Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Posted on by Thor

The day Pam and I arrived in Chicago for the Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival, we decided to head downtown immediately to go to a Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert early in the afternoon. We had a Lift ride to our B&B which was an adventure in itself. Our driver who was originally from Central Florida loved Chicago because of the ethnic  and cultural diversity. She wore bright blue sunglasses and the car was decked out in glittery blue highlights everywhere. Thinking back I really should have sketched that car ride but I knew I would be sketching at the concert.

We got seats in the highest balcony. It turns out that meant we had to climb six flights of stairs. I was massively winded by the time we got up to the stratosphere. I am clearly spending too much time behind an animation desk and not enough time exercising. The seating up there is at an amazing incline with metal bars between each row to keep patrons from falling forward. With sigh a steep incline there is no chance of a tall person seated in front from blocking a view. I wonder if that inverted glass dome above the performers offers a unique way to disseminate the sound. I doubt it is just decorative.

The woman seated next to us always likes sitting in this section. She explained to Pam that she used to come up here as a child and for that reason loves seeing concerts from this high vantage point. The seating in these heights was half full, so we had some social distancing from other audience members. Pam and I stayed masked for the concert. About 5% of the Orchestra performers were masked.

Pam’s mom claimed Chicago is walking distance to where Pam grew up in Iowa. When Pam wanted to go to a big city, she went to Chicago. She therefor knew how amazing the Chicago Philharmonic was since she had been there many times before. She was a trombone player in her past and she loves to hear a rock solid horn section live.

The concert featured Rachmaninov’s poignant Third Symphony which evokes the Russia that he loved. In my sketch is Violinist Karen Gomyo, who joined the CSO for Philip Glass’ Violin Concerto No. 1. The third performance was of Sibelius’ atmospheric Pohjola’s Daughter.

Chicago Reel Shorts Film Festival

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This Historic Chicago Firehouse is home to the Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival. This is where my short film, COVID Dystopia has it’s Midwest Premiere. Our bed and breakfast was just a block away, so getting to the festival each evening was a breeze. When walking to the theater the first night we saw a sweet husky in the firehouse side yard wearing a glowing blue collar. The pup sat as far away from its owner as it could.

The building is also home to Chicago filmmakers, which is a not-for-profit media arts organization that fosters the creation, appreciation, and understanding of film and video as media for artistic and personal expression, as well as media of important social and community impact. One of the shorts in the Friday night screening titled 3:00AM by Ricardo Albarran, was filmed entirely inside this building. I recognized some of the locations as I searched for a men’s room between screenings.

I think my favorite film of the festival, other than COVID Dystopia of course, was Get Away, director by Michael Gabriele. This live action horror film features three young women get away to a secluded stone cabin in the desert. With no wifi, they find a single VHS tape and decide to watch it. The movie was filmed in the cabin they are. The action in the VHS tape intertwines in their reality in strange and unexpected ways.

Many of the shorts including Get Away had a 3 day shooting schedule. That makes it sound like a short film is a breeze to produce. Compare that to doing a painting a day for three years and then animating for another seven months and counting.

When I got back to Orlando, my online students started asking how people reacted to my film. Certainly no one laughed at my film and there was a long pause of silent horror followed by applause to break the spell. One of my students told me that both parents are infected with COVID right now. I decided to show her a silent version of the film since the soundtrack has several expletives.  When the silent version was over she was silent and I decided not to press her for feedback. The film is intended to fight the pervasive amnesia and denial that surrounds the COVID mass infections that continue. The message probably bounces off of COVID deniers but lingers with the few who know the long term repercussions of repeat infections. COVID continues to be a train wreck happening in slow motion. However most prefer to go think life has returned to “normal.”

COVID Film: Rudy Meltdown

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Yesterday I animated the candle flame in this shot of Rudy melting down using Callipeg.I animated the flame with an animation student. I found a youTube video that showed a candle flame flickering for an hour for mediation. I let that video play the whole time I animated. My first pass at the animation was a bit to extreme, so it dialed it back with a second pass at the animation.

Two of the lawyers in this scene, Jenna Ellis and Sydney Powell,  recently pleaded guilty in the election subversion case in Georgia. They pleaded guilty to avoid jail time. Amazingly their “boss” is the Republican front runner in the presidential election next year.

I had previously animated the candle flame in After Effects using the pin tool. However by animating the flame by hand I had more control over the flame tip movement and the squash and stretch. The difference is subtle but to me very noticeable.

I kind of like the scene with just the candle flame being animated, but it is too peaceful. Today I will be igniting the constitution as well. My fear is that the new inferno might upstage the candle flame but it is needed. I will likely use the pin tool to animate Rudy’s face melting as well.

I got a thank you e-mail from the Chicago International Reel Shorts Film Festival today. They had a very successful year with largely sold out screenings for each show block. They were helped by Chicago Magazine and The Daily Herald who promoted the festival in their “things to do this weekend in Chicago”. I must say, my screening was packed full.

Sprout Halloween Nap

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The last drawing I did during a virtual online course with a student pulled everything together. Donkey got off of this seat and Sprout took her place. Thankfully he was facing me as he dozed off. He is rather small on the page which allows the setting to tell more of the story.

In the corner is an umbrella for a rainy day. Next to the umbrella is a six foot long stick which I used to bring to Crealde Classes to be sure students were spaced apart. COVID is airborne and can linger in the air for much further than six feet but at least I tried to keep my students safe.

What makes this sketch work is the contrast between the bright outdoors and the dark interior. It allows for more impressionistic colors and moody greys. Hopefully the student walked away with an understanding that a good sketch is more about the story than just getting the thing on the page.

Donkey

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As I sketched my dogs as a demo for my online student, Donkey was curled up across from me with her back to me. Most of the time she was a shapeless lump. When I got up for a moment to change positions, she took notice and glanced at me.

That was the moment I started to raw her. I knew the moment wouldn’t last long, so I threw lines down as fast as possible. Donkey had a crazy grey haired mow-hawk which I wanted to catch. She lost interest after a few minutes of starting at me and so I focused on the rest of the sketch.

There are things I would like to improve, but instead of obsessing over this one sketch I will just do another. This is more scribble than sketch.

Sprout 2

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For a second sketch with my virtual student, I sketched Sprout when he lay right next to me.Again, I stressed working fast and furious. Sprout has a strange way of lying like a human when he sleeps. His back legs are not foled up under him like most dogs. Instead. he lays with his back legs extended. I think this must ne rather uncomfortable, but he can lay like this for hours.

Light was low in the late afternoon, so I made the whole sketch rather dark. There is no pure white, instead everything is in muted greys. I timed each sketch based on how ling Sprout remained in that particular position. There is a sense of panic that the moment might be lost that is never achieved by working from a photo. My student was unfortunately sketching from a photo and got a decent result, but there is a stiffness that always surfaces from the photo real.

Today my film COVID Dystopia is being screened for the first time at an international film festival.

Sprout Afternoon Nap

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In a virtual portfolio class I am encouraging my student to draw from life more.Many of my younger students are stuck in a world of video game art. They constantly draw characters from their favorite game. My goal is to get them to look away from the computer screen and sketch from life.

While my student drew her dog, I went to the living room and sketched our dogs. I wanted to encourage the student to work quickly and rather loose. I did three of four of these quick studies, while my student worked on a single sketch.

Working quick and loose is a message that never sinks in right away. I hammer away at the message over and over while showing them how I approach a sketch.

COVID Film: Burn It Down

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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.

COVID Film: Takes One

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I am continuing to experiment with animating fire. This one is based on a slow motion shot of a fire starting. Fire happens so fast that it changes faster than the shutter speed. This means the action is happening faster than it can be observed, creating jarring quick spikes. This was slowed done a bit to allow for smoother action.

Most tutorials I have been looking at promote a smooth waving motion and I have resisted that cliche for more chaos. The painting of the fire has been done on two layers, one being the base which is orange and then a much brighter yellow. I bring those two layers into procreate and add more brush strokes to add more texture and chaos.

I may skip the yellow layer today and simply paint with more texture from the start. I am trying to get as natural a feel as I can in the way it is painted without spending too much time on every cell. I honestly don’t know if the animation I am doing is accurate. I am just playing with the shapes and experimenting. I favor chaos over a simple repetitions pattern of motion.

I am animating a torch today and the goal is to simplify the motion in some ways. I have adopted a perspective blur effect to radiate a blur away from the base of the fire. This saves me from having to smudge the edges of the fire shapes to keep the share from looking like a hard cut out. I am trying a different work flow on every animation I do and when I find one that works really well, I will adopt it across the board.

COVID Film: Crying Baby Fire Animation

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Today is my day off, so I am committing to animating the flaming baby close up scene. I tried animating ti with a rising bubble technique, but wasn’t satisfied. Instead I referenced a burning curtain. Animating fire involves absolute chaos with principles of waving motion and rising currents.

I started by animating the chaos on twos. With that pass finished, I returned to add inbetweens to put the scene on ones. These inbetweens should smooth out some of the motion and make it more fluid. I also change the animation to try and get the rising motion to work better.

Will all this work? I honestly have no idea. I am proceeding as if it will all fall in place but ti could very well fall apart since I am not a seasoned effects animation. I should be able to wrestle any scene into submission if I simply keep correcting things that feel wrong.

I now have a work flow that can paint the flames pretty convincingly, but it is the motion that will really sell the shot.