so uhhh yeah if you weren't aware, I did actually attend the San Diego Comic Con this year! Since it's been like two weeks since the con, I thought I might as well make some kind of post about it.

22nd
On Wednesday, I departed the fair city of St. Paul, bound for California with my dad. When we arrived, we hung around in the lobby until our traveling companion arrived from Texas: J_Seed! since we were all pretty tired (and didn't have passes for preview night) we headed to our hotel.

23rd
Thursday was probably the craziest day of the con.
Since this was our first time going, and with this year's dire warnings of oversold passes and mile-long lines, we decided being there as early as possible was the best course of action. After picking up our passes without much difficulty, J and I headed to the exhibit hall while my dad departed to places unknown. you cannot comprehend how large the exhibit hall is. In all seriousness, it's probably the largest room I've ever been in. we wandered for a bit before seeing our first noteworthy person of the day--Doug Tennapel! Tennapel is the creative genius behind one of my favorite games of all time, The Neverhood, so I was very excited to meet him. It must be said that Tennapel is massive. 6'8", to be exact. easily the tallest person I've ever met in person. damn.

we continued our trek around the hall, finding various booths and getting autographs and free stuff, before finally winding up at the Newgrounds booth, where I met a couple people, including Tom Fulp and Dan Paladin, who were very busy scribbling on everything people handed them. I can't remember in what order or on what day I saw everyone else, so at the end of this post I'll just include a list of everybody. I think we wandered around the con for a while longer before heading to a panel with Scott McCloud and Bryan Lee O'Malley, talking about Scott Pilgrim. While waiting in line, we saw a long-haired fellow in a white shirt and instantly knew it was Kirbopher! We said hello and went along our way. later, we ran into BlueHippo on our way to see John K, the creator of Ren and Stimpy. When we arrived at the room, he was talking to someone a few feet away! we waited around until he noticed us, and got to say hello to him in person. very nifty.

after that it was evening time, roughly, and so we hopped in our batmobile and drove to the beach for Pen Ward's beach party! upon arrival, the beach seemed oddly lacking in adventure, so we wandered around asking groups of people if they were there with Pen. of course none of them were, so we were a bit perplexed. then a car pulled up and a big guy with a piano-key tie and a massive beard got out. he poked at his phone for a minute, then looked up and yelled ADVENTURE TIME! it was pen ward! he was equally unsure of where the party was, but after talking for a minute we found out it was at the other end of the beach. we jogged down there and saw a much larger gathering of jolly people. after standing around for a minute, a mysterious person came up to me and asked "are you... ansel?" who should it be but squeef! we sat around and talked for a bit before we got a call from Anigen wondering where the party was. after giving him directions and taking a short walk, we met up with him and returned to the beach. then, rtilshowed up. we all sat in a circle and plotted to destroy newgrounds. as we left the beach, we said hello to nath milburn and hans before heading to the hotel.

man that took forever, and thursday was the most eventful day, so I will make the next three much shorter

24th

not a lot happened today. we walked around, maybe went to a panel or two i forgot, stopped at many booths!

25th
this day was a remarkable day because I spent a lot of it in one auditorium. Hall H is the largest panel room at the convention, and that's where the really big-name events all take place--I was trying to get in to the Disney/Pixar panel, half to see their new stuff and half just to see Hayao Miyazaki. we got there like an hour early and waited in line for quite a while before finally getting into the Warner Bros. movie panel beforehand, a happy accident that resulted in me seeing ULTRA TOP SECRET trailers for movies that BARELY EVEN EXIST YET. Movie stars, directors, etc. Finally it was over, and rtil met us in the auditorium-- as has already been discussed elsewhere, anigen skipped out on it to hang out with some INTERNET SUPASTARS. Pixar spent a lot of time bragging about their new 3D releases, and how they plan to re-release Toy Story 1+2 in 3D. Yeah, it's fascinating that you can just re-render the film using 3D technology, but really, it's not that impressive. They did show a clip from their 3D conversion of Beauty and the Beast, though, and I did find that interesting--they've gone over the original cels and worked some kind of voodoo magic to give them a three-dimensional look. Not terribly stunning, but interesting.
FINALLY they got to the part everyone was waiting for, which was a clip from their new 2D film The Princess and the Frog. it looks absolutely fabulous, and the animation work is incredible--definitely some of the most elaborate I've seen recently. pumped to see it when it comes out. Then they brought out the man himself, HAYAO MIYAZAKI. Everyone cheered, and basically anything he said was met with applause. He talked a little bit about his ideas and inspiration, and then showed a lengthy clip from his new movie Ponyo, which comes out... uh, pretty soon. That also looks beautiful. After THAT panel, there was another one, with Tim Burton discussing 9, which also looks gret. EVERYTHING LOOKS GREAT OK

After leaving the auditorium, bleary and hungry, I wandered down to the i-mockery booth and said hello to BoMToons. For those of you not IN THE KNOW, he programmed Buccaneer Battle in a week, and did a damn good job of it, too. it was nifty to meet him, finally.

Then it was time for the NEWGROUNDS PARTY. Talked to various staff members, artists, and buddies of mine, ate gross food (sorry, tom :c ) and generally had a good time. I should mention that there was a special guest there - Jhonen Vasquez! He's apparently a fan of the behemoth, and so he showed up quietly and before I got a chance to talk to him he was surrounded by people :( I caught him as he was leaving, though, and got in a quick word about how much he inspired me back in the day.

26th
this was the shortest day, since my flight left at 4 or something and we showed up at the con fairly late. I didn't even make it back to the NG booth to say goodbye to people :( J's flight wasn't until the next morning, and through a terrible chain of events he would up spending the night at the airport. SORRY, BRO :(

it was a lovely experience and i am tired of writing, maybe i will go back next year I DUNNO

oh yeah here's my list of people i met, too lazy to provide links, if i forgot you i'm sorry

NEWGROUNDS

mike
Squeef
Anigen
Kirbopher
Sucho
Egoraptor
Lazymuffin
J_Seed
Krinkels
BlueHippo
Skraggy
Tomamoto
Hans Van Harken
Swain
Tom
Rubberninja
Jonas
PrincessAurora
HispanicHamster
Luis
NegativeOne
nathanielmilburn
JohnnyUtah
poxpower
BoMToons
Dan Paladin
rtil
sugarpolyp

ANYONE ELSE

Craig McCracken
Lauren Faust
Matt Furie
Doug Tennapel
Pen Ward
John K

here is a beautiful drawing by ukinojoe, depicting the historic meeting of ansel and jseed

this is a horrible, horrible idea and it should be removed immediately

that's about it

Go here and vote for us in this contest, aight? I've attached some helpful pictorial instructions to make this FUN AND EASY for you! You do have to register before voting, but it takes like 5 seconds-- it'll take about a minute to vote for us, and you could help us win money and (possibly) bigger things for Buccaneer Battle. GO GO GO GO GO GO

So yeah, I bought a Cintiq tablet. After several months of bandying about and NOT buying one, I decided to just do it and I did. I ordered the 21", which is the best Wacom sells, it arrived promptly, I set it up without any difficulty, and I started to draw. And it is fabulous. The screen is very high quality just as a monitor, certainly far better than the one on my laptop--I'm using it as a second monitor now, even when I'm not drawing. As a touch-screen, it's amazing. There's no jittering or anything that I got with my itty bitty Graphire, and the pressure sensitivity is also improved. I can't really tell if there are 1024 levels or whatever, but it's very smooth and I am certainly impressed. This is the first large-scale drawing I've done with it, as while as my first finished Photoshop piece--I think this'll help me expand my REPERTOIRE OF DIGITAL SKILLS pretty nicely. While it is a fabulous product, it's also the top of the line and it's also very pricey. Right now, the cheapest price I could find is 1900 dollars, plus shipping--which is something like $20 at the cheapest, as the Cintiq weighs roughly 20 pounds and is nearly two feet across. Start fillin your piggy banks

I've been thinking about starting a website for a while now. I think I've reached a level of skill and professionalism where I'd be confortable referring people to my personal site. However, there's a slight issue. Ansel.com is registered by a rude fellow who doesn't want to talk to me, Ansel.net is registered by domain squatters, Ansel.us is some bizarre personal page, and so on--all common domain extensions are registered, and no one wants to sell. I've started trying to think of other possible domains I could use, but none of them really appeal to me. Ansel-media, anselgames, etc. all sound like I'm trying to be something I'm not--a professional. Ansel.___ would be preferable, but that doesn't seem to be an option, and so I'm asking here: What should I name my website?

I'm still making flash. Working on 2 movies and 1 game, don't have even a tentative release date for any of them

here's a picture of my cool thing

This is a very, very long post.

OK. This has been going on for a month or so now, and I've posted in various places and am still communicating with Adobe Tech Support on weekdays, but I thought I'd post my problem here on the off chance someone will read it and be able to help.

A while ago, I downloaded After Effects CS4. Before that point, the only Adobe programs I used were a completely legitimate (no, really) copy ofFlash CS3 and the trial of Flash CS4. These two programs were living happily next to each other on my desktop, and I don't know what dark temptation drove me to download After Effects. It was a fucking bad idea. \

I ran that program exactly once, having no real idea what I was doing, and then closed it, thinking that I'd just delete it when the trial ended. But then Flash CS3 wouldn't open. It'd start up with the little dialog window, flash some text, and disappear. No error message, nothing. Just a complete stop. Flash CS4 still worked, so I assumed I'd simply overwritten some part of CS3's basic files with something from AE. Once again, I decided I could fix it by simply uninstalling Flash and After Effects CS4, as well as Flash CS3, and reinstalling the latter. I uninstalled all three programs and reinstalled Flash CS3, which worked normally. I didn't think any more of it.

But then, a few days later, Flash stopped opening. The same problem occurred--a complete shutdown when the program was starting up. I reinstalled the program once more, and it worked again-- for a few days. Since then, this process has repeated constantly. The problem seems to arise independently of me opening or closing the program, restarting my PC, or anything else I try to do to induce its occurence. Many other programs have also been affected, and my computer seems to be steadily deteriorating--whatever AE did, I think it might have damaged my OS.

This is the list of all programs affected that I know of, as well as all details I know.
1. Flash CS3 Professional. When I start up the program, the dialog box appears and runs normally for about half a second. The last text displayed is "Loading Standard Profiles," and then the dialog box simply disappears. There is no error message and Flash.exe is not running in the Process Manager.
2. Mozilla Firefox. This program follows the same pattern as Flash. Every few days, it will stop opening. I'm greeted with a "Firefox has stopped working" message, infuriating in its vagueness, and must reinstall the program to use it. These crashes seem to coincide with Flash's, starting at the same time.
3. iTunes, as of yesterday, no longer runs, despite my best efforts to revive it. I have uninstalled and reinstalled and restarted my system multiple times, as well as reinstalling/uninstalling quicktime, but neither of those two items will run. Very frustrating.
4. The webcam software that came preinstalled on my computer has stopped working. When I try to open Dell Webcam Center, from which I can take pictures, video, etc, Livecam.exe stops working. I cannot use my webcam anymore. Also very frustrating.
5. For a time after all this started, QUICKTIMETASK and TABUSERW would both stop working when I started up my computer, and Vista would helpfully tell me so. QUICKTIMETASK is obviously related to Quicktime, and when I uninstalled QT, the error message went away. It returned when I reinstalled. Adobe tech support informed me TABUSERW was my tablet driver. Despite the fact that my tablet still worked perfectly well, I reinstalled the driver and this also went away. I haven't seen it since then.
6. AOL Instant Messenger will open and run perfectly normally. I have had no problems with it yet, however, sometimes when I close the program I am told that "This program requires a missing Windows component." This does not occur every time, and I'm not sure how to artificially make it happen. It's not a problem, just irritating, but it reinforces my feeling that Windows is damaged.
7. foobar2000, a free media player, stopped working after I installed AE. I haven't tried reinstalling it.
8. Microsoft Works Word Processor, which came preinstalled on my computer, can no longer open .doc files or save as a .doc. When I try, Wordconv.exe stops working. I have located this file, so I know it exists--once again, Windows is failing to do something.
9. Here's another odd factoid. Adobe gave me a cleaning script to purge all CS3 files from my computer, and it seems to work. However, there's a bizarre catch--I extracted all the files from the .zip I downloaded it from, and within a few days the exe no longer launched correctly. I was extremely unhappy until I tried running the original .exe from inside the zip. It worked.

Flash CS3 and Firefox are probably the two most important programs I use. I have no idea what the problem is or where it is rooted, but I am absolutely convinced it started with the download of After Effects CS4. None of these problems existed beforehand, and since then things have only been getting worse. Yesterday my computer took two attempts to boot up correctly, and that has never, ever happened to me before. I'm worried. I've backed up all my files and am calling Adobe as often as I can, but it's painfully slow progress and I can't get any work done under these conditions. I can explain things in greater detail if necessary, and any input at all would be welcomed.

:(

Agh so much to think about

1. I am a judge for best game of 2008. It was terribly surprising to be asked to do this, and I'm hoping my decision will be a smart one... there are many wonderful games this year and choosing between them is going to be very difficult. There are some games that should've been nominated (in my opinion) and others that should not have been nominated at all... not monthly winners included by default, but staff inclusions. There are still some games I have to play/replay before I can choose, so this will be a busy weekend.

2. I am making a new game with Snubbyc, who programmed Supertank. I'm really happy with the art (and programming :3) so far and I think it's going to be great when it's done... It's a remake of an old project, that is actually posted publicly on the Internet. If you can find it, then you can feel like we share a special bond. Also you'll get to play a crappy game and get transported 2 years back in time, when I drew with the mouse and thought I might actually get good at programming. HEH. I still have a lot of game ideas in the back of my mind, and one of my goals is to really speed up my thought process and work, so I can think through and finish games much faster. I've got a lot to learn before I can finish things in a matter of weeks, though.

3. Started storyboarding Invertebrata, Larvae's half-brother. I'm working hard to try and make it as good as it can be, so it might be a while before I even begin animation--I'll show the animatic around first and probably rework a lot of it. You should probably forget about it entirely, it'll save you a lot of waiting.

4. I found a torrent of all the music from The Neverhood, the game that dominated my brain for years. After several failed attempts to download it, I finally triumphed, and now all of its glimmering treasures are mine. Download it here. It will change your life.

5. I bought Edmund Mcmillen's CD and it's fantastic. Buy it and help a brother out, aight? Oh yeah I bought it from his etsy store instead of the NG store, which is why I don't get a fun little icon on my GEAR page. oh well maybe next decade

uh I think that's everything. here's a FUN SNEAK PEEK at the new game thing

YEEEESSSS!!!!

Bomtoons and I won FIRST PLACE IN THE MAXGAMES CONTEST for Buccaneer Battle! SEE? SEE?

This means we win 10,000 plus a bonus for best art! THIS IS A BIG DEAL! Everybody go play it if you haven't already! I'm still super proud of the game, especially considering how rushed it was, and our hard work paid off! I FEEL ON TOP OF THE WORLD RIGHT NOW

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/
467553

Play it right now. BoMToons and I have busted ass this past week to finish it by friday for the maxgames contest, and he's still been working tirelessly to update it all weekend. It's finally finished though, as finished as it'll ever get. It's not a perfect game, and there're some things I would've like there to be in it that had to be cut, BUT IT'S DONE FINALLY. We could win a bunch of money for it, so hope for us.

ALSO: I am researching ancient China and martial arts for a flash about a guy fighting a ton of other guys in a restaurant. Any resources giving information on that time period would be appreciated, since I want to give it at least some historical accuracy. PS: This is an excuse to watch a whole lot of cheesy kung-fu movies for fighting material. recommendations?

ALSO: I'm looking for a nice zip-up hoody shirt with something nic on it for people to look at. shop for me

ALSO: The great thing about Flash isn't finishing the games, it's showing everyone online that I did.

glink908 (4:24:41 PM): you best be workin
glink908 (4:24:42 PM): lol
anselmlies (4:25:34 PM): BACK UP
glink908 (4:25:40 PM): o.o
anselmlies (4:26:04 PM): also i won the irish lottery
anselmlies (4:26:05 PM): Ref:UK/9420X2/68
Batch:074/05/ZY369
You have won £1,000,000.00.
To claim your prize, Contact Anderson Powell with the following informations.
Name, Address, Age, Occupation, Country
Email: agent_irishlottery01@yahoo.co.nz
Mrs. Judy F.Alkan
glink908 (4:26:15 PM): nice
anselmlies (4:26:16 PM): isn't this great
anselmlies (4:26:20 PM): i mean forget flash games
glink908 (4:26:24 PM): i know right
anselmlies (4:26:39 PM): i'm going to get like 1.5 million dollars
glink908 (4:26:46 PM): lol
anselmlies (4:26:49 PM): and i didn
anselmlies (4:26:53 PM): t even have to enter!
glink908 (4:26:56 PM): ;D
anselmlies (4:27:04 PM): it's almost too good to be true!
glink908 (4:27:11 PM): lmao
anselmlies (4:28:01 PM): it's a little wierd that the irish lottery has a new zealand domain
glink908 (4:28:09 PM): lol
anselmlies (4:28:10 PM): but it's probably just for legal reasons
anselmlies (4:28:18 PM): i'm sure it will all explain itself
glink908 (4:28:24 PM): most lieky
glink908 (4:28:27 PM): likely*
anselmlies (4:29:11 PM): do... do you think this could be one of those email scams to trick me out of my money?
glink908 (4:29:22 PM): nah
glink908 (4:29:25 PM): seems legit to me
anselmlies (4:29:34 PM): yeah i mean look at those numbers at the top
glink908 (4:29:51 PM): i dont know how anyone culd randomly place letters and numbers toegether like that
anselmlies (4:29:59 PM): that spells "O-F-F-I-C-I-A-L" to me
glink908 (4:30:05 PM): pretty much
anselmlies (4:30:31 PM): man will you be jealous when im swimmin in the cash
glink908 (4:30:38 PM): true dat

damn i won the lottery check me out

I've been doing sprites for this game for a month or so now. When you count up all the items on stage and all the layers in each one, there are, at any given time, several hundred individual vector shapes onstage at once. Now, this is not a terrible problem in itself. At medium quality, the game runs just fine, at a nice 28/29 out of 30 FPS. However, the problem arises when I try to test my movie. I'll be drawing, animating, etc. inside a movieclip. Moving things around, swapping layers, switching frames. I try to see my work completed. Ctrl + Enter... and disaster strikes. Flash locks up at the "exporting flash movie" progress bar, never completing an operation that usually only takes a few seconds. I cannot close the window, I can't get past it to do anything in Flash, and I am effectively locked out of the program-- the only way to "fix" the problem is to shut down Flash via Task Manager and then restart.

This is one of the most infuriating and idiotic bugs I've ever encountered in CS3, for all its finickiness. There is no given criteria for triggering it, except that I am animating in a symbol, and even then it doesn't happen every time. I have no idea when it will happen or why it will happen, and when it does it is always surprising.

I made a BBS post about this, but no one seemed to have anything to suggest of relevance or use. I'm hoping someone reading this will have some variety of input, because this has happened at least 20 times to me within the past few days-- it is a constant interruption to an already oft-interrupted workflow, and I need it fixed.

In closing: Fuck you, Adobe. I paid hundreds of dollars for your shit, and work laboriously to overcome the many small trials this malevolent program sets before me every day. This is but a new addition to a ever-largening regimen of frustration, anger, circuituous work-arounds, and enormous amounts of wasted time trying to fix bizarre, unfixable problems. I must work to do what I love to do. I should not have to deal with this bullshit.