COVID Film: Norway Superspreader

Posted on by Thor

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.

COVID: Animating SS Agents

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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.