Yesterday This Was Home: Boarding

Posted on by Thor

A drivers seat eye view of our character entering the bus.Before bounding up the steps he glances towards the back of the bus then fills the frame as he passes our point of view. Glancing at this and writing about it, I realize that I need to change the angel of the molding on the inside of the bus. I will make that alteration today. That is the thing about animation once you make one change several others have to be made. I finished animating a pivotal scene yesterday and it affected the two scenes that followed.

Toady I will be animating a dialogue scene with the driver. He does a big flourish with his hands and I suspect it will get a laugh. The narrator over acted as he delivered this line so it is a chance to overact and exaggerate a bit the drivers performance.  It is fun each day to wake up to a new challenge. I am hoping to have seven seconds of animation finished by the end of today.

This short will be on display at a special exhibition fromOctober 3, 2020 to February 14, 2021. The show is titled Yesterday This Was Home. It is about he 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history.

Events unfolded on Election Day 1920, when Mose Norman, a black U.S. citizen, attempted to exercise his legal right to vote in Ocoee and was turned away from the polls. That evening, a mob of armed white men came to the home of his friend, July Perry, in an effort to locate Norman. Shooting ensued. Perry was captured and eventually lynched. An unknown number of African American citizens were murdered, and their homes and community were burned to the ground. Most of the black population of Ocoee fled, never to return.

Yesterday This Was Home: Boarding

Posted on by Thor

I woke up this morning realizing how nice it is to wake up to just focus on animation. For the past 4 months I have been doing dark COVID-19 themed illustrations and my research always left me fuming about the incompetence and indifference of America’s response to this global health  crisis. Now I can put that aside and focus on this tale of a bus trip.

Of course 1957 was also a dark time. Emmett Till had just been lynched and the civil rights movement had just begun. Despite this turmoil, a 12 year old boy took a trip up to Detroit on his own and took a stand.

I created this board with the idea of having the viewer a bit lower than waste level, making the adults look tall in relation to the small boy. The protagonist approaches the line, which is being held up as a woman fumbles for her ticket. I’ll   probably have to get rid of that purse under her elbow when i animate to allow some freedom to move her arms.

This short film will be on display at the Orange County Regional History Center (65 E. Central Blvd. Orlando, Florida 32801) from October 3, 2020 to February 14, 2021. The exhibit titled Yesterday This Was Home is about the 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, which remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history. This landmark exhibition will mark the 100-year remembrance of the Ocoee Massacre. The exhibition will explore not only this horrific time in our community’s history but also historical and recent incidents of racism, hatred, and terror, some right here at home.

 

Yesterday This Was Home: Getting the Ticket

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After teaching an Urban Sketching Class at Crealde School of Artthis morning I spent the rest of the day animating dialogue for this piece. The most important line of dialogue was “No.” I animated that line for much of the day today. I kept the timing on 4s which means most frames hold for 4 frames. This results in crisp rather clipped motion which I rather liked for this particular scene. A Disney Feature Animated film would always make sure the timing was on 2s or even 1s in some cases, meaning thee could be 24 drawings for every second. On 4s I would only have  to d 6 drawings which is a time saver as I get up to speed again.

I started a second dialogue scene which is framed much like the first scene. That scene is over 10 seconds long which should take all day to do. Besides animating, I also try and get the frames painted and then edited into the final story reel by nightfall. Animation is all consuming and there is always a pile of work waiting to be done. I finished the storyboards yesterday, so I know the story is solidly tied down and now I can just focus on production. This is going to be a crazy ride.

They boy in this scene seems a bit older than 12 years old , So I will likely change his look a bit when I start animating this scene. I like the Art Deco look of the station ticket counter. I used to work i the Empire State Building in NYC and the lobby and whole building had this look.

Again, this film will be on display at the Orange County Regional History Center  for an exhibition titled, Yesterday This Was Home, on display October 3, 2020 – February 14, 2021

The 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history.

Yesterday This Was Home: Waiting Room

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Part of what I am figuring out as I board out this animated short is how tall the character should be. He is 12 years old and my drawing of him vary a bit as I try and recall how tall I might have been at that age. The look of the character slowly becomes clearer as I get further into the project. By the time I got to the pivotal scene I  felt like I had him established. When I go back to ass animation the characters can be refined an put on model which was established on the fly. There ws no time for a prolonged visual development I just had to start and hope it all  falls together.

These first shots in the film are fairly contained, but by the end of the film I was playing with some more complex camera moves and effects. I am learning so much ringing this character  to life. Timing is figured out based on the cadence of the oral history and in this case I decided it should take about four seconds to step towards the door, grab the handle, pull and take one step inside. I’ll let you know how that works out when I actually animate. Scenes I am animating to start are the close up dialogue scenes since they take time and care. By the end of production with the deadline looming, the time for care might be sacrificed.

Days are from about 8AM to 10PM or later but I haven’t started burning the midnight oil yet. Last night I spent an hour or so researching the case of Emmett Till who was lynched a year before this bus trip. Like George Floyd’s death, his senseless murder galvanized a civil rights uprising. In this film when the character refers to historical moments, Black becomes white and white becomes black.

This film will be shown at Yesterday This Was Home, a Special exhibition on display October 3, 2020 – February 14, 2021 at the Orange County Regional History Center.

The 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history. Events unfolded on Election Day 1920, when Mose Norman, a black U.S. citizen, attempted to exercise his legal right to vote in Ocoee and was turned away from the polls. That evening, a mob of armed white men came to the home of his friend, July Perry, in an effort to locate Norman. Shooting ensued. Perry was captured and eventually lynched. An unknown number of African American citizens were murdered, and their homes and community were burned to the ground. Most of the black population of Ocoee fled, never to return.

Yesterday This Was Home: Learning to Walk

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The first scene opens with a close up on the Christmas star in Downtown Orlando. I created the sketch and painting in Procreate. The great this about that program is that you can play back a movie which shows every stroke creating a time lapse replay of the painting as it was created. I tool that movie and panned town to the street level. The sketch is created as the camera move happens and when I got to the street I lap dissolved to the final painting to save some time. A young boy walks across the street with a suit case in hand.

I fully animated this scene to test out thee program I plan to use to do all the animation for the project. The program is called Callipeg and it was designed to be used on the iPad. The program is surprisingly intuitive if you have animated with paper and pencil before. That reminds me, I am writing this entry because my Apple Pencil has run out of battery life and I am waiting for it to recharge. A good old wood and graphite pencil never needs to be recharged and sharpening it takes just a second if yo have an electric sharpener.

I animated my character taking four strides across the street and the scene required 97 drawings. I am learning by trial and error discovering ways to save time each time I animate a scene. Since I decided to keep the head and torso still, I could cut and past those elements from drawing to drawing and just animate the legs and arms. Having him carry a suit case had the added advantage of fewer arm swings to animate. I  used the standard timing I teach most students at Elite Animation Academy. Each stride takes about one second or 24 drawings to animate. I am experimenting quite a bit with timing to see when I can get away with animating on twos and fours when possible. That means each drawing is held for two or four frames of film. It can save on the amount of drawings that need to be done.

In traditional animation you flip the drawings as they are created to watch the motion as you work. In Callipeg, three fingers scrolling up and down the screen accomplish the same effect. For some reason my pencil turns into an eraser unexpectedly while I animate so I have to be very careful with how I touch the screen. Just selecting multiple frames in the timeline was a challenge. You have to touch and tap twice very fast and drag to make the selection. I had to practice most of an evening because the selection would just move the frame I tapped on.  So much of my time is being spent training myself on developing just the right touch so the computer knows what I want.

This scene is part of a short being show at the Orange County Regional History Center for their exhibit on the 1920 Ocoee Massacre. The exhibit is titled, Yesterday This Was Home. This special exhibition is on display October 3, 2020 – February 14, 2021.  The 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history

Yesterday This Was Home: Greyhound

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Cross dissolve to second title card. I spend much of mu first day of production figuring out the aspect ratio to be used for the film. Adobe Premiere Pro had to have this aspect ratio and I made a blank fame of future storyboards. Black and white was the theme from the start. The oral history is a bit over three minutes long which is an eternity of work if you are doing frame by fram animation. There are 24 frames per second for most traditional animated films so that was the frame rate that I am using moving forward. Three minutes means about 4,300 individual drawings for smooth animation. I am finding various ways to streamline the production workflow. For instance storyboards double as the lay outs for each scene.

This film is going to be shown at an exhibition titled Yesterday This as Home, at the Orange County Regional History Center. This special exhibition on display October 3, 2020 – February 14, 2021.

The 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history. Events unfolded on Election Day 1920, when Mose Norman, a black U.S. citizen, attempted to exercise his legal right to vote in Ocoee and was turned away from the polls. That evening, a mob of armed white men came to the home of his friend, July Perry, in an effort to locate Norman. Shooting ensued. Perry was captured and eventually lynched. An unknown number of African American citizens were murdered, and their homes and community were burned to the ground. Most of the black population of Ocoee fled, never to return.

This landmark exhibition by the Orange County Regional History Center will mark the 100-year remembrance of the Ocoee Massacre. The exhibition will explore not only this horrific time in our community’s history but also historical and recent incidents of racism, hatred, and terror, some right here at home.

The content will encourage reflection on a century of social transformation, the power of perspective, and the importance of exercising the right to vote, and will ask what lessons history can inspire for moving forward.

Yesterday This as Home: Animating Again

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For those of you who have been following my COVID-19 series, I have had to stop that series since I am now fully engaged in animating for an exhibit at the Orange County Regional History Center. I am animating oral histories, using those stories as the audio for the animation. This process is an all consuming obsession so I have decided to just post small clips each day of the project in progress rather than posing old sketches each day. I haven’t been fully involved in animation since Disney Feature Animation closed over 20 years ago. At Disney I was one of several hundred artists who helped create films that were drawn by hand with 24 drawings for every second of film. I am tipping my toe in again, and having fun solving new challenges every day. Should any animation student find this series of posts they should find it helpful to see what problems and solutions had to be found to keep this project moving with an army of one.

Fade in on this simple title card. The black border is the film safe 1920×1080 aspect ratio. All of my storyboards are done in this black and white style. I am hoping that the boards are finished enough so that I can use the art as the background for the animation itself. I am working digitally keeping the background level separate for drawings of characters and background elements. I jump around each day sometimes animating sometimes boarding and every day compositing it all in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Today I am working on a animation that I consider the cornerstone of the piece I am putting together. It involves lip syncing dialogue and if it goes well, more scenes will be done this way. I find myself acting out actions during the day thinking about the animation to come. An added benefit is that working on animation in the studio keeps me very engaged during the COVID-19 lock down. Anyway, I need to keep these post short since there is tons of boarding and animating left to do.

Stars of Hope

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The Orange County Regional History Center exhibited a large collection of these stars that were left at the site of the Pulse massacre. Stars of Hope gives communities the tools to empower children’s compassion through creativity. They foster empathy and compassion for communities throughout the world. They are pioneer communal therapeutic art at a global scale, while combating loneliness. Speaking about the organization were, Marcel, Annie, Sarah and Elsie.

Marcel was a New Yorker. She met the man of her dreams and moved to Georgia in 1998. She has two daughters Sarah born in 2001 and Annie born in 2003. They started making the stars as a way to handle the grief. Everyone is hard hit in the beginning, but they quickly get back to their own life.

Annie is a photo historian. She has a quiet energy. Pulse was emotionally draining for everyone. AS a family they felt the need to regroup. The family saw the wall of stars at the History Center’s Pulse exhibit. For them it as a beautiful ray of light. It was so beautiful. They hope that the stars inspire people to feel hope rather than slip into depression. Negativity only pushes us into darkness. They want to inspire us all to tolerate one another and enjoy people.

Elsie lost a daughter on 9-11. She drove up to NYC right after that tragic day. It was the longest car ride of her life. Here in Orlando Pulse is hallowed ground. Going there felt up lifting. Everything was so bright. There was healing and spirituality there. There were rainbows and free hugs. I felt so inviting and embracing.

The Starts of Hope group wants to have a day of celebration each year. It doesn’t need to focus on a tragedy. The Texas division of Stars of Hope cuts all the stars. All the volunteers gather on labor Day weekend, celebrate and eat a lot of meat. The kids started painting he stars and so many were painted for Orlando. Signing the back of the star is as important as the painting of the star.

Jeanine and Wally Goodnough

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Jeanine and Wally Goodnough from Sarasota, Florida, decked out a little Smart car in honor of the victims from Pulse. They were invited to Tampa Pride. The car had a top hat which cost about $400 to build. All expenses came out of pocket. They were invited to events all over the state.

Jeanine is the parent of a child who is gay. She identifies with the heart ache and pain that the pulse families of victims are going through. Brenda Lee Márquez-McCool was at the club with her son and her story toughed Jeanine deeply. That could have been  her with her son. He was actually going to go to Pulse that night but chose not to. He had to work. One of his friends died. That person worked just a couple of blocks from their home. Less than 6 degrees of separation brought Eddies life, his tragedy, into their life.

They decked out their Smart car to carry on Eddies Justice‘s motto, “Do as much good as you can, for as many people as you can, and do it as often as you can.” They created the car out of love, out of respect, out of compassion. It was done, because they wanted to show their, love, their respect for a hurting community, a hurting world.

When they took the smart car to Saint Pete Pride Parade, a woman was looking at the car, and Jeanine explained that the 49 stars represented the 49 victims and the 53 smaller hears represented the 53 survivors. The woman was one of the survivors. Jeanine broke down and cried. The simple stickers on the car meant so much to so many people.

 

Pre-Pandemic: A Holdover in Washington DC

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On The flight back from Turkey there was a holdover n Washington D.C. before flying back to Orlando, Florida. Back in April of 2020 the Trump administration gave a $25 billion dollar bailout to the airlines industry crippled by the COVID-19 pandemic. That money was used to pay salaries and keep the flights in the air. That was provided so long as the industry  didn’t cut jobs until Oct. 1, 2020. That date is fast approaching. U.S. airlines have warned more than 70,000 of their workers that their jobs are at risk when the current round of aid expires in the fall.

President Donald Trump has recently expressed support for a proposal for another $25 billion in federal aid to support airline industry jobs. The proposed extension has gained bipartisan support as a rebound in travel demand remains remote. He said, “I think it’s very important that we keep the airlines going,” Trump said in a White House press briefing when asked whether he supported the proposal for the extension of the aid. “We don’t want to lose our airlines. If they’re looking at that, whether they’re Republican or Democrat, I’d be certainly in favor. We can’t lose our transportation system.”

Orlando Arts venues are being illuminated in red to highlight how the arts have also been crippled by COVID-19 shutdowns.