COVID Film: Winter Fest Displaced Fire

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This scene has a fractal displacement map to shape the flame and another fractal map for the inner flame detail. I am just starting to learn about how to use track maps and I used a gradient map to add transparency to the top of the flame.

I am slowly becoming better at adding glow to the flames I create. This one took three separate glow effects to get the right look. Since I have so many flames to create I should be an expert by the time this film is complete.

I made a duplicate of the flame and blurred it out underneath to add more glow. Even that wasn’t enough, so I created a yellow orange oval and blurred it out below the flame to add more light.

The shows I watch in the evening on TV all have many fire effects. Agents of Shield just featured a ghost rider whose head bursts into flames. I might not be creating effects on that scale but it is something to aspire towards.

Each fire has literally hundreds of settings that can be tweaked. This week I should have more time to tackle the problems that come up. For instance I want to find a way to break off the fire tendrils as they rise. I found a tutorial where a fractal noise could create those gaps but I haven’t been able to get it to work yet.

In the scene above, I abandoned some hand drawn animation that I had done because the shapes didn’t feel natural enough. This displacement flame feel better and I will accept it for now. As I learn more I might come back to it. That is what is happening to every fore I animated over the last few weeks, I am returning to add complexity to what was a hand drawn solution. It is the final 10% of any project that pushed it to the next level. I am there now, refining, learning and tinkering until I get it right.

COVID Film: Alpha Matte Fire Solution

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Last night I had a major breakthrough when I found out how t use track mattes in After Effects. I already had the candle flame working with hand drawn animation, and I had hand animated the flames fairing up the edges of the Constitution. However I didn’t like how the Constitution flames were painted.

I had imported every frame as a PNG into Callipeg and hand painted each in that program. However I didn’t have any way to see what the previous frame’s painting looked like, so I had to guess how to paint the next frame. Despite spending a solid day painting and repainting each frame, I wasn’t satisfied.

I decided to try and redo the animation using a displacement map to control the shape of the flames. However that shape had too many separate tendrils that animated straight upward. The shape didn’t look natural. So I used the animation I had already drawn and used it as a tracking matte. I created a fractal noise layer below it and worked out how the flame interior texture should look and move. Then I turned on the track matte on the animation layer I had drawn above it. This offered the best of both worlds. I had full control over the shape and movement of the flames and a fractal noise pattern animated upward inside offering texture and complexity, color and glow.

I suspect this solution will be used throughout the film to animate the flames. It offers control and chaos which is exactly what I need.

COVID Film: New Fire

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I animated perhaps six scenes with fire. By doing so I learned quite a bit about how fire moves but I was not quite satisfied with these initial hand drawn effects. I can control the outside shape of the fire well enough but the interior texturing was something that was a challenge with paint.

I decided to experiment with creating fire using fractal noise and displacement maps. This was my first attempt an it is indeed better than the hand drawn fore that proceeded it. I still need to figure out how to apply a gradient that will make the fire more transparent as it rises and another gradient that can make the fire slightly darker as it rises. I think this can be done with tracking mattes but I don’t know how to make that work yet. Research is needed.

I am also thinking that it will be nice to hand draw the fire shapes but use the fractal noise inside the flames as the rising texture. I am using expressions for the first time to animate the upward movement. I am hoping I can use existing animation as a matte that the fractal noise animation can show through. I don’t have all the answers yet but I am getting close.

Next week my schedule will open up and I will fill that week with research and experimentation until I have a good method of animating flames. In some cases the hand painted flames look good, so I might combine techniques to get the look I want.

Chicago Boat Tour

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On the last day of our Chicago trip, Pam and I went on a Chicago boat tour. We had our carry on luggage with us and sat in the back of the boat. I discovered that wearing a mask also helps keep my face warm in colder weather. As the passengers loaded onto the boat I sketched them. I realized that I should have been sketching the buildings first since the boat did a u-turn and took off once the passengers were loaded.

The tour was of the Chicago architecture. The only old architecture was the tiny homes attached to bride overpasses. Any one of those tiny home would make a great studio if I could get used to the sound of traffic. Several skyscrapers have a thin footprint and lean out over the river. Apparently there is a reservoir of water in the building which sloshed back and forth to stabilize the structure and keep it from falling over. No thank you.

The Chicago Tribune has sold off its huge printing press building and is moving out to the burbs. It is another sign that the news industry is in a death spiral. People don’t want news, they want rumor, innuendo and anything that supports their blindfolded denial.

After the boat tour we walled down to the Navy Pier to look around and then caught a Lyft to the airport.

Back in Orlando I found out that my film COVID Dystopia had won the award for Best Short Animation. It was quite a roller coaster of a trip. It is now 7 days since my screening and I don’t have any COVID symptoms, so it looks like basic precautions like masking, helped even in a crowded theater.

Chicago Symphony Orchestra

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The day Pam and I arrived in Chicago for the Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival, we decided to head downtown immediately to go to a Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert early in the afternoon. We had a Lift ride to our B&B which was an adventure in itself. Our driver who was originally from Central Florida loved Chicago because of the ethnic  and cultural diversity. She wore bright blue sunglasses and the car was decked out in glittery blue highlights everywhere. Thinking back I really should have sketched that car ride but I knew I would be sketching at the concert.

We got seats in the highest balcony. It turns out that meant we had to climb six flights of stairs. I was massively winded by the time we got up to the stratosphere. I am clearly spending too much time behind an animation desk and not enough time exercising. The seating up there is at an amazing incline with metal bars between each row to keep patrons from falling forward. With sigh a steep incline there is no chance of a tall person seated in front from blocking a view. I wonder if that inverted glass dome above the performers offers a unique way to disseminate the sound. I doubt it is just decorative.

The woman seated next to us always likes sitting in this section. She explained to Pam that she used to come up here as a child and for that reason loves seeing concerts from this high vantage point. The seating in these heights was half full, so we had some social distancing from other audience members. Pam and I stayed masked for the concert. About 5% of the Orchestra performers were masked.

Pam’s mom claimed Chicago is walking distance to where Pam grew up in Iowa. When Pam wanted to go to a big city, she went to Chicago. She therefor knew how amazing the Chicago Philharmonic was since she had been there many times before. She was a trombone player in her past and she loves to hear a rock solid horn section live.

The concert featured Rachmaninov’s poignant Third Symphony which evokes the Russia that he loved. In my sketch is Violinist Karen Gomyo, who joined the CSO for Philip Glass’ Violin Concerto No. 1. The third performance was of Sibelius’ atmospheric Pohjola’s Daughter.

Chicago Reel Shorts Film Festival

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This Historic Chicago Firehouse is home to the Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival. This is where my short film, COVID Dystopia has it’s Midwest Premiere. Our bed and breakfast was just a block away, so getting to the festival each evening was a breeze. When walking to the theater the first night we saw a sweet husky in the firehouse side yard wearing a glowing blue collar. The pup sat as far away from its owner as it could.

The building is also home to Chicago filmmakers, which is a not-for-profit media arts organization that fosters the creation, appreciation, and understanding of film and video as media for artistic and personal expression, as well as media of important social and community impact. One of the shorts in the Friday night screening titled 3:00AM by Ricardo Albarran, was filmed entirely inside this building. I recognized some of the locations as I searched for a men’s room between screenings.

I think my favorite film of the festival, other than COVID Dystopia of course, was Get Away, director by Michael Gabriele. This live action horror film features three young women get away to a secluded stone cabin in the desert. With no wifi, they find a single VHS tape and decide to watch it. The movie was filmed in the cabin they are. The action in the VHS tape intertwines in their reality in strange and unexpected ways.

Many of the shorts including Get Away had a 3 day shooting schedule. That makes it sound like a short film is a breeze to produce. Compare that to doing a painting a day for three years and then animating for another seven months and counting.

When I got back to Orlando, my online students started asking how people reacted to my film. Certainly no one laughed at my film and there was a long pause of silent horror followed by applause to break the spell. One of my students told me that both parents are infected with COVID right now. I decided to show her a silent version of the film since the soundtrack has several expletives.  When the silent version was over she was silent and I decided not to press her for feedback. The film is intended to fight the pervasive amnesia and denial that surrounds the COVID mass infections that continue. The message probably bounces off of COVID deniers but lingers with the few who know the long term repercussions of repeat infections. COVID continues to be a train wreck happening in slow motion. However most prefer to go think life has returned to “normal.”

COVID Film: Rudy Meltdown

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Yesterday I animated the candle flame in this shot of Rudy melting down using Callipeg.I animated the flame with an animation student. I found a youTube video that showed a candle flame flickering for an hour for mediation. I let that video play the whole time I animated. My first pass at the animation was a bit to extreme, so it dialed it back with a second pass at the animation.

Two of the lawyers in this scene, Jenna Ellis and Sydney Powell,  recently pleaded guilty in the election subversion case in Georgia. They pleaded guilty to avoid jail time. Amazingly their “boss” is the Republican front runner in the presidential election next year.

I had previously animated the candle flame in After Effects using the pin tool. However by animating the flame by hand I had more control over the flame tip movement and the squash and stretch. The difference is subtle but to me very noticeable.

I kind of like the scene with just the candle flame being animated, but it is too peaceful. Today I will be igniting the constitution as well. My fear is that the new inferno might upstage the candle flame but it is needed. I will likely use the pin tool to animate Rudy’s face melting as well.

I got a thank you e-mail from the Chicago International Reel Shorts Film Festival today. They had a very successful year with largely sold out screenings for each show block. They were helped by Chicago Magazine and The Daily Herald who promoted the festival in their “things to do this weekend in Chicago”. I must say, my screening was packed full.

Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival

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The Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival is the first screening of my film, COVID Dystopia  outside of Orlando Florida. Pam and I took the trip to Chicago to attend the festival. The screenings were in a beautiful historic fire house.

In all, 50 short films were screened. I printed up 50 cards with the movie poster on it and only one card was picked up. The buttons I printed with the laurel and the COVID title did much better since 12 of those buttons were picked up. For the next festival I will be printing small url stickers to place on the back of each button. scanning the url symbol would link directly to the film.

There were about 79 people in the theater for the screening of my film titled COVID Dystopia. In my film block there was a film about building schools in Uganda. In the audience was the wife of the man who is spearheading this effort to improve education in his home country. She stood up in the question and answer session and said she was amazed by the quality of the films but some of the films frightened her. I have no doubt she was talking about COVID.

The staff and volunteers that ran the screening were amazing. In one day, Pam and I sat through ten hours of short films in a row. When you see that many shorts in a row, you become thankful for the shorts that are extremely concise.

The only thing I regret about the festival is that there was no opportunity to meet the other film makers. It would have been nice to meet the other film makers in a local bar or restaurant or even a tent outside the theater with a food truck for food.

Seeing my film o the big screen I decided I need to make on change at the beginning. The music came on so strange to start that the sound system couldn’t quite handle it. I will reduce the volume a bit and let it build. All the animation being added helps direct the audience’s eyes but I am sure it is still overwhelming.

Several older ladies came up after the screening to ask more questions about my film. Pam pointed out that the older members of the audience have experienced more and aren’t as likely to fall prey to the amnesia and denial that fuels the “back to normal” mindset of the majority of Americans.

In some ways I feel I am hiding the messaging of my film by only showing it at film festivals. If I shared it on you tube it will become ineligible for many of the larger festivals. I am committed to the festival circuit and hope the film will start to pick up some steam.

Donkey

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As I sketched my dogs as a demo for my online student, Donkey was curled up across from me with her back to me. Most of the time she was a shapeless lump. When I got up for a moment to change positions, she took notice and glanced at me.

That was the moment I started to raw her. I knew the moment wouldn’t last long, so I threw lines down as fast as possible. Donkey had a crazy grey haired mow-hawk which I wanted to catch. She lost interest after a few minutes of starting at me and so I focused on the rest of the sketch.

There are things I would like to improve, but instead of obsessing over this one sketch I will just do another. This is more scribble than sketch.

Sprout 2

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For a second sketch with my virtual student, I sketched Sprout when he lay right next to me.Again, I stressed working fast and furious. Sprout has a strange way of lying like a human when he sleeps. His back legs are not foled up under him like most dogs. Instead. he lays with his back legs extended. I think this must ne rather uncomfortable, but he can lay like this for hours.

Light was low in the late afternoon, so I made the whole sketch rather dark. There is no pure white, instead everything is in muted greys. I timed each sketch based on how ling Sprout remained in that particular position. There is a sense of panic that the moment might be lost that is never achieved by working from a photo. My student was unfortunately sketching from a photo and got a decent result, but there is a stiffness that always surfaces from the photo real.

Today my film COVID Dystopia is being screened for the first time at an international film festival.