COVID Film: Burn It Down

I finished animating the torch in this scene. I worked that into the final comp but when I went to open it today I got a warning that stated. “After Effects Error: The file you are attempting to open was created in After Effects version 24.0.2 (Windows 64) and cannot be opened with this version. See www.adobe.com/aftereffects for information on upgrading your software. Hell I created the file yesterday. It isn’t like this is an ancient file created in the distant past. Hopefully Pan can figure out tonight why the software is once again crashing and burning.

I thought I could get away with only animating the torch flame but once I saw the scene with that animation in place. I decided I would have to animate the boat flames as well. What I am showing here is early on in that process. I imported all the drawings into Procreate and I will be painting the flames this afternoon. The action is chaotic enough and now I just need to make the painted flames more believable.

I was looking at fire animation from the movie Bambie and surprisingly the fire isn’t an element that is smoothly animated. I also looked at fire animation in Hunchback and that has some stellar fire scenes. My fire is based on live action footage and isn’t very stylized. As I continue animating fire it will hopefully become more intuitive and fluid.

Most online tutorials show flames as cartoon teardrop shapes that wiggle back and forth. What I want is more sharp and violent.

Tomorrow Pam and I are flying to Chicago to screen the film at the Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival. I plan to share some sketches of our dogs that I did with a student while we are gone. I am sure I will sketch at the film festival, but I will not do any write ups until I get back.