(I think I'll stay at the ''every 6th - make a post'' system...)

Do ya want to hear about progress?
That's bad. I have nothing to say.
I WANT to animate. To finish the ''it's been two years - coming soon again'' project, make another, and so on... But I'm stuck. As the title says, it is caused by hardware prob- oh wait.
''I can't withstand working on such a ****ty computer anymore" IS a hardware problem, right?
//This sentence was followed by 30 lines of thoughts and complains about how bad my comp is. Come on. Who cares? Deleted. Simply:

I am going to buy a new one. But thit isn't a cheap thing and I haven't much money left for sudden needs.
=>
I won't be able to fully work sooner than this Christmas. And I fear this. You know what it is gonna be followed by, right? Deja Vu anyone?

It is January. I just finished some project I was working on. Finally, it is time to finish Mad-n II. The deadline is on some day during Summer.

...Duke Nukem Forever, right? I can't believe this is the third time a year is going to start like this. Every time, during Spring, +/- April, I got bored, stopped working on it. But it won'be like this forever. Look:

2008 - What?
2009 - A tricky animation, Mad-n II delayed at 5000 frames.
2010 - Got bored in July, Mad-n II's progress stopped at 9 500 frames.
My guess:
2011 - Made a flash for... for Robot Day?(O_o) Mad-n II delayed at 16 000 frames.
2012 - Made... something. Delayed at 20 500 frames.
2013 - 25 000 frames. Done. Hooray.

This is gonna happen, unless I'll do something with it. Honestly, do you think I want it to happen? Because of that, I'll try to get as much as possible from the following three months, then... hmm. Is it so hard to do at least 2000 frames a month? It's not. I wonder what I was doing last years.

If this made you think ''WTF? Why now?''.
Well... I accustomed to work on slow computer. Somehow, watching 30fps animation at 20 fps or lower has become normal to me. But, now... I just can't. Mainly:
I decided to redo the first scene - +/- 2500 frames. The scene has no ''action element'' to amaze you. This forces me to make it cool by its timing, music synchornization, cuts, and that is impossible to do with such speed.

(LAUGH AT IT!!!?!11! My current comp: :D (2003 or so? How could I make ATA with this...)
Northwood, Intel Pentium 4, socket 478, 2.6GHz, 1 physical core(obviously)
2GB RAM
ATI Radeon X1650
I consider other parts being too unimportant...)

OK, finally,
I'm back.
I've read everything what happened since my last post(comments + PMs),...
I guess I should say something:

I know,
I've failed.
Very heavily.
I'm sorry.
I know I said (...comeback in 1-3 weeks...). But, you know, the longer break you take, the harder it is to return.
But yesterday, I thought ''OH SH**, it's Madness Day tomorrow.'' I wasn't afraid of it because I had to have something done until that day. Actually, yeah, there were many things I should have done, but, I simply failed and decided to ignore them(even at 13th September I thought ''man, it's time to finish the remaining 100 frames and finally send it!!! -MD3 collab'', but you know how much work you do if you keep saying ''wait, I'll do it tomorrow''.
But since I said there's going to be a comeback, how long can I keep ignoring Newgrounds if I ignore even Madness Day? That would be my real virtual death. So, just for refreshing ''madness'' to me, I listened to all the MC soundtracks, Combat to Aggregation(I accidentally fell asleep during MC9 :D).
WOW
All the memories. They returned. The details of world of Madness(now I mean the MC storyline).

So I finally returned, watched some flashes(Krinkels proves again and again that Madness doesn't suck XD), wrote this post and...

Well, the main point:
This is NOT my necrologue XD
Just saying what happened.

What WILL happen?
I do not know. Mainly, there's no deadline for me. I can do whatever I want, I won't push myself to animating.
Yeah.
I miss making cool action scenes with amazing music in the background. But this time, without deadline. FINALLY.
There are tens of ideas for animations in my mind right now, so just let me choose. I'll probably either continue with Mad-n II or make my first nonmadness project called ''??e ?o???il??r''.

uh
rebirth is quite difficult XD
(btw StarCraft II rocks XDXD)

...it is dead. Or in ''coma''.
I feel it so. It was quite hard to log in after a month of absolute inactivity.
Flash? WTF is it? OK :D I think I cleared my head a little.
I know myself. My NG life can´t be dead... forever. Some kind of comeback will happen. Probably before MD10. Since... <the-big-project-I-was-working-on> :D will be done when it's done and it won't be on MD10, I have time for those I neglected last weeks, so:
MD3 - +/- 1000 frames, needs 150 to be done. Unfortunatelly, this ''pause'' happened before I did the rest XD
I might make another part for both collabs. But... I do not know...
That's it. I do not know, and this post won't change as long as I don't care about NG.
(Honestly, I expect the return in 1-3 weeks...)

Hmm... there was a reason why I called June ''collab month''...
I joined Madness Desintegration 3 and Madness Accumulation 2. I was going to make two parts for both. Guess what happened... my, ''effort'',... was not... ''enough''. Honestly: One part done for MA2, one 80% done (980 frames) for MD3. Another part for MA2 would need at least a week to finish. And, hmm, time - there are 78 days left before the Madness Day. NOOO!!!. Have you seen the preview for my MD10 project?
THIS needs my time.

.
/* */
So, this is just an announcement.
My ''contribution'' to Madness Desintegration 3 is only one animation. It is going to be done in 2 days.
My ''contribution'' to Madness Accumulation 2 is one part, but there's a slim chance of finding free time for making another... but why not another for MD3?
Well, it is about the effort for collabs.
My part for DIMB is going to be 1300 frames long, bloody, full of amazing kills.
My part for 1337-Dawg is 900 frames long. But it is just a random joke scene. No real ''kills''. The second part for him I started (actually, the second part here is de facto the first part, 200 frames are already done) is more cool and helps collab far more than the first part.

That's it. I'll be done with collabs in two days, then... I hope I will make it. Mad-n II: 50-60% done. The fact it still looks like ''just another of the hundreds of animations saying ''to be continued'' '' makes me really angry. It's time to actually finish the sequel, to stop talking about it and actually ''tell the story.''

Here's a screen of Hank's / my rampage:

The last of ''about:''s. Unfortunately, my progress from last months... my... caring about projects... well, I have feeling that writing about Mad-n II would be completelly beside the point. I did not work at it, it did not change since last time, so what do you want to hear? OK, I'll try to sum it up:

1) As before, I rate months. The lazy times from last month are over, the nightmare does not continue. I am fully back at animating. Still, I did not hardwork during the WHOLE last month, so May gets 4/10 from me.

2) 24th June. Wouldn't it be stupid to do nothing special on this day? It would. You'll get a preview for Mad-n II.

3) Ah, the collabs... deadlines are around the end of June, so this will be something like a ''collab month'' for me. After finishing all the parts, I am going to go straight for having Mad-n II done. Quite busy holidays... like last time XD.

4) The time plans, progress, keeping you updated and so... you know... this bores me. There are many things to do for me and I'll just do them. OK? It is the same for Mad-n II's deadline. I have some plans, but just let me live, I'll tell you when something important happens... or OK, I'll tell you now:

5) About Mad-n II:

Full project's name: ''Adoptio - Mad-n II''
Date: Uhm... probably Madness Day 2010. (22nd September 2010 1:37 NG time)
Current Fla size: 200 MB
SWF size: unknown (Unexportable for me now, low virtual memory. I hope it won't be a problem XD)
Frames: Around 20 000
Kills: Around 90
Preview: 24th June
Musics: here
Story: You'll see... but, here's a trailer:
Before Mad-n I, Kreyd was both a soldier and a mage, but he put his energy in a disc for some scientists. The 010 sect(with blue belts) stole it, so Kreyd entered their fortress to get it back. After Halu left Kreyd and Kreyd's machine was destroyed, he must try to get it just with guns and weapons. Without any powers. Unless he meets his main enemy, Ereus, the 011's main and very powerful warrior, his chances to survive get the disc are quite high, but he has to beat gefusers(weak mages), laser-cannon-watched laboratories, go through the fortress's canteen, . . . . .
(Do not think this is just another 'I must get the microchip/CD/disk/some random machine series! This goal will be ended(achieved or so) in THIS animation.)

Oh... you still remember that FAKE.

24th June - UPDATE
Yeah, that sophisticated scene was a fake. It won't end like that. When I think about it, the final epic scene will be even gorier than the pic. But it won't have such 'now he has no chance' moment.
Bad new: My brother got a computer, but not a monitor, so now I work only with one. Not a problem after all.
Good new: My brother got a computer... :D :D :D NOW THIS MACHINE IS ONLY MINE. Holidays. 5+ hours of animating a day. YEAH.
So... I promised you a preview? Yeah. I worked very hard on it today. Here's my story XD:

There was a problem during making the animation(after an hour of work, the flash suddenly shutted down, so I had to get decompiler and get the lost scenes from SWF.)
There was a problem with having it done. The final fla was so big that I had to quit other programs to complete it. I lol'd when it said ''there is not enough memory available'' when trying to insert a keyframe.
There was a problem with converting. All my programs were lost after installing Windows 7, so.... no converter, no decompiler, and so. When I found converter, I realized I have no codecs to convert the swf into avi. The ''no quality loss conversion'' had 1.7GB. The basic compress had 260 MB while looking like a 16-colors video. Finally, I decided to install the codecs. Nothing happened, so I decided to upload the stupid 260MB thing, when I decided to open VirtualDub once more. They appeared! Yeah.
Wait, VirtualDub? Ehm, the converter was unable to actually convert something into video, so I had to convert it into image sequence. VirtualDub made the rest - image sequence into video.
So, is this how the preview was made? No, there was another problem. The major problem which lasted for months - I do not know my YouTube password... :D :D
The 'youtube account problem part' deleted. I FINALLY LOGGED INTO MY OLD ACCOUNT XD. YEAH.

OK, this was today's story. Now, I guess you want the preview. I present you . . .

.
/* */
Enjoy. I like how it looks... but for me, it is more like ''what i've done'' than ''preview''. It contains... 60% of Mad-n II? :D :D OK, not so much, but I think you know what I mean.

Here's a REAL screen from Mad-n II. It is here for comparing with the whole animation after Madness Day. Wait... what's interesting in this screen? Well, this is THE LAST AND NEWEST FRAME I HAVE DONE NOW.

Some news again... bad news. Not ''bad'', but less ''good'' than I hoped...

1) Maybe I'll start rating months. Why? The last one was terrible. In January, I made a plan/timeline for Mad-n II's progress. This is not the bad scenario, but I am making done a scene which would be done two months ago in the good scenario. My laziness and absence of motivation gave to +/- 20 days zero frames done. April gets 2/10 from me. That leads to the next point. I finally got back to animating, but this was...

2) ...fatal. Mad-n II on 24 June? Not likely. I am really sorry, I'll delay it to...
...no.
NO.
NO MORE DEADLINES AND RELEASE DATES...
(to be continued)

3) Before telling you about the new plan, here are some other changes:
3)a) Madness Day project canceled due to Mad-n II's slow progress. Enjoy it next year.
3)b) The logic is easy. Mad-n II needs more time, MD project canceled gave me time. But these do not equal. I think there will be some free time left... so I joined Madness Desintegration 3. It kinda looks like my madness-collab-aversion is disappearing... but I simply think that it is ugly to watch so many good animators spend their time by making madness collabs instead of making some own original movies. But don't I make some? But also this collab is going to be SO good XD...

4) Back to my work:
Day of release: When it's done. This won't lead to the massive delay like last year. This is a new plan for me:

- Finish Mad-n II - Scene 5. (Making this now - 1263 frames, 35%)
- Make a collab part to Madness Accumulation 2.
- Make a collab part to Madness Desintegration 3.
- Make the rest of Mad-n II, submit it. XD
...
There's more to happen in next months. But won't I make a post in June? I will. And future plans will be truer after 31 days than now. At least this plan shows that my movie's progress is nearly straight, its publication is unsure but you will not wait so long after the original date.

5) About: Animation
Hmm...
No picture shows you anything about the movement, effects and animation in Mad-n II. There's just one important thing: It looks crappy from the beginning, in fact scenes 1 and 2 are both from the beginning of 2009. But I think I have already spoken about this some time. Ok... after that, it looks as good as I am at animating now. And I think that is not too bad :D It is hard to fill a movie both with story and action. There are already some texts, not dialogues yet.
Madness part - Scenes 1 - 7 - cca 15,000 frames
Epic part - Scenes 8 - 10 - cca 6,000 frames
The only change I made in animating is increasing fps from 26 to 30 and making some blood animation sprites after being tired from a guy being shot for the seventh time... wait, didn't I write about this in About: Graphic? Ah, I totally dunno what interesting could I say about animation by static texts and screens!

The next month is going to show you more about it... because I won't leave this giant flash without a preview...

Due to slow progress in April, there's no new room I could make a screen from. So here's something from the beginning:

Account level up. Awkward 'md09' removed, icon is now +150% more cool... ELDRAZIFTW

I am here again. This time, it will be grandiose. Finally something is happening. At least for you.

1) The website is here.
Just bluffin'. It is dead.
It needed to many articles(in two languages), a trusty webhoster (the best I found was X10Hosting, but you would not be able to see it),... I wanted to make it in flash. Any other looking would not be so good, but also it meant it is far harder to finish it(all the frames on timeline without any order). It would look like this. Good message for you? The 'more about my flashes' will come here. I'll find a month when there is nothing I have to tell you and I'll write for example, about production of some flashes, about my audio tries, about the list of all ATA jokes and about its secrets...

2) Except for the webpage, there is another thing I should work on. Madness Accumulation Collab 2. It was in progress for a while... but then stopped. Mad-n II's day is too near and I want to leave the 'can I make it in time?' border. Its idea is quite nice, its time is going to be probably in May.

3) Website - dead. So where can I update the info about Mad-n II's progress? I think I have to put it here......
OK, SO HERE YOU HAVE IT. MUHAHAHAHAAA!

Updated
04/25/2010 (I'm sorry, I finally opened the file after two weeks and it looks like a fatal time loss...)

(Support me by checking the texts - not 100 % correct English, also the fullscreen mode probably does not work, I'll take a look at it)
Menu - 257 frames - 0 kills - 682 kB - 100 % - FINISHED
Scene 1 - 2051 frames - 7 kills - 1217 kB - 100 % - FINISHED
Scene 2 - 1830 frames - 12 kills - 2009 kB - 100 % - FINISHED
Scene 3 - 3890 frames - 21 kills - 2260 kB - 100 % - FINISHED
Scene 4 - 955 frames - 14 kills - 1225 kB - 26 %
Total - 8983 frames - 54 kills - 7393 kb(won't be so big, some files are shared) - 56 %
My time for it (remaining) - 61/240 days (yeah, I can make it because I was very lazy)

Target(crude guess):
Menu + 10 Scenes
15000 - 22000 frames
80 - 110 kills
9000 - 14000 kB
100 %
...on 24th June at 1:37 PM EST (NG time)

This is not just an update. OK, it is. Last time I said something about Mad-n II's progress was 6th April 2009. After that, you knew nothing. Yeah, that's an update.

4) This is called 'about audio'. So here's something about Mad-n II's audio:

Sounds - I use the same as before. They are all from Madness Combat series - I decompiled some of them, the rest is from Wibumba's sound pack. I did not know which sounds should I use for weapons, but I am building up a *.fla with guns, rounds, shots and their shot sounds for me - at least I started to actually understand them. The newest change in my sound collection is a choice of some new sounds from MC5.5. They sound strange, but they fit in it. The only interesting fact about sounds from Mad-n II is that I created some of the sounds. Exactly - I only create sounds for my own weapons. It is the plasma gun and the 'blue magic whip' from Mad-n I. In Mad-n II, there are two new submachine guns. I created sounds for them by mixing some random records, some noise I make and some sounds I 'draw' in Audacity. I sometimes add an effect from The Sound Effects Library. I must thank them, check it out if you need something, it is the best internet library I found, there's everything. It helped me even for some random needs like 'a modern mechanical gate' and 'generator buzzing'.

Music - Nothing to say. Except for the fact I made one of them (already submitted to Audio Portal, waiting for approval - do not except anything cool, it is more than a year old and it was made in demo -> no saving -> one day to mix it), all the musics... are... just... so here they are:

SineRider - Lovely Tings
MasterMeCash - Techno Motion
Dj-Fanta5t1c - Nastay(anarchy)
YouriX - -:YRX:-MachinRAa Black Steel
The Juke Bottle Casino - Gone Guy
PearlDrummer516 - Decibus
Timber-Wolf - Feels Like Nails
Coft - Wake Up (finally...)

And a screen for the end.

February wasn't so succesful as January. The common killing in Mad-n II continues very well... I made 1500 frames of madness, but I planned far more.

My 'collaborative' music video is going to be released next Thursday, on the 11th March. Do not forget!

IT CAME OUT - Go watch it. Website still not done, but in progress.

The site is still in progress. I worked hard to write all the articles and put it together in flash, but I am not able to show it in a good form today. Wait a week or so, maybe I'll tell you the URL with the publish of the music video.

Until Mad-n II, I'll write an article about the production each month... and every time about something else. This time I'll try to write something about its graphic.

The first scenes continue exactly where Mad-n Ib ended. Exactly, becasue I started making Mad-n II a few days after I finished Mad-n I. So everything has the old looking. Room, AutoAnir, effects... after a year of getting new skills and after finishing Mad-n Ire, I returned to it. It didn't look so bad, but still I spent a week or more on correcting the graphics, camera, sounds, movement... Some scenes were changed a lot, in some there are only added details. I changed fps 26 -> 30 (thanks, Krinkelsrules) and the size is now 560*420 (4:3, since Mad-n Ire it became my favorite resolution) instead of the 550*400. The camera has quality buttons and my nickname on it now.
That was the correction. And new rooms... sometimes I add so much details and effects that in the end I convert it into a *.png to make it watchable(blur and camera -> so slow). In Mad-n Ire, I played with lights a bit, but it looked strange. This is the last room(beyond) with some lights and shadows in it. Newer rooms are in grey scale and most of the time they only contain furniture and some stuff on walls. The perspective helps a lot, Sunshaft made a perfect tutorial for it. (I watch it very often because every time I am making a new room I realize that I forget WHICH wall must be darker than the other and so.)

So much work done in January. That's why I named it 'rapid progress'. From the first day of this year, I never stopped animating or gave myself a break, I work hard every day. About the work, here it is:

The 'short' madness music video is done. It is not so violent as other madness movies, in fact there's no blood except for the loading screen where I made some effect that was made to look like blood. I won't change it. It ended up as 6000-frames long sprite(drawn by me) movie full of random fun. Maybe not so funny, but it looks good. You'll see it on... 3/11/2010. ***** Edited(again). I never failed when making a flash, and this time I feel no failure. It was my mistake that I wrote 3/2/2010 here, but I forgot something... so due to some technical troubles, it will be released a week later. I can do nothing with it, anyways the flash is already finished, so please just wait a week more.

After that, I finally returned back to work on Mad-n II. Quite massive project, it looks like it will be longer than Mad-n I. Yeah, the original one, both of them, 14k frames. And it is full of the classic madness. It will contain some story, too, but not so much as the other will do. There's far much what could I say about it, but that's what I will be doing during next months.

Other projects

As I said to many artists who invited me, I don't like collabs. But after the collaboration with 1337-Dawg we had last year, I couldn't say no, so I take a part in Madness Accumulation 2. I have already got an idea what to animate.
Also, I decided to create my own webpage. I won't move away from there, but it gives me a chance to say more about my flashes, to write more about my progress and to release more spoilers. But I think I'll make it in flash so it won't be updated very often. It looks like I will put some news on it every 6th with NG posts and maybe some pictures from current animations on random days. Do you want to know the URL ? It is not done, but I have already prepared it, it is there. ***** Edited again. Was I blind or did they suddenly add ads ? I changed it again. I'll tell you the URL when it is done... yeah, it will be soon.

Some screen here. Mad-n II is far bigger project, but I don't want to be fast.

Holidays are over. I have never thought about rating last year or about preparing for the next one. This is the first time I can say that I am looking forward a year. Some artists have already a column '2010 Submissions' and it looks so amazing.

My supply this year ? Four flashes + maybe I will find time to realize an idea about strange short series. It's a music video some day in summer, Mad-n II in June and... be surprised. I will not miss Madness Day this year. By the way, I have already started making my entry.

Has anyone checked the Tricky art ? Maybe I should change the order and put 'Art' far higher.

Animating sometimes becomes very boring. I would like to be working on Mad-n II, but time says I must do the short at first. Time. I hope so much I will not get any amazing idea and I will finish what I am supposed to finish. Did you know that it is more than a year since I began working on Mad-n II ?

It is also more than a year since I submitted my first animations and since I posted my first post. The post was just an idea. Now I find it necessary to write some article every 6th. So it is a year. Yeah. My animating improvement was exceptable. But I can thank you all, this community, Newgrounds, for my English improvements. Look at my old posts or at the original Mad-n I. Isn't it terrible?

That's all for now. Do not except something like this next month, I run out of ideas and it will look like 'hi guys' and 'screen'.

This is a screen for this month. It does not show much, unfortunately the main part of it is the red sky. Even if it is not an art but a frame, maybe I will change the camera. It is from the music video which will fill the time until June. It has middle lenght and it is quite funny. And the main information for some madness sprite haters - I drew everything for that!