COVID: Animating Zombies Day 4

Posted on by Thor

I have no doubt that I will finish animating this scene today. The partially transparent zombie has just had 3 keys blocked in for position. Next I will need to add the contact drawings, and the up and down drawings. After he is fully inbetweened I will need to figure out what to do with the rest of the background crowd. The zombie I will animate today is sandwiched between two more attractive zombies. I may just leave his arms stiff at his sides and see if that works. I will also rick him side to side so his weight is over the weight bearing foot in each step

I have several more zombie crowd scenes to animate so I will get more time to experiment on broken limps and shuffles.

COVID: New Year 2022, Halfway

Posted on by Thor

Yesterday I pushed past the halfway point in animating this scene. I have four more hazmat suited men to animate. At this point I know exactly where to place keys to get each to work so things should go smoothly. Though everyone is walking in lockstep, each man has a slightly different gait and am swings.I could push straight through and finish today but I also need to teach a class so I suspect I have two more days on this scene.

With the blank spots in the timeline, this looks a bit like a game of Tetris. Those blanks need to be filled with sketches. I am noticing as I animate that I need to touch up the background a bit more as well, so I will do that once animation is complete. This might be the last large crowd I need to animate, but I will have to check the film to be sure.

One Irish film festival said that they only accept film that are 24 or 25 frames per second. My film has been created at 29.97 frames per second. has I realized that I would be doing so much animation, I would have created the film at 24 frames per second. Hopefully there is a way to convert a 29.97 to 24 when needed. I will cross that bridge later when I have time to research.

COVID: Restaurants Reopen

Posted on by Thor

I added animation of the hazmat bartender serving a drink to this shot. To save time, the upper body and head are copy and pasted onto each frame of the animation. The body was moved like a puppet and the arm is the only element that needed full animation. This shot kike most others is less than a second long and the animation helps draw the audience eye to the lower let corner of the screen.

This shot was done in Key West along with an animation student. My student was doing studies of Spiderman themed characters. Today I am animating a zombie walk and that is a real challenge since it is more of a limp while favoring one foot. For reference I am looking at videos of drugged out street walkers on youtube. It is amazing what reference is available online.

Takes One After Effects

Posted on by Thor

I animated this couple walking during an animation class. The couple walks towards the camera for just one step. The flames move along with the guy wearing the HOAX shirt. I animated the flames a bit using pin tools in after effects. It would be better to fully animate the flames but for now the light movement will do.

The next shot is identical but with the entire crowd on fire. I thought I could just place this couple into that shot, but it looks like After Effects crashed and the After Effects scene wasn’t saved. I will have to recreate the scene from scratch. I hope to have that scene composited by tonight. I also animated a robotic arm yesterday and plan to composite that into that scene. I will see what can be accomplished by 3pm.

COVID: Omaha Beach Animated

Posted on by Thor

It took three days to animate this scene. From this scene I will roll right onto a similar scene with DeathSantis overlooking children running from a napalm attack. After animating I was excited to export the scene into the final edit. Unfortunately the file size was so large that it would not export. This is the type of situation where hair gets pulled out.

Pam researched the issue and after some time found a work around that involved converting one file into another using a third party program. The problem was that the program deflated to a very high resolution 4K render. There was no way to convert the scene to the lower 1920 by 1080 version that I was using for every other shot.

Pam asked me to shuck open a bag of pistachios while she worked. It became a race to see if I could de-shell the nuts before she found a solution. I am insanely thankful she ultimately found a solution. I will be super careful  with the next shots to be sure I don’t create another 4K behemoth of a scene.

 

Viral Touch Animation

Posted on by Thor

This is a scene in progress. The clown pastor has been duplicated and the second layer painted white so he becomes completely opaque. He was then turned off and the background was painted behind him. I only really needed to paint the area behind his arm since the only action is him reaching towards the woman. I decided to keep the motion minimal so his arm only bends at the elbow a tiny bit.

The shot is less than a second long, so I didn’t want an over the top movement. After I finished working on him, the drawing for the woman and the background was turned back on. For an animation this simple, I just used the puppet pin tool in After Effects. I put a pin at his elbow and at his hand and a third pin at the base of his body to keep his body from moving.

By animating the clown, I lost the subtle 3D parallax effect on him. I needed to substitute animation for parallax. With such a short scene no one will miss the 3d effect. The woman and screaming skeletons all have the parallax effect.

COVID: Theater Animation

Posted on by Thor

This shot already has a sweet zoom and pan in with parallax that shows the directionality of the theater.I felt the need for some motion in the playbill to draw the eye over to the cleaning ladies in the hazmat suits. The scene is just a second long and to draw the eye I simply added the animation of a page being flipped in the playbill. Thankfully the playbill is in such a position so that it is conceivable that a hidden hand is flipping the page.

This is the final shot in the trailer, so mow I need to re-edit the trailer to include all the animated shots. I uploaded the film to filmFreeway with the animation added to this point. I have submitted to about 8 film festivals so far and have been accepted to two. Notification dates for most festivals are still months away, so I continue to layer animation into the film over time.

COVID: Social Media Audience

Posted on by Thor

This small bit of animation is being added to the Social Media Audience shot at the opening of the film.There are multiple rows of people in the audience laughing and having a great time and then this person who is the only one in a mask.

I the animation I have him anticipate by leaning forward slightly and dipping his head and then he leans back in the theater seat. With this scene I got used to the brushes that work best form my animation on this project. Most of the line work is put down at 88% opacity which makes it feel like I am drawing with a pencil. For delicate lines inside the figure I knocked back the opacity to 44%. That more delicate line work helped as i worked on details of the face for instance.

I painted a held cell where the arm touched the guys leg since I didn’t want the paint boiling in that area. The head and boy were then painted on a separate layer.

COVID Clap

Posted on by admin

This animation is for the Rhinos in the Audience shot. The one person wearing a mask is clapping so I decided that should be the first animation I did. For reference I looked at Citizen Kane. There is one scene where Orson Wells claps after the opera and He is essentially the only person to do so. I figured out that he clapped four times in the 1 second and 25 frame shot.

I then figured out where each clap hit on the timeline. For instance above you can see a clap falls on frame 29 and on frame 37. Then I dug in and started figuring out the timing and mechanics of an individual clap. The hand moves quickly to clap but slower when it is pulled back for the next clap. This section of animation shows the pull back as it slows into the pulled back position.

The elbow should lead the motion, followed by the wrist and then the hand. However I wanted to get away with only animating the hands and arms if I could, while leaving the head and body a held cell. I animated subtle elbow movement but it drew attention to itself. Animating just the arms felt unnatural so I added a head turn to distract from the elbows.

After painting the hands I felt the thumb was distracting on the character’s left hand so I ended up erasing it. Since I animated the head I then added a subtle animation around the collar. I repainted the whole body as a held cell since the original painted hands would have to be painted over anyway.

Crealde Thumbnails

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My next Crealde Urban Sketching class was canceled since not enough students signed up.These thumbnails were done on the Crealde campus with an Urban Sketching students. He only had a pencil and paper to work with so I used just a pencil to block in the quick compositions. I enjoy doing these since there is no pressure to produce a refined and finished sketch. Looser is better.