audio (heh heh heh) ...I have no idea how to do that, though, but I'll find out before Christmas.

In non-ZOA related news, I did excellent on my English final...leaving me more free-time to devote to ZOA.

My back is killing me because I've been sitting on an ammo-can working on this thing...I really need to invest into a comfortable office-chair or something.

But yeah, animation process if coming along smoothly...suffice to say, I'm having more luck detailing the backgrounds than I am animating the bastards but that's why I've implemented Pinky. The Pink manaqon from my flash test!

I set the layer that holds the background to invisible, with only minimal same-layer, same-color, guides to let me get a general picture of what's in the background as a frame of reference. He's been helping me get the movement of the characters and the lip-syncing down just right...I just started using him today...so far so good.

But I've been working on this thing for hours today. It's time for me to get some sleep.

Film at Eleven.

I don't know if anyone even reads these "Captain's Log" updates on ZOA, but whatevah.

To compensate for the short-short runtime, I'm throwing BACK on some scenes I was going to do anyway in the follow-up Part 2. Only a couple, though, so it's not going to push back my goal to release this thing before Christmas. (Fuck, 20 days away...)

On top of that, I re-recorded a couple of voice-overs that I thought to be shoddy, and wound up coming up with funnier dialogue anyway, so it worked out.

Other than that, when my eyes got a little too strained from sitting in front of the computer all day, I laid down with a notebook and started writing ahead so I can end this all with a satisfying closure. I'm excited to do the rest of these, but first things first.

If you've been keeping tabs, you haven't seen a single finished-product still (except for the "Ender's Game" one...I'm probably leaving that as-is.) So here's a background I finished today just to tease you fuckers.

Film at Eleven.

Originally, all of the audio synced up and everything read out like this was going to be an incredible FOUR AND A HALF MINUTE LONG FLASH.

(It's a big deal to me, anyway.)

But also looking at it, with the way the sounds were aligned, minimal animation, and individual frames over each events to remind me of what I should animate there when it's finished, it seemed to take on a huge file-size.

In fear that with the finished frames and animations would be too much, I chopped it in half. If you watched the two links in the earlier news posts, originally I was going to stop it right before Leo goes to find that program after Elena talks to Leo about paying him for all of his troubles and delivering the frame to them.

After the cut, I'm cutting it right before Leo goes into the VR training after defeating his first Raptor. Bringing the run-time to exactly Two minutes and Forty seconds.

Was this a wise move? Am I rushing things or given my experience with this, was this a good decision?

I guess my score will tell me. Besides, I'd like to get a little better at animation before animating the hardcore Jehuty fights.

On that same note, however, I want to do other things that require greater skill. No offense to Egoraptor, but there's no way in hell that I'm making Awesome parodies all through '09. After my "Zone of the Awesome" project(s) are done, I'm not animating another Awesome flash.

Edit: *I'm not making another flash with Awesome in the title. All of my flashes will be awesome. XD

The writing is complete!

I was basing it all loosely on the events that happen here and here, but looking at Metal Gear Awesome as a means of basic "Awesome" structuring, I found the best dialogue might be written on-the-fly.

Now all of the pacing and timing is done. I have little doodles to serve as an animatic to remind me of what should be happening visually for each scene, but now all that's left is fleshing it out.

After that, I'll go through and lip-sync each piece of dialogue individually. This shit is gonna rock!

I feel good about this one. Before I can get on with the next step, however, I HAVE TO find a female voice-actress who can pull-off a good ADA, this same voice actress could also do Elana, but I seem to have Viola covered out of comedic effect.

Begh, whatever, I'll figure it out. My goal is to release this thing before Christmas!

It's coming along smoothly. I'm amazed at how much ground I've covered, but it's not done yet!

And unlike the hundreds of flashes that I blam weekly, I WILL NOT submit it until it's finished.

It already has a runtime of 1 minute and six seconds! It may not be much, but it's far from halfway through, and chock-full of content that'll make you laugh whether you've played the game or not.

Guess which game it's gonna be? C'mon, guess. I'll give you a hint:

What I'm trying to do with this Megaman flash is way over my head. That's why I keep getting overwhelmed, and starting over, and starting over, and starting over...

I gotta churn out something. Just anything. So I'm devising a series of little pop-shots that'll make people laugh and serve as an animation exercise for myself.

Maybe then I'll finally get something done. Finally feel like my wheels aren't just spinning.

Besides, how bad could it be? It couldn't be any worse than my first flash.

Also, if you don't listen to Testament you need to.

Film at Eleven.