After compositing all the layers of the flaming football players, I decided to animate a simpler scene in the afternoon.I figured animating this army nurse offering a vaccine jab would be a simple task. I tried animating the scene at first in Callipeg by cutting the arm into a forearm and upper arm. The plan was to animate those two sections like cutout paper animation. The problem was that Callipeg reduced the resolution of the segments when they were moved into a new position. I suspect that rotating the segments caused the loss in resolution. This is a major drawback for the program and I stopped using it for this scene.

I instead cut out the arm as a single segment and imported it into After Effects. I set up depth maps for the scene minus the arm. The arm layer was then composited on top of the scene which had the parallax effect. I downplayed the parallax effect on the girl and nurse’s head and shoulders.

The yellow dots scene in the shot above are pins which I placed at the joints. The red dots are called starch pins which solidify the bony arm segments. I moved the wrist pin and the elbow pin a tiny bit to key frame the animation. Unfortunately After Effects can not play back the animation in real time because of memory issues. It only plays a few frames in quick succession. I have to render the scene and look at the render to check the animation. I tend to accept some sub par animation because of this technical glitch. I plan to go back into some of the previous scenes to adjust animation timing. I might go back into this scene as well after I figure out how to adjust the memory settings for optimal use in After Effects. Technical shit like this can cause a solid day of digging into memory settings, so I prefer to just keep moving forward.

At first I animated the jab over the course of the whole scene which is just short of two seconds. That was too slow and monotonous. I then cut the animation down by half and held the jab in for the remaining time. That left a somewhat uncomfortable pause but I liked it since I am always uncomfortable when I get a jab.

On day one of animating this scene in Callipeg.  I assumed I might finish one runner after finishing my online course with 2 students. For some reason both students were missing in action so I devoted myself to animating all day. I finished animating three runs for the day, although I need to paint a few arms and add a strip to the pants of the runner in the background. That paint will be just a few blobs and stripes since the figure is often hidden. If I can keep this pace up I will have the scene done in two more days.

I have one more big running scene with Centaurs running down the streets of Washington DC. That could be the trickiest scene in the film and might require full animation, with the centaurs running up the road and then turning in front of the camera. This scene is building up my chops so I can tackle that Centaur scene.

I might go back and re-animate scenes I worked on in After Effects. That program makes moving objects easy, but the computer creates very even timing which stands out like a sore thumb. There is an ease in and ease out function but the timing otherwise is monotonous. I will have to go back into those scenes to add some snap the timing. I am using every trick in the book to complete animation quickly but I can’t settle for boring timing.