My computer exploded (and what that means for Wall World) (Patreon)

Hi all! Some pretty rotten news to report- about a week ago, without any warning, my computer stopped working. It was doing nothing in particular, then it was frozen, then it was off. It was so off that it would never turn on again. It was so off that the entire hard drive corrupted, and the computer fixing guys who I gave it to 5 days ago have finally conceded that all of my data is completely unsalvageable.

So! What was that data, and what was I smart enough to back up? Surely I've been backing up Wall World??? The answer is of course, of course I've been backing up Wall World. Not just sporadically dragging it onto an external drive either, but automatic back ups- something I've never done before, but should theoretically be always all the way backed up.

In practice, it was not all the way backed up. Nothing too major in terms of animation, but for whatever reason, the most recent shot or two were not there. A few week's work. Frustrating, because it's a shot I was already not enjoying and dragging my feet on- it's a difficult one and not a particularly interesting or rewarding one- and coupled with a week lost to trying to fix my computer, getting a new computer, setting up a new computer- I've functionally lost a full month of time. BUT that's really a drop in the ocean for a project this big, and animating a shot a second time is usually quicker, since I've already done all the problem solving.

What I HAVE lost, which is much more significant, is sound.

All of the sound design and music for Wall World is made in tandem, in Ableton Live. The Ableton Live file was safely in the backup of course, but that's functionally just a list of instructions that say "the splat sound will start here, it has an echo on it".That splat sound is generally not exclusive to Wall World- so instead of putting it in the project folder, I would put all the splats and boings and bonks in another big folder of ever-growing sounds that I pick from for all my films and music. And THAT folder, well, I apparently haven't backed that one up in four years.

Thankfully, what I DO still have is the exported version of the audio track so far- everything flattened into one file. I had not mixed most of it properly because I was going to go back and fix it up later- but now most of the source files are missing, so the un-exported version is now a swiss cheese of missing sounds. If swiss cheese was about 70% holes- so very bad value swiss cheese.

So going back and changing any audio can now only be done in a very limited capacity, and re-using any of the sounds or instruments later in the film just got a lot trickier.

Still, that's all stuff I can ignore for now, and I've already started re-animating my lost scene (hopefully better than before?)The best thing I can do is power on and not let it slow me down. I feel awful that I've effectively done negative work this month, on your dime, and I hope I can make it up to you!