saving problems

[Sifka]

Hello everybody,

I have a major problem with TV Paint. Lately when ever I've made a new scene and saved it, after opening it again it's suddenly vanished! The program acts as if I saved a blank scene, but when I click on the saved file it shows how much disk space it takes and time and date of last edited.

I really hope somebody can help me, I've already lost a great deal of work...
Tanks

[Paul Fierlinger]

Just a wild guess; have you tried looking under the Project tab in the left top corner of your layers panel?

[Sifka]

oh my god, You're right!!!

Thank you so much

[Paul Fierlinger]

You are welcome.
Here's how that system works for me:
1. When I first open TVPaint to start a new project, before I even draw something I SAVE AS the project under a name only, say Bad Dog. This gives me a file Bad Dog.tvpp (notice two "p's")

2. I open the Project tab and rename the clip by double clicking on its Bad Doy name to "BD1-10" This stands for
Project Bad Dog
Scene 1
Clip 1 (using only decimal numbering for clips)
I draw my first storyboard panel and go to the little row of +1 icons on the left

3. and add a new CLIP (not SCENE, which are the icons above).
This gives me a new clip next to my first one and I name it BD1-20

Scenes are segments of my story, for instance this first scene is in the kitchen and perhaps it's made of 4 or 5 clips. I double click on the first clip which opens it up with the layer panel showing and I draw perhaps 2 or 3 rough keys separated by a length of instances between each key. I play these 3 drawings back in real time (usually my projects are set to 12fps in the startup screen before I open TVP) to check my timing.

I do the same within clips 2 and 3. I then leave the Project tab opened and hit PLAY -- and now all 3 clips, which is Scene 1, will play together. If I see a need to add a new clip between 1 and 2, I insert a new one using the little icons on the left and name this one BD1-15.

4. Now I'm ready to plot Scene 2 out and using the icon Add a Scene after the current scene, I start a new scene. It is visually separated from Scene 1 by a notch at the bottom and top of the dividing line. I name it BD2-10 and continue the way I described above with Scene 1.

5 I SAVE OFTEN, SOMETIMES AFTER EVERY FRAME I DRAW. Under Preferences I have Auto Backup set to anything between 10 and 99. When I close my WIP and reopen it the next day, all I see is what you saw; BAD DOG.tvpp. But there are times when I want to export just a clip and for that I select EXPORT CLIP. I might do this so that my wife , Sandra can pick it up and start coloring it. The clips will be saved under the names I have given them with the extension *.tvp (just one "p")

As you get deeper into your work, there will be much more that you will learn about why you want to follow this sort of file management but it is important to learn to get into the habit of keeping projects and clips in good order and to always name every layer, name every custom brush you create, name saved settings etc. and save these elements in a consistent system of folders. Otherwise, without being diligent about file management you'll find yourself very quickly in a mess.