Hi everyone,

There's a new Mr Snaffleburger animation online:

http://www.matazone.co.uk/animpages/mr-sna...n-products.html

(links are up on http://www.matazone.co.uk if that one is borked by Yahoo)

It's been a long time since I've made anything for Mr Sb, so my site really was due an update on everyone's favourite corrupt corporation. Well... Some people's favourite anyway… As always, please pass on the animation to anyone who you think might like it!

Speaking of corruption, sadly the forces of commerce and suchlike mean that I have rent to pay and food to buy, so please remember that, if you're buying something from Amazon.co.uk or .com this Christmas (or any time), start your session using the search boxes at the bottom of the pages on my site and 5% of what you spend gets donated to my site. Amazon doesn't tell you that you're doing this, but it works and I'm very grateful for the support.

I've got a bit of a dilemma at the moment: I'm trying to get my thesis finished by Christmas, which means I need to get another chapter done by the end of this month. Unfortunately that is also Halloween. Old regulars to my site will know that every year I make a big animation at Halloween to celebrate the anniversary of the site beginning (links to previous ones are here http://www.matazone.co.uk/menus/miscmenu.html , ‘The Clown Killer’ is often considered to be one of the best things I’ve made). The clash of deadlines means that I might have to forego my planned spooky tale (which I was really looking forward to making) and make a simple silly one instead. I don't know... I'll see how much time I find.

Speaking of time, it's nearly 3am here, so it's time I went to bed.

Before I go, another quick reminder about my blog, which is filled most days with daft, entertaining, or just interesting things that float towards me on the surface of this tiny miracle we call the internet. It also has a rather lovely RSS feed thingy, for those of you who like that sort of thing.

Night night all!

Have fun,

Mata

PS. You'll need Flash Player 8 to see it if you don't already have it. http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer

I can't describe how much I love that end slogan. Muhahaha.

A step from the usual SB style animation but I enjoyed.

And you're up early tonight? Isn't it way past your bedtime?

Yes it is, but I usually stay up late finishing things. I'm off to bed now.

Great animation, but - why do you always talk so fast on these? Your diction suffers.

Was anyone else reminded of Max Headroom when they saw Dr Trevor Dimbleworth? (?? I forget his name by the time I've watched it through.)

Still, another good'un, shame about the halloween animation, saves having to come up with a brilliant story for next year though....or you could just do it anyway when you have the time...

Essentially I speed up on bits that are bulky in text but I don't want to cut from the script so I don't bore people. I find animations boring when they linger too long over something that think think is clever. I think you're partially right: it may be that I go too far in the other direction, but I think that there is a happy balance to be found.


Dr Trevor Dimplesworth. That's very close!


I'm still hoping to find a way to do it, I've got some interesting plans in mind that might make it easier to do. We'll see.

I've actually got four Halloween plots, but I think only two of them are ready for public telling, the other two need more work.

Well, I can't actually hear what you're saying when you go fast - but then I have awful hearing so you shouldn't judge by me

Noted, I'll try to go slower next time. It's difficult for me to judge because I work with a high kbps version of the audio when animating but need to lower it down a lot to put it online, losing a lot of the fidelity. I usually publish at 32kbps for the streaming audio. It's not bad, but it's a lot lower than most recorded audio that people will listen to.

Cheers for the feedback. I really do find this stuff useful

Mata!

brilliant!

though do you have a cheat sheat of all the subliminal things that poped up, because they where too fast for even me, I saw a word or two hear and there, an image over the face and something else..

what where they!

Oooooo, that would be telling.

Great as usual. I like the idea of evil dolphins, I've been trying to tell people for years, but woul dthey listen? No. But now that you've shown this in your animation I am deeply impressed and know that it will only be a matter of time before all those people are begging for my forgiveness. Thank you mata for once again informing the world of these dangers through the power of your animations.

*squishes*

Great (as per your usual). I liked the new style (sort of like that chicken tunafish gopher) but I must say it was jarring to not see that familiar green background.

Also--whose torso did Dr. Trevor manipulate? Was that yours?

Very good!

I liked the new style too - but - my compter mashed the adds and the amimation together

The entire figure is made up of a selection of photos I took of myself standing in my hallway, the eyes are hand-drawn (obviously) in Photoshop, and the smile was taken from a photo of Tom Cruise I found on the web. He has the cheesiest grin I could think of!

I'll probably use this style again, it's quite fun, but it doesn't half make for big file sizes. This was 2.3ishMB. That's huge!

OH, there's nothing different in the code on that page. Do you get problems with the adverts on other animation pages or just that one?

This was hilarious, but there were a few places where I couldn't hear what you were saying because you were talking so fast. I didn't catch any subliminal messages, but I'll look for them on the next viewing.
I've known for years that some dolphins were evil. They'll eat all of our fish and then just leave one day. Just wait.

...I see someone has discovered the animutation style, eh Mata? That guy's face (highly disturbing btw), the too-fast subliminal stuff... I may have to attempt reverse engineering this Flash to truly appreciate it.
Or would I be banned for that?

You can do it if you like.

I guess I'm really going to have to slow down my speech in future. Well, I do make the things to be watched more than once, so I guess that's the benefit of having subtitles.

Eh up? That didn't happen before.

I get the first line or so of voice, up to the first 'tuna chunks' and then the voice cuts out. I did the refresh and shiznit but I still can't hear it. Any help?

Happened to me too, I shut my browser and opened it again and it worked for me. I'd just downloaded version 8, don't know if that has anything to do with it.

I did enjoy it, though, especially the "evil" dolphins with the 666 flashing on their foreheads.

I've seen it three or four times already, but I keep missing the subliminal stuff and the slogan at the end. *stares intently at the animation* What *is* the slogan at the end, anyway?

Nice blazer

I suspect that it's probably related to the Flash 8 upgrade. Macromedia have been trying a new system for the upgrade this time around, and I've been hearing all kinds of strange reports back about how it's behaving.

Astarael: as mentioned, the flash of 666 on the evil dolphin's head is one of them, and the most obvious, but the others aren't necessarily working to support the corporation... So who could have put them there? And why?

El: It's not a blazer, it's a suit jacket, I'm just very tall so the jacket has to be quite long!

I have Flash 8 but its still cutting out.

Oh bugger. It's happening to me now.

I downloaded the version of the swf that's on my server, played it from my local drive and it worked perfectly.

Aaaargh! What the blinking Nora is going on?

Eep! It must be the work of the government!

I think that's the only logical conclusion.

There is another idea though. Initially I only had Flash 8 installed on Firefox. I've not done a PC restart since putting it on IE, so maybe that's having some effect on the playback? Some sort of caching issue related to the streaming audio maybe.

I looked at it again today and the page has seemed to fix itself - which is good.

2.4MB WOW!

Yep, it's a biggun.

I restarted Firefox and tried rewatching the animation after a ctrl+F5 refresh and I got a lot further into the movie soundtrack than before. I definitely think that there's some caching issue. I'm downloading lots of (non-commercially available and so legal) stuff at the moment so I don't want to restart my machine, but it might be to do with the streaming audio not being able to get the bandwidth that it needs. Possibly...

Either that or there is going to be a patch appearing for flash player fairly soon. It doesn't seem to be quite as compatible with... anything at all come to think of it as one might wish.

Note: He's fibbing about the eyes being hand drawn. They're real, and he really does move like that. Unfortunately being in stop motion seems to limit manual dexterity. At least, I think that's the reason he always refuses to write on the answer sheet at pub quizzes.

The cutty-outy-sound thing is happening to all sorts of animations I'm watching on Newgrounds - it's verying the annoying. But I've had no problem with the new Mr SB as of yet, so I have no idea.

Really? Ah, now that is interesting. So it's not my file at fault, but a more general issue. Thanks!

I've reported it to Macromedia, hopefully I'll hear something back by tomorrow.

EDIT: I just tried watching it again and this time it worked all the way through. How strange. I've also uploaded a copy with the dialogue put through a de-esser filter which might make it slightly more clear.

Theres a difference?!

Yes, it's something to do with the styling and pocket shape I think, although I can't remember exactly what.

Hmmm.... Good to know....
A bit tipsy cuz I had to calm down my nerves!

I need to watch the animation a few more times so I can look for all the subliminal-y greatness because I dont think I caught it

Though, I really like the way you talk fast in this.... all your animations, because thats what keeps me thinking. It makes me stop and be like "Wait a second.... Wow! Okay!"

The exact opposite of my situation. It played fine for me online, but when I downloaded it to disk and played it, no backgrounds, no...
Help...? I cannot download this whenever I want to see it, having dial-up...

That sounds like a Flash Player issue. If you've downloaded the animation try watching it through your web-browser (open with...). If you aren't seeing anything on the downloaded version it's likely that the Flash Player has only installed into your browser, not your whole machine. This is just a guess, but that's the only likely scenario I can think of.

I've watched the animation now without my downloads going on in the background and the sound plays through without any issues, so I'm guessing it's an issue with the streaming audio not having enough bandwidth when there are loads of other things going on down the connection. Can anyone who has been having trouble with the audio confirm that this sounds about right for them please?

When I was at home I didnt have anything running (except AIM....) and I couldnt get it to work on Firefox, but opening with IE worked fine for some reason.... I do have the new flash and all that sooo....

I dunno

You have to install Flash individually on Firefox and IE. Also, Ad-Block, a brilliant extension for Firefox, automatically blocks all Flash 8 content if the Ad-Block tabs are turned on. You can still use Ad-Block with the tabs turned off, you just have to use the Adblock box on the bottom right of your browser window. The tabs are set 'on' by default, so if you've got that extension then that would prevent you from seeing my animation in Firefox.

I suppose I would have gotten that done if I had read the rest of the thread like a good girl I'll try that out

Oy... I am watching it through my browser (IE, for this) and Flash is installed on my machine. Maybe the patch will fix it... maybe.

Could people who have had/are having problems please chip in with a few details? A chap from Macromedia (the makers of Flash) would like to know a few more specifics. First confirm you're on the latest version of Flash Player here

http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/about/

(you should have version 8,0,22,0 at the time of writing this) then put the following details in this thread:

What OS you're running (Windows XP, Linux, etc.)
What you're watching the animation through (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, Safari, etc)
If you're using anything that might be taking up a lot of bandwidth
Approximately how far into the animation you get before the sound cuts out
Has it ever fully worked for you?