Morgue Start Animation

Posted on by Thor

For this scene, I painted out the two central Hazmat workers who were lifting a body bag. The painted in details didn’t need to be particularly accurate since they would mostly be covered by the workers except in a few spots where it might peak through as the workers moved.

I discovered that in these early paintings I didn’t always paint figures completely opaque. I often would let the back ground color show through. To make the figures opaque I had to duplicate the painted layer and alpha lock it. I then painted that second layer white and put it behind the other painted layer. This makes the figures opaque so that the bright windows for instance don’t show through the paint.

The first scene I did with these steps, I didn’t follow through on making the figure opaque. The scene is of a woman floating above her hospital bed on a respirator. I decided the fact that she was partially transparent added an ethereal effect to the scene. I might go back and paint her body more opaque and just leave the dress transparent. Then again she is rather ghostly now and I might live with that look.

Sweep it Under the Rug

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After three days of experimenting with the animation, the opera scene is done. That shot had me develop a new workflow to allow me to paint the cells in Procreate and then re-import those paintings back into Callipeg to work out the timing. It is now my favorite shot in the film.

Next up was the sweeping scene. This involved animating the squirrel tail and the skull bouncing under the rug. Once I decided to bounce the skull, I had to change the tail animation so that the tail would hit the skull much sooner. The scene is only 28 frames which is less than a second long. I couldn’t get the skull to settle in that time, so I cut on the action.

Watching the scene in the final edit, I realize that most people will not have time to catch the details action, but will notice a flurry of motion. I suspect people will have to freeze frame the scene to catch exactly what is happening.

My plan for today is to finish the animation on Cinderella getting her nose swabbed.

COVID: Fat Lady Sings Repaint

Posted on by Thor

When I hand painted each cell in Callipeg I found that the paint would crawl and flicker from frame to frame.In this scene she simply throws her head back and opens her mouth more to belt out the final note. The paint flickering was distracting. All of my illustrations were done in Procreate which has much better brushes.

I decided ti import all the animation drawings I had done into Procreate. I then took this first frame and used it throughout the scene. Rather than repaint the flesh each time, I simply stretched and morphed this existing painting. The result was exactly what was needed.

Exporting frames with transparency is still something I am trying to work out. I exported the scene back to Callipeg to get the timing right but a white background exported with each frame. I had to erase all the white since Callipeg does not have a magic wand selection tool like Photoshop. That is a painful and unnecessary step. The clip I imported into the final edit had some white flickering from small spots I had misses with the eraser.

Now I am considering cleaning up the shot in Procreate and exporting with transparency directly. This could be a good workflow, but I am still working out the kinks.

COVID: Fat Lady Sings Paint

Posted on by Thor

I animated the fat lady sings shot yesterday. I decided I could live with 13 drawings and a held cell while she held the note. At first I held the drawings for 4 frames each to span the length of the animation. When I saw the animation with the sound, it felt off, so I shortened the duration of each drawing on 2s. I am contemplating even putting the drawings on 1s to give it even more punch. I’ll try that today and see which version works beast.

I also considered having her face turn red, but 2 seconds go by very fast so I abandoned that idea. The body held cell is actually included with the painting of the background and that image was depth mapped. Her COVID breastplates are given extra prominence in the depth map.

When I animated the camera move in Volumax Pro. her arm holding the axe ended up moving a bit screen right. That is a happy accident I kept in the shot. Another camera move is used inn Premiere pro to zoom out from her face. That move tends to make the parallax effect less.

Painting these cells are a challenge. In a feature animated film the colors are very flat. I am however trying to blend the animation so it feels like the painting that I originally did. That is a challenge since the it is almost impossible to keep the values painted on each cell consistent. The paint tends to jitter and crawl a bit, and I just need to fiddle with the painting of each cell to tone down the earthquake.

It helps to paint on thing at a time, like the shadow down the side of the nose on each cell with the same brush and brush size. It is always a guessing game. Since the shots are so fast, I am thinking maybe I could paint one cell and copy that painting onto each other cell and morph them slightly. Then again I kind of like seeing the human touch. I am figuring this out as I go.

COVID: The Fat Lady Sings

Posted on by Thor

I am now scattering animation throughout the film. Rather than work from start to finish, I am jumping around in case I need to screed the film before all the animated scenes are in place. The fat lady sings is one of the the last shots in the film. This is a longer short at about 2 seconds so I have about 30 drawings to do today to complete the animation.

Ultimately the head, shoulders and the braids will be Animated while the breastplates and lower body will be a held cell. I will have to go back into the painting to separate out the lower body elements and erase the upper body which will be an animation layer.

I am considering having the singers face animate a beat red as she holds the sustained note. I have done this before and it is pretty easy by just changing the color on each frame as I go through the scene painting the face color.

COVID: Bar Yell Animation

Posted on by Thor

This is not the largest character in a crowded bar scene, but she is the only one wearing a mask. To get the viewer to notice her in the crowded scene I decided to animate her. The only thing she does is glance at the viewer, and lower her phone. She is partially covered by expanding clouds of infectious breath which helps integrate her into the scene.

Her entire body s a held cell and the painted layers of her Head and arm are above that. The animation came out smooth a butter. It isn’t a complex animation but it felt like I was back in the saddle and drawing on a tablet screen is starting to feel as natural as when I drew in paper back in my Disney Animation days.

There are several much larger characters in a row in front of this woman and I decided to move them slightly so they don’t block the view of her phone as she lowers it.

This has set the standard of how I plan to proceed with the animation. I will only animate the character I want the viewer to look at and the rest can remain still. Perhaps as I go I might animate more but since each scene is a second or less, the viewer really doesn’t have time to notice more that on aspect of each scene. Many scenes don’t even require animation since the people are standing still. I’ll see how it unfolds.

Scenes are being animated and painted in Callipeg. However the painting brushes in Callipeg aren’t as good as the brushes in Procreate. I am considering animating in Callipeg and then painting the cells in Procreate. The issue is that I want the characters to be three dimensional just as they were painted. I will try this work flow on the next scene and see if it works better.

Sheep Animation Third Try

Posted on by Thor

This is my third try and figuring out the head turn animation for a black sheep. The first one I animated looked a bit like a strange alien I decided after seeing it composited into the film. The second one looked to adult, so this version is an attempt at a younger black sheep. It looks rather angry instead of cute but for now I am thinking that is a good thing.

I have moved on and animated two other scenes so I am hoping this little guy will grow on me. I spent three days on this head turn but the other scenes have turned out as expected with no problems. The good thing is that each scenes is just about a second long so I can animate with 12 drawings.

The scene above being animated in Callipeg, is on 4s and 6s but by the end of the day each drawing was held for just 2 frames which allows for very smooth motion. I decided to add 8 more inbetweens at the end of the day to smooth things out.

Sheep

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AS I have been submitting my COVID film to film festivals, I have started to wonder which category it best fits in.I have been submitting it into animation and yet most of the scenes are still though three dimensional with camera moves. Another category is music videos which sort of makes sense since it is set to one piece of music. The film is also documentary though in a rather surreal way.

I decided to sneak more hand drawn animation into the film. The is is the second shot I experimented with. There are tons of sheep in this shot but I want the audience to notice the black sheep wearing a mask. I decided to animate the sheep’s head turning which will draw the eye.

The first shots I am playing with are in the trailer. I hand animate each in Callipeg and then export as an MP4. I decided the easiest way to get the animation into the existing After Effects shots was to use green screen. IN this case only the heat turns so I didn’t touch any of the other sheep. They are already moving because of the paparazzi zoom in that I had already worked out.

Most of the shots in the film are less than a second, so I might have to do 12 drawing each day to add just a bit more movement to each frame. Many of the shots however do not require movement. I will have to make a judgement call for each as to how much I want to add.

I might have opened up Pandora’s box by deciding to add more animation because there are huge crowd scenes through out the film. I have to be selective to stay sane.

COVID Trailer

Posted on by Thor

I made a quick 26 second trailer for the COVID short. I was inspired to create this version after watching the trailer for Dr. Strangelove. I am now starting to submit the short to film festivals. I decided to take the short off of youTube since I was told it reduces the chances of having the film accepted in festivals. I think the short can be seen on FilmFreeway which is the site used to submit to festivals. If the Film Freeway link doesn’t lead to the film, I am hoping someone will let me know. I can see it since it is my home page but I never tried to get to the page from another computer.

Anyway, all this festival business is new to me so I am learning as I go. Film maker and storyteller, Jon Busdecker has offered to do a more advanced trailer and we are just getting started on that version which might be 30 to 60 seconds long. Jon asked me to research trailers I liked, and that research lead me to creating this short trailer as a place holder with my film festival submissions.

Voice over might be added.  Phantasmagoria founder and actor and director John DiDonna has offered to do the voice over work. He commands the stage with his Phantasmagoria troupe, and I sketched several performances where he performed as the quintessential Scrooge. I have no doubt his voice would be perfect for the COVID trailer.  Voice over might be used on the full trailer.

My 4 minute COVID film itself is almost shorter than most feature film trailers. It is hard to decide how short a short should be for a short.