Face blindness can be caused by COVID. It happens in women more often that men. What results is an inability to recognize faces of acquaintances, friends and family.
In this shot from COVID Dystopia, here is no animation in this shot other than a camera move with a depth map applied. I did two versions of this painting, one without the smear effects and one with the effect. There is simply a lap dissolve between the two versions of the shot to have the smear appear.
As always seems to happen as I write about each shot I just realized that I could improve it. My thought now it to take the un-smeared shot into Procreate and then recreate the smears by incrementally moving he smear over each face. Procreate has an ability to play back every brush stroke as it is created, so I could animate the smear.
The shot is less than a second long so I have to wonder if people would even notice the extra effort that would go into the shot.
I think it is worth experimenting with the idea. I claimed the film was completed in 2023, but I am still adding animation today. It would be nice to work on something that had a definite clean cut end date. I keep improving it because it is so universally despised by most film festivals. The real problem is that the film lack a story that pulls at heart strings. It is instead a fast paced barrage of imagery. Well this film is what it is. I will hopefully tell a more universal story for the next film I create.