COVID: Shot 6

Shot 6 was the first time I tried using Volumax Pro 7 Smart to try and get some sense of a third dimension to the monkey. I drew depth maps with a pen tool and adjusted the 4 or so layers I creates to that the hand was light and things grew darker moving back. I then painted the mouth to be darker to get some depth. The effect is subtle but it is there. I can see the teeth turn obsessionally as the monkey screams.

I used Volumax Ai to create a depth map for the background monkeys and then moved each of the hands separately. I doubt people notice all the hand movements but they should get a general sens of chaos. By this time I was used to animating breath and COVID spatter using positioning and scale. As each shot progresses the breath expands and the spatter moves with it. Each painting has a different way of visualizing breath. I must have used every color of the rainbow in visualizing how airborne COVID floats through the air like smoke.

The public was lead to believe that the virus could only spread 6 feet but it can travel so much further. My general rule of thumb has been to mask up if I get within 22 feet of anyone else. That applies inside and outside.

For the first time I am paying attention to how many times this film has been seen. I am disappointed since the day before I posted this online a woman posed a video of her singing a song about masking. That video had 80,000 views on the first day. This film has only been seen several hundred times. I don’t understand how ti use social media. I don’t think I ever will. I knew people didn’t want to be reminded of what has happened and what is still happening. Oh well, I need to muster up the courage to keep creating.

You can see the full COVID film here.