COVID Dystopia: Berlin Premiere

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COVID Dystopia is an official selection of the Berlin Short Film Festival. We are busy getting passports and making travel plans. Though we are fast tracking the passports, there is no guarantee that the US Government will get them ready in time. Though I am super excited to screen the film for the first time in Europe, this isn’t the 74 year old Berlin Festival which will be happening several weeks later. I thought this might be an Academy Award Qualifying festival, but I didn’t do my research well enough.

I have been researching my father’s WWII military unit history and I know which towns he was engaged in as his unit moved towards Berlin. His unit crosses the Rhine Rover at Duisberg the day after Churchill crosses the river a bit further north. I also know he was at the liberation of a forced labor, or concentration camp in the Ruhr. I hope to figure out exactly what camp that was someday. There will not be enough time on this trip to explore those cities in the Ruhr section of Germany.

COVID Dystopia will be screening at 6pm on February 11, 2023 in the Babylon Cinema, Rosa-Luxemburg-Straße 30, Mitte Berlin.

COVID Dystopia: Wacky Wavy Final Animation

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Last night I composited the animation with the background and confetti in After Effects. The depth map is shown on top. With the depth the camera move feels like a drone or crane is lowering the camera as the mob of wacky wavy Uncle Sams gesture.

As I was working on this composite, I got some great news in that COVID Dystopia is an official selection at the Berlin Short Film Festival in Germany. I am scrambling to update my passport and making plans to be at the screening. It seems the submission process is picking up steam. I honestly thought no one would ever screen this nightmarish short.

Now that the film has won a Best Animated Film Award in the Chicago International Reel Film Festival, I realize all the time invested might have been worth it. This wacky wavy scene might be that last scene that needs animation. I am going to render the whole film again so that the Berlin Film Festival can upload the most recent version of the film.

My mission to make people aware that the pandemic is far from over continues.

COVID Dystopia: Wacky Wavy 7

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After 8 hours of teaching online students, I only had the energy to add several arms to one of the wacky wavy characters. I actually am starting to enjoy doing the overlapping action on the arms. I am starting to better understand how they blow in the breeze. Adding the fabric fringe fingers is my favorite part since they bend with the action.

I want to add several more to this front row to fill in the negative shapes between characters. In the original illustration I added partial bodies and legs in those spots just as filler. There are bodies without heads just to fill in the space. I can’t get away with that in the animation so I need a better solution. One arm is sort of dangling all alone so I will need to link that to a moving character.

The end is in sight but I will not finish today. There are a whole lot more characters that I want to animate in the distance. I will simplify that animation a bit playing down the waving motion, but it will still be lots of work. Today I will find out if the Berlin Film Festival wants to screen this film. Fingers are crossed.

COVID Dystopia: Wacky Wavy 6

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I finished up two more wacky wavy animations yesterday.I was really pleased with one where the arm waved in front of the character’s face but the move is largely hidden since the other characters are in front. Anyway I plan to do two more mid distance wacky wavy animations and then I hope to do the distant arms on a single animated layer.

The end is in sight, but I will not finish today because I will be teaching 8 hours on online virtual classes for Elite Animation. Today I am teaching character design and animation. I might animate along with the student in the animation class but I will need to also demonstrate how to animate a bouncing ball.

Yesterday COVID Dystopia was rejected by the Sacramento Film Festival. I don’t get as upset by the rejection zs much these days, since I know this is an award winning film. I also know it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. A festival director has to have some pretty big balls to screen the film while promoting in person festival screenings. The message that the pandemic is not over doesn’t resonate when you want to crowd as many people as  possible into a theater with no thought of air filtration or masking.

Again we are at the height of the second largest wave of the pandemic right now, making 2020 and 2021 look like cake walks. People however have been sold a bill of goods that the pandemic is over and everyone should go back to how things were in 1919. Mass infection is the goal, but immunity isn’t being build it is being demolished.

COVID Dystopia: NYC Tsunami

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We are at the peak of the second largest wave of the pandemic. Few take any precautions because the president has said there is nothing to worry about. Every day bring new horrible news of how the virus is damaging immune systems. The initial infection might not kill, though about 2000 Americans are dying every week, but people are dying of stroke at a very young age and Long COVID is disabling the American workforce.

Anyway it took quite a few days to clean up this scene so that it will not be blurry when projected on a large movie screen. I am animating scenes at 4K now which is double the final resolution so that lines stay crisp. I am still working on the wacky wavy scene but progress is slow and methodical. Part of me worries that all the wacky waving action might be overkill. I have to push ahead and finish the scene to see if it works in the flow of the film.

COVID Dystopia: Wacky Wavy 5

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Two more wacky wavy animations were done yesterday. I need to finish up painting one of them.Now that the front row is in motion I am realizing that there are a bunch of legs I places in the original illustration that do not line up with actual characters. I am if I should leave this as a painted element held cell of keep adding characters to get those legs to move.

There is another whole background contingent of wacky wavy characters and I may simplify their movements. I might just move their arms in a subtle way the way the scene was first animated. Today I will animate the outer most wacky wavy guys. The end goal is to feel like you can see a massive crowd going back into Times Square. The negative spaces need to be filled to make it clear this is a massive crowd. I had the same situation with Centaurs running down the street. I solved that scene with a moving painted dark crowd to represent the other Centaurs but I don’t think that will work in this case.

At some point I will only be animating what can be seen. So far I have animated each character separately and on may partly hide another. Once characters are only partly seen the animation might be done on mass. In two days I will start teaching virtual classes again, so production will slow down. This is probably the last scene I am animating, so I am not rushing to finish quickly.

On the COVID front we might be at the peak of the second largest wave of the pandemic. About 1 in 3 people are infected. 2 million people are being infected each day. 2000 people are dying from COVID each week. Repeat infections do not build immunity, rather immunity is being destroyed much in the way HIV destroys immunity. Good luck out there stay safe.

COVID Dystopia Wacky Wavy 4

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I finished two more wacky wavy animations yesterday. I have stated to realized that every one of them is standing upright at the end of each animation, so with the second row I plan to have some leaning down at the end of the animation. I need to add more variety to the heights.I can move characters if needed as well, but for now everyone is staying in place.

In the original illustration I have many leaning down so I could see into the distance down the street. Perhaps a clear view isn’t needed as long as I can see the mass of distant waving arms as well. I am sticking to getting two done each day. This scene in the present version of COVID Dystopia does work. It appears as slow motion movement but I think this will work better in the end. The question become what is good enough versus what works great.

The first week of the year brings some sadness as I have to prepare all the expenses from last year into a spreadsheet. On top of  that the DMV never sends me my new tag for the car license plate each year. We discovered that they were sending the tags to an old address. That was corrected but I bet they aren’t smart enough to make that change and send it to the right address.

Orange County DMV still hasn’t done its job and sent what I ordered. I have had to go downtown to the DMV office before to beg them to do their job and give me what I paid them for. It looks like I will have to do that again.

COVID Dystopia: Wacky Wavy 3

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I finished about one an a half Wacky Wavy animations yesterday. I am looking at live action reference to figure out how the arms wave but I am learning that I can make things up so long as there is some wave action happening. I don’t need to be 100 percent accurate in how the arms move the movement just needs to chaotic and believable.

Having made quite a few mistakes I am now getting abetter handle on what is believable. I have to take into account gravity and the force of the air billowing up the arm tubes. I hope to finish two more wacky wavy animations today.

While working on this scene I am listening to accounts of the final 100 days of WWII. My father was in Germany of the final 99 days of the war, so I am trying to figure out his movements. My father died in 1987 and her never spoke of the war, so I am researching to try and find out what happened “over there.” I figured out which cities in the Ruhr pocket her fought in and I now know he helped deport victims of a forced labor camp. Forced labor was common in Germany to fuel the war effort in the industrial pocket. I am trying to narrow down exactly which camp he would have liberated, but there are so many in the Ruhr area. This is an account from the other 1st Lieutenant in my fathers unit…

“In this capacity, we had a strange task that I have brooded about for years. There were many Displaced Persons (DP’s) that apparently, by treaty, were to be shipped home by the easiest rail line. I, of course, would have given my eyeteeth to be sent home and I therefor was very perplexed as many of these people did not want to go “east.” In fact, we had to nail the doors shut in the 40-8’s to keep them on board at least until they left the marshaling yard. I now realize that for many there was no “home” and that this act that I considered a good deal was often really a  death sentence. I can still see the sad faces as they were boxed up to go “home.”

– Joe Colcord Lieutenant, Company C, 290th Infantry U.S. 75th Division

COVID Dystopia: Wacky Wavy 2

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I didn’t complete a whole lot of work on this scene Sunday. Pam and I did a major day of house cleaning in preparation of her having some of her family friends over from Iowa. I stayed masked any time I was in the house. The HEPA air filter was on full blast as it always is.

Both of our dogs have been in lockdown since the start of the pandemic so they are not used to having people enter the home. Donkey went ballistic screaming and barking at the guests, so I stayed with the dogs outside until she calmed down. I then brought her inside again and stayed with her in a far room so she could see the guests but not jump on them. In some ways this was good for me as well since it guaranteed I kept social distanced and masked inside.

We put the dining room table outside on the screened back porch and that worked well. It was a perfect day to be outside. All the home windows were open and ceiling fans stayed on indoors and outdoors on the porch. Pam used the Uni pizza oven to bake pizzas for everyone. This was the first dinner party we hosted since the pandemic began.

Donkey calmed down once everyone was seated outside. I am new to the risk assessment game and I decided the mask could come off outside but I would put it back on any time I went inside. My hope is that the ceiling fans outside would circulate any aerosols down and then outside. A couple of times I just held my breath inside as I went in to get guests drinks.

Right now the pandemic is raging. We are now in the second largest wave since the start in 2019. This wave hasn’t peaked yet. It is expected to keep rising through February 2024. Only the Omicron wave was larger. About 2 million people are being infected every day and no one knows exactly what percentage of those people will develop long Covid. By the end of this wave one in three Americans are expected to become infected.

COVID did come up at the dinner party. One guest had COVID twice. COVID had been in our house twice but my layered mitigations managed to keep me from getting infected. Masks, HEPA air purifiers and vaccines do work.

Promoting my COVID Dystopia film will likely be the most risky thing I do in the coming year since it might mean attending crowded film festival screenings in cities around the country and around the world.

When the White House press secretary was asked point blank about the rising cases, she said people are responsible for accessing their own risks. In other words, “You do you.” America has always been, and continues to be, the most infected nation in the world when it comes to COVID. You are free to become infected and encouraged to infect others. It is the American way.

COVID Dystopia: Wacky Wavy 1 color

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Yesterday I was helping Pam clean up the house, so I didn’t expect to get much animation done. I did however get a chance to animate all the tendrily fingers hanging off the tube arms. This was some fun straight ahead animation that added plenty of overlap to the flapping arms. I also painted the entire character late in the day.

What I learned from animating this first Wacky Wavy Uncle Sam can be used when I continue to animate all the other Uncle Sams. I will not reuse any animation. Each Uncle Sam will move differently. It looks like there are about 8 more characters t animate in the front row and there are plenty more going back in space. By the time I finish this scene I should have a better grasp on animating waving tube arms.