COVID Film: Polishing Opening Shot Animation

Posted on by Thor

Yesterday I got a note on social media from a conspiracy theorist minimizer complaining about the messaging in my art. It makes me feel good knowing this film can make minimizers skin crawl. I wanted to finish this shot yesterday, but I started going cross eyed late at night.

Several issues remain and they relate to the difficulty of using After Effects. I thought that rolling a ball would be a simple task using transform tools. I accomplished the ball roll in Callipeg but noticed that the ball had become insanely pixelated when I saw it play back in Premiere pro. It turns out that any time you rotate or scale an object in Callipeg it becomes more pixelated.

So at the end of the day I was trying to re-animate the ball roll in After Effects. Sliding the position of the ball is easy, however rotating the ball happens around an anchor point in the center of the screen. that anchor point can be manually moved to the approximate center of the ball but when I go to the next key frame the ball moves to the center of the screen where the anchor point was first located. I wrestled with the setting for about an hour with the ball flying off in all direction. Who knew that animating a quarter inch ball roll would become such an issue? I gave up in frustration and went of bed.

Since there is no printed manual, I will be watching a slew of youTube videos about the rotation tool with few of the videos addressing the issue. I did tackle this issue before with the wood chipper scene. I just have to figure out what I did. So my goal for today is to roll a ball a fraction of an inch. Time to face the digital hydra.

COVID Film: Animating the Ambulance

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Yesterday I finished the background painting for this shot. I added a depth map but for a long shot like this it added little to the overall depth of the scene. The right wall was painted as a separate layer as well as the interiors. The shot opens on a close up of the window. As the sound of the ambulance becomes audible the virus rills up to the window as if to look out. Then the camera slowly pans to the left while zooming out, following the ambulance.

I finished keying the animation for when the ambulance turns the curve in Callipeg. The plan is to use the transform tool to move and scale down and up the final keys to the horizons. Animating the blinking lights is going to be the biggest challenge of the scene. I suspect I will want to import the keys into Procreate where there are much better brushes for painting bright lights.  Actually Procreate is coming out with an animation program called Dream in November of this year. It is a shame I can’t use that program for this shot.

Anyway I have a lot to figure out today, so I better get to it.

COVID Film: New Opening Shot

Posted on by Thor

To screen my film which was essentially a story reel at the time,at the Orlando International Fringe Festival, I had to put a disclaimer in front of it. That disclaimer said, “Content Warning: Contains some mature language and content, including depictions of illness and death. Viewer discretion is advised.” After six film festival rejections so far, I suspect judges are predisposed to reject the film as soon as they see this nine second Content Warning.

I decided to start the film with a new opening shot that fills the slot the content warning held. The new shot is a nine second pan down a NYC street following an ambulance which is the only vehicle moving on the streets. The existing audio is of an ambulance siren so this makes perfect sense. I finished the yesterday but didn’t complete the painting since I had worked on several other scenes as well.

This scene opens with a close up on the window and the virus rolls up to the open window as if looking out. The camera pulls back and pans left to follow the ambulance as it rushes down the street. The pan moves from vanishing point to vanishing point.

I am basing the nocturnal scene on a painting I did of the twin Towers from my Stuyvesant Town Apartment back in the late 1980s. This shot is of Third Avenue but the lighting is the same with a variety of apartment windows glowing like stars in the night sky. This is going to be a fun painting to finish.

I am also looking forward to figuring out the animation of the ambulance. It should be fun to figure out how to animate the lights blinking wildly and I need to find a good way to have the headlights illuminate the street. At nine seconds long, this is the longest shot in the film, so I have to make it worthy of the screen time. Should a festival need the warning, I will place it back over this shot.

COVID Film: Animating Genie

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My main objective with this scene was to have the Genie’s arm move so it ties in better with the previous shot. With that accomplished I then animated the the lower red cloud, sand the four COVID protons circling the large virus. The Genie’s head was then thrown back and the pixie dust was morphed to add movement. All this was easy enough to do in After Effects.

When I watched the scene the Genie’s hair seemed lifeless. I therefor imported the skull into Callipeg and hand animated the hair overlapping. Part of me wonders if I over animated the overlapping action, but it works so I accepted it. Aladdin, on stage I left alone. He isn’t the focus of attention.

The next shot I worked on was the cell tower conspiracy shot. I had under animated that shot and had to go back  in to punch up the movement to make it noticeable. Animation seems to be a non stop balancing act of finding just the right amount of movement for each shot.

COVID Film

COVID Film: Animating Uber Driver

Posted on by Thor

In this shot I decided to simply animate the driver rubbing his temple. The shot is just over a second long and many people will probably not notice the animation, but it adds some subtle life to the scene. I might animate the trashy lady’s fake cough today. It would be easy enough to do with pins in After Effects.

COVID was rejected by the Warsaw Film Festival and the New York City Short Film Festival. I get that this film is a hard sell. Most people think the pandemic is over and want desperately to get back to their 2019 lives. This film rather rudely reminds them that the pandemic is very much not over. If it were a light comedy, it might get screened in more festivals. But it is what it is.

Today I plan to start off by animating the genie arm which is a scene that follows the Times Square skeleton selfie. The Times Square skeleton is moving his arm to aim the camera and this scene will follow the same motion. I might animate the magical genie viruses but we will see. Most of the big animated scenes are completed and now I am going back and refining animation and adding subtle touches like the temple rub.

If you want to see COVID on filmFreeway, here is the link... This particular scene might not be cut in yet.

COVID Film: Animating the Skull Toss

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In the previous version of this shot I only animated the skull arching towards the crowd.I decided I need to animate the former president throwing the skull as he slowly walks the stage. In the previous animation I did I moved the skull in After Effects. The trouble is that there is little opportunity to change the timing of the animation. I got it to move on the arch but with very even timing.

I tried animating the skull in Callipeg using the transform tool but a very similar problem arose in that the timing was too even. Computers seem to insist one even timing. I finally decided I had to animate frame by frame repositioning the skull for each position so I had control of the spacing between frames.

I am half way finished with animating the former president. His arm moves fast but the walk is ponderous and slow. I am assuming the audience will only have time to see the skull movement and will not pay attention to the walk. I am debating about some tie movement. That will be subtle if I move it at all. For now the idea of animating the crowd or flags is overkill.

COVID Film: Animating a Flying Cow

Posted on by Thor

In this scene I am animating the flying cow. I had animated it previously but that pass had only a leg move. I decided to get the cow into a full on gallop as it flies through the air backwards. I animated the gallop as a cycle in place. The cow will be much smaller and moving backwards. Once the animation is complete and painted, I plan to merge all the layers and move the existing animation. I might also rotate the cow a bit.

The tail animation still needs to be done. I am imagining a rather frantic tail movement since it is wagging and also being buffeted by high velocity winds. The funnel of the tornado was animated as well and I plan to paint it rather roughly to tr and replicate the spinning shape. I will likely add a subtle movement to the virus as well using pins in After Effects.

I have to still animate the flying tractor and broken boards. I will see if I can do this using the transformation tool. I could also do this animation in After Effects. The house is already animated. I used the transformation tools in Callipeg to move it on a simple arc. It moves rather slow so a camera move was added to the first shot to speed up the scene. I will probably keep the same camera move after animation is complete.

COVID Film: Norway Superspreader

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I cut this shot into the film yesterday, replacing one of the Winter Park Art Festival superspreader shots. One of those shot had one guy in flames holding his girlfriend’s hand and then the next shot was pf the entire crowd on fire. Since the shots were so identical they started to feel like a mistake rather than a progression. That section of the film features scenes which are engulfed in flames. I decided this worked fine since it has the gentle romantic glow of Christmas candles. This replaced the first shot, offering a gentle glow and then the inferno to follow.

I was considering walking all these characters toward the camera, but with the depth map added, I so far feel like there is enough motion already offered in the shot which is less than a second long. I pulled out another shot which had vaguely cloaked nudity with the thought that the single shot might keep some judges from considering screening the film. My best bet however might be to look for film festivals that embrace horror and shock value in their screenings.

COVID was rejected by Leeds International Film Festival in Ireland today.

COVID Film: Canned Lightning or Hand Drawn?

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I spent a day learning how to create some canned lighting in After Effects using expressions and a myriad of effect presets. The effect of all that experimenting is on the bottom. I wasn’t satisfied with the options available. In the original illustration I had created lighting which branches and spread out much further.

I created hand drawn lighting for another shot and realized that by creating the lightning by hand I had much more control over the shapes created. I decided to go back and redo this Zeus scene with the hand drawn approach. Lightning happens extremely fast. Each bolt lasts for just a few frames. So I animated each bolt with a small flash near the finger and then the next frame would have the entirety of the bold painted. The next frame would have a very thin version of the same bolt. After the initial flash, I would create a copy of the lightning bolt and paint it black. That black frame could be felt but not seen. I created the effect the the light was so bright that it burned the retinas.

I repeated the process for a series of bolts in quick succession. The final bold I allowed to trail off by breaking up the thin bolt over two frames. Looking at the scene now I think I want to lightly paint the tips of the flashes a pink color and I need to re-import the hand with a pink glove.

I decided the and drawn lighting will be what I use in the film. It ties in better with the look and style of the film overall.

COVID: SS Texts Final Composite

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I finished compositing this shot yesterday. It all came together as I had hoped. The third SS agent I animated had the largest arm swings and that kept the scene from being too stiff. Since some elements are rock solid, I am always looking for a delicate balance between stillness and action.

Today I am editing in an entirely new shot into the film. I decided that one shot is too controversial to be included. Many of my paintings are insanely controversial, but I need to find the right balance that will start getting accepted into festivals. The new shot I am pulling together is grim but has some warmth. The shot now in the film was chosen simply because a figure was mummified and in a hospital. The new shot still had a sickly patient but they are surrounded by caring parents. I also can add some simple animation to the shot which will add the the ongoing chaos as the film speeds forward.