This is another example where I post a scene here and decided it needs more work. Seeing this still, made me realize that the darks on each player are different. On the defender the darks are pure black whereas the darks on the player taking the shot are greyed down. I think I will grey down the blacks on the defender to match. The goal isn’t to focus on the players but on the virus.
The scene took a solid day to animate and paint and is should take an hour or so to refine the darks one more time. In the illustration the painting of the players focused on subtle gradients of paint that describe the round forms. For the animation I instead painted the players with bold poster like brush strokes. They jump and fall away so quickly that no one will analyses the way their faces are painted.
I added turbulence to the background clouds to add some motion. Most people will not notice that subtle addition but they will feel it.
I should be ready to render the whole movie again today, but I know that the Adobe render engine is malfunctioning. The last time I tried to render whole scenes would render off screen and drift around in a black void. It is frustrating to keep working, not sure if the results will ever render correctly.