COVID: Animating SS Agents

Posted on by Thor

I considered animating the SS agents in slow motion but that looked to unnatural. Instead I kept fast motion through the run and then spent one third of the time getting them to settle into a final stance. It worked out well. I haven’t added shadows yet under the agents. That will anchor then to the ground plane. The shadow of the agent leaping over the cell phone will be painted on a layer behind the held cell of the phone. That will allow the opaque phone to cut off the shadow cleanly.

With the second agent I tried the run with the agents arms stiff as a held cell. That looked very unnatural, so then I tried flailing the arms about but that looked too crazy. I finally animated the arms straight out front but going up and down a bit and then slapping down at the end. That was just enough action to work without looking distracting.

I painted the background to fill in where the agents once stood. This allows for me to move them all without a hole appearing behind them. That new painting was used to create the depth map. I didn’t bother painting the tire on the car since the tire will never be seen. The two foreground agents will be very still although I might shift their weight a tiny bit.

I have one more agent to animate today. My plan is to have that agent fill in the empty space behind the other tow agents thus filling in the empty space. I would cut off that animation without settling the action at the end. That means I will have to space out the keys further apart to get a fast run. He will have to start from behind the car of perhaps even off screen to make that happen. Each run has three primary keys so I will compare the spacing to the previous runs.

I should have the scene finished and composited before I start virtual teaching in the afternoon.

COVID: SSTextss

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Yesterday I met four new students during six hours of online courses. I always enjoy the first courses since I get to discover the ambitions of new aspiring artists. After the classes I needed to relax, but I set up this shot in Procreate to start animating today.To set up a shot I isolate each character on their own level so I can animate each independently.

My plan is to animate the three agents who are running towards the virus. The two agents in the foreground will remain rock solid as held cells. They will save me from having to draw quite a few legs. My thought is that I would like these guys moving in slow motion but that means more drawings on ones. I have my work cut out for me.

The other agents will move only slightly. The agent with the mini machine gun will raise his gun a bit and the two police will lean into the virus ever so slightly. That animation will involve a lot less work. My iPad just informed me that I have been working on the film for 11 hours a day last week. Time to get back to it.

COVID: What Virus?

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In this shot the camera trucks downward a bit. I added some subtle animation of the legs kicking on the guy who is doing a handstand. The day was quite productive with 5  shots completed. I was finishing animation on this scene around midnight.

The 4 animal shots work really nice now that they are animated. I am using animation to draw the viewers eyes to certain sections of the scene so that they are ready for the next shot. I have finished most of the most complicated shots but part of me wants to go back and refine some of the animation. The scene on the beach with the zombies in particular stands out. I animated broken limbs and off balance walks, but they are detracting from looking at the beautiful woman wearing a mask. I might go back and slow down all the zombies so they move in slow motion. It could be as easy as getting rid of a lot of drawings or it might mean adding a whole lot of inbetweens.

I will be setting up to work on the iPhone assassination scene. Secret service agents can remain rock solid and still but there is a guy rushing towards the virus being pinned against a wall. I am thinking he may also need to move in slow motion. Each time I view the short, my list of refinements grows. The fact that 3 film festivals have rejected the film so far inspires me to keep making it better. But the hard edged lyrics and imagery aren’t for everyone.

COVID: Lion’s Den

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Yesterday as another day of animating lions. I noticed that the human skull on the floor is a bit lost in the quick shot, so I animated the male lion stepping on it. If there was time I would have him bat it about like a kitten with a toy.

I just need to add more paint to the second lioness to tie her into the look of the scene. I do this by first painting shadows and then highlights. The challenge is to try and do this consistently from cell to cell so that the paint doesn’t crawl too much.

Getting the lioness to walk away from the camera was quite a challenge and I am happy that I pulled it off. Other lions in the background will move subtly but I plan to animate then using pins in After Effects. The nurse will also lean forward ever so subtly again using pins to key frame the existing painting.

Yesterday I got a congratulatory note form filmFreeway with animating balloons ext to let me know COVID was a Finalist with the FilmQuest Film Festival in Utah. The note had buttons to share the news on Facebook and Twitter. I punched both buttons in my excitement. After some research on being a finalist, I found out that the film was not accepted to be screened. It was just one of the top 75 films that was cut at the last minute. There is still a possibility that the festival might screen the film online. This makes sense since those who would appreciate the film are likely COVID cautious and thus would not attend a crowded indoor festival.

My list of rejections so far include, Global Peace Film Festival, Film Quest and Saint Louis International Film Festival. My record now is 2 screenings and 3 rejections. I am coming to terms with the fact that I have created a film that no one wants to screen, since everyone wants to forget and move on. Most are vaxed and relaxed. However vaccines do not stop infections or long COVID symptoms. The main point of my film is that the pandemic is not over, and no one wants to hear that. Every rejection hurts, but every time I get bad news I apply to another festival until I find judges brave enough to screen COVID.

COVID: Lions Infected

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Yesterday I managed to animate three lions. Now I haven’t worked on Lion animation since I was an intern during the making of the Lion King. The few inbetweens I did for that film don’t really qualify me to be animating quadrupeds. The animation I did yesterday is passable and I am pleased with the final look of the shot.

I didn’t get into all the subtleties of the walks with shoulder blades protruding above the back or the hip movements but I did figure out the basics of getting four feet to work in tandem. Like in a human walk it all comes down to finding the contact positions and the passing positions. If the front legs are in a contact position then the back legs will be in a passing position and vice a versa.

I was quite pleases that I pulled off the lion walking towards the camera and turning. When I was a child I saw Disney animation drawing exhibited at a mall of a tiger walking in a circle. Ever since seeing those drawing I wanted to be an animator and I have finally gotten to the point where I am trying a similar scene. There are actually some mistakes with the back legs in that animation but the foreshortening hides the movements of the back legs and in general it works so I am moving on.

Today’s animation is very similar and just as challenging. One lion is walking toward the camera and the other waling away. The lions are in a crowded ER so there isn’t much room to move then so they will each just take one stride. I also want to animate a lion yawning the the background but that can be done in after effects with pin animation. This is quite a bit to hope to accomplish in one day, so I better get started.

Oh. I discovered that After Effects was playing back previews at 60 frames a second for some reason and I found the way to change the setting back to 29.97 so watching my animation going crazy fast is no longer an issue.

COVID: The Racoon Dog

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Folks in China and Europe hate the feral Racoon Dog. The animal has proliferated despite being hunted by man. One study found that Racoon Dogs which were sold as meat at the Wuhan market might have been infected and possibly bean the outbreak. Another study found that first study to be inconclusive. The studies were based on hundreds of environmental swabs that Chinese scientists collected from cages, carts, and other surfaces at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China. With COVID people want something to blame. Dim witted Americans lash out and violently threaten anyone of oriental dissent.

With this shot I animated the Racoon dog turning it’s head to look up at it’s captors. I animated the scene in Callipeg. I only worked on the head and forequarters of the racoon dog while leaving the rest as a held cell. I had fun with this animation because I kept the paintings loose and spontaneous with plenty of pencil scribbles in the fur. I exported the animation with a green screen behind it.

When I composited that green screen shot into the final composite in After Effects, the animation played back twice as fast. I decided to just send it over to premiere pro to see if that fixed the crazy playback speed. When I did that a single frame went black in the render with a long error message. Of course all this happened at the end of the day when I wanted to wrap up and relax for a bit. Pam looked at it and suggested I shut everything down and try again. She suspected that the problem was in the export from Callipeg.

I shut it all down and let it sit overnight. This morning I repeated the renders. All looked good in Callipeg, but the play back in After Effects was still twice as fast. I sent the composite over to Premiere Pro and thankfully it played back fine there. I researched the issue this morning for a bit and one conclusion is that After Effects can not be trusted to play back with the proper timing. With that in mind I need to keep pushing forward knowing that the program has some major flaws.

Today I will return to animating animals. This morning I will start tackling a lion walk.

COVID: Bullet Time

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Yesterday was a day of learning how to animate lightning. The first scene was of Zeus with pink lightning flashing from his finger tip. I created the animation in After Effects using an advanced lighting tool along with several expressions to effect the flashing brightness and conductivity. I learned quite a bit about how to get just the right amount of glow but there was little control over how the lighting animated. The scene worked an I moved on.

The second shot was of a basketball rebound with lighting flashes in the background. For this shot I hand animated the lightning and the result was far more dynamic. A single lightning bolt was drawn with wide jagged edges and then the next frame would be a single thin line down the middle of the bolt. Alternating back and forth the lightning flickers. Adding a single black bolt then adds some retinal burn. I was quite pleased with the result. Callipeg the animation program I used has no blur effect so the glow had to be hand painted. Since the flash happens so fast that wasn’t much of a problem.

I animated the viruses in this scene and now I plan to go back and add the lightning effect to the fissures in his body. I plan to do this lightning effect on a separate version of the scene and then export it as it’s own movie. I will then add it to the final composite in After Effects. I am thinking I might be able to add a blur to the lighting in After Effects. Once I discover the limitations of one program I have to find some work around so that eh effect can be achieved in another program. I know what I want to achieve now I just need to experiment and make it happen.

COVID: Waning Immunity Dragon

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In this shot, I animated the dragon, knight and flames bursting forward. The flame animation has the same timing as a football player who is running in flames in the next shot. That is a happy accident I am glad for. All of this animation was done using After Effects and the pin tool. I placed several pins in the feet to keep them anchored and then a pin in each joint. I am getting better at figuring out when to add pins. I now work out the movement of the bigger masses and then add pins for more refined motions. I also managed to do some decent animation moving the dragon tail. In past scenes I would go into Callipeg to animate something that loose.

Today I listened to the full Key of E cast album. By that I mean the actual record on a record player. Andy Matchett created an amazing album which is purposefully weathered and worn. It looks like it survived an apocalypse. Anyway Pam felt that some of the music from the epilogue could work at the end of the film over the credits. The credits now run for just 20 seconds so the audio would have to be that short. These was a really nice line that defines apocalypse. “The traditional definition of apocalypse is, a revelation, a disclosure of the truth in an age of falsehood and misconception.” Pam likes some lyrics that were about isolation. “I dreamed of isolation, wished that everyone was dead, I got my wish and got a load of misery instead.” These lyrics are a bit harsher than my word view. I just hope people can regain empathy and take simple steps to keep each other safe, like wearing well fitted N95 masks indoors and in crowded spaces, cleaning indoor air with HEPA filters and staying home when sick. My hopes that people are capable of caring has been lost.

All classrooms and hospitals could be made more safe from an airborne virus but no one cares enough to invest in the future. My film mainly points out that the pandemic is far from over though the public has been duped into believing a lie. The long term effects of ongoing mass infection are becoming more evident every day with each scientific study showing horrific long term harm as people repeatedly get infected.

COVID: Burning Liberty

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With the Burning Liberty scene, I animated the three black cloak clad skeletons as they ignite the pyre. Each moves in subtly different ways. The rest of the scene is a depth map which pans upward. Liberty’s crown and upper arm had to the protected from warping too much. Since the scene flashes by so fast, the animation might not even be notices so I better go back and make sure there is a slow out on the camera move.

Yesterday was quite productive. I also animated Mike Pence clapping his hands, reworked the end credits a bit, and added subtle animation to the 5G tower scene. Today I plan to work on the woman waiting to vote, three plague doctors and some angel wings.

The list is growing smaller but I keep writing down notes each time I view the film.

Recently when I render scenes in After Effects, a single frame blacks out with a long error message. I should really try and figure out why that is happening. For now I am working around the errors by slowing down the clip speed to crop out the error frame. This isn’t a tech savvy solution, but it keeps me moving forward.

COVID: AntiVax Breakdown

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This is another example of how I break apart a painting for animation. I wanted to animate the two arms pointing so I separated them from the body. I liked how the parallax worked on the people so I imported them into Volumax Pro and worked on making them dimensional separate from the background. I made the background dimensional in a separate pass and then composited them together in After Effects.

Animation on the pointing arms was completed using the pin tool in After Effects. I was rather timid using this tool at first but now I am embracing it as a way to add simple and subtle animation to the paintings. I placed a pin at each joint and moved those pins for each key frame. I found that if I turned off all other programs on my computer I could watch the animation play back in real time. I therefor spent plenty of time refining the animation until it felt just right. Fire and smoke were animated the same way. Now that I know I can play back the animation as I am working on it, I might go back and refine other scenes that could use more work.

I got my first rejection from my 20 or so submissions to film festivals. The film will not be shown at the Global Peace Film Festival here in Orlando. I didn’t think the film was a right fit at first, but a board member of the festival insisted that I submit it. My film clearly does not promote world peace. If anything it is battling a collective world amnesia and denial. I decided that each time the film is rejected, I will submit to another film festival. My film is a hard sell, but I think it needs to be seen. If a festival is holding in person screenings then they are already embracing and helping spread the COVID virus. They will not likely want to screen a film that shows the horror of the ongoing pandemic when they wish the pandemic was over or never happened.