COVID Film: Death of Democracy Animation

Posted on by Thor

I decided to animate an insurrectionist in the background of the Death of Democracy scene. He anticipates and then pumps his fist in the air. In the foreground representative Jamie Reskin will stiffen his back and stand proudly. I had to create this new depth map in which the animated insurrectionist and the representative were removed.

This morning I will be compositing the shot. The other element that will animate is the breath and COVID spatter coming from the gaping mouths of the insurrectionists. I didn’t notice the breath animating last time so I will push the animation further.

I tried separating out the greenscreen in this Photoshop example but it was less than successful. Since this isn’t part of the film production pipeline I decided to leave it as is. I am sure that with some research I could eliminate the stray green pixels around the edge of the character.

COVID Film: Dr. Death

Posted on by Thor

I spent most of today animating the Doctor Death scene in Callipeg. The complicated bit was animating the patient on the gurney turning his head to look at the viewer. To accomplish this I did a rough pass in red where I drew the shape of the head as it turned. I then did a clean up pass on top of that with the final line work.

I then animated the green fluid squirting our of the needle, followed by the plunger and the doctors thumb pressing upward. it is all rater subtle animation and who knows if people will see it in the one second the scene is on screen. I watched several videos on water effects before I animated the needle squirt. That animation might only be noticeable on the big screen.

As always the animation and the background with depth were composited in After Effects.

I then had corrections to make in the end credits since several of the animated scenes flashed off too early. I had to re-render that scene 5 times before I got it right.

Now I am considering re-animating the Maya sacrifice scene. I think the animation of the high priest is too stiff so I might fully animate him so he plunges his hand into the chest cavity and raises it up as it drips blood. That is rather complicated and will take several days to complete.

 

COVID Film: Button

Posted on by Thor

I designed a button to help promote the film a film festivals. Granted film makers might not want a film with COVID on it, but how could they resist a butting with laurels on it? The button will be 1.5 inches wide which is kind of small, but hey the virus is small. I decided to get 50 of these made up. They are just swag. I will not be selling them.

I also printed up cards with the film poster on the front and social media and lyrics to Andy Matchett’s song, Just Can’t Wait on the back. Again they are swag giveaways to help promote the film. There is a QR code on the back and amazingly it leads directly to the film. I scanned it and saw the film on my phone for the first time. Honestly, most people will likely see the film on their phones but I am continuing to promote it at film festivals.

The post cards are ready but when I went to drive to the print shop, I discovered my car battery was dead. That is how long my car has been sitting idle in the driveway. Pam and I tried to jump it last night without success. We will try again tomorrow for a longer time. The jump we did managed to get a few small light to work but the engine was still dead.

The cards will have to stay at the printer until I figure out how to get the car up and running again.

COVID Film: Adobe Glitch Nightmares

Posted on by Thor

Overnight, Adobe seemed to have updates its software without consulting me.Imagine working on a film for months and then wanting to render the final product but finding that dozens of shots are not longer able to render. What I see instead are color bars. I had to go through the entire film and re-render shots in Adobe After Effects.

Besides the color bars a program called the Media Encoder was thrown out with the upgrade. I re-downloaded the Media Encoder but the program didn’t recognize it. I wasted over half a day trying to find a work around to get the scenes to render. I found a youTube video by an Indian artist describing a work around. I had trouble understanding what was being said but I could follow the movement of the cursor. I had to copy source code and navigate multiple menus to finally manage to get some renders to work.

This final shot in the end credits is a stubborn hold out. It refuses to render. The clip works in After Effects but any time I try and render it I get color bars. I will be spending hours again today searching online forums to see if other are experiencing the same nightmares.

For now however I plan to step away from the problem for a bit. Attacking the problem in frustration could do more harm than good. The programs may need to be thrown out and then re-downloaded and I am not up to that level of destruction and reconstruction.

Instead I plan to focus on marketing. I need to create 50 five by seven inch cards that can be used as marketing swag at the Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival. I also created buttons that I think filmmakers might want to wear with the film title and laurels. The buttons were ordered online, and now I need to find a printer for the cards. Pam had a great idea of printing the lyrics to Andy Matchett‘s song Just Can’t Wait on the back. I also will offer web links should people want to order the music. All my web links will also be on the back.

COVID Film Official Selection

Posted on by Thor

COVID is an official selection at the Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival being held November 10-11, 2023. COVID will be be shown at the 4 pm screening on Saturday November 11. This is the 20th annual CIRSF Film Festival.

The screening will be in the Chicago Filmmakers Theater, 1326 W. Hollywood Ave., Chicago, IL 60660.  This Venue is the NEW Chicago Filmmakers Firehouse Location, located in the Andersonville neighborhood. I am quite excited since this is the first time COVID is being screened outside of Orlando. Tickets to the screening at $15 should you be in Chicago. If anyone knows of a nice place to stay in North Chicago, let me know.

Chicago Filmmakers 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. Chicago Filmmakers’ twofold mission is to serve independent film and digital video artists by supporting the creation and dissemination of new media arts works and to serve Chicago audiences by screening artistically innovative, socially relevant, and diverse films and videos.

I will be attending the festival and now I am arranging to print 5 by 7 cards, posters and buttons as swag. Should you be ins Chicago, stop by and say hi. Look for the guy in the N95 mask and goggles.

 

Comedy of Errors: Poster Evolution 3

Posted on by Thor

The final version of the Comedy of Errors Poster involved removing the winged lady or just clipping her wings, and adding more parade revelers. One of the twins was removed, and the whole focus became the parade. I added sparks falling from the sky as if from fireworks.

The third pass at the title treatment worked best. It was hand drawn for added control over the letters. Copying some letters saved time. Thank goodness there were so many Es and Rs.

I learned quite a bit about using elements from one poster and adding new elements as the poster evolved. Each character was kept on their own layer in case they b=needed to be moved. People were indeed moved multiple times to fill out the scene.

This might not be the final pass a the poster but it was the one I could locate on my hard drive. I just noticed I had already signed the original poster. I threw another signature on this post since it is kind of a habit.

Comedy of Errors: Poster Evolution 1

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With the first pass at A Comedy of Errors poster for the Shakes, I played with twins imagery. The show is set in New Orleans during Mardi Grass so masks and vibrant colors were incorporated. I used an abstract peacock imagery as a backdrop which was also symmetrical.

It was decided that the twins imagery wasn’t needed. What did stand out was the hint of a Mardi Gras parade in the background. The parade was to be the focus.

Comedy of Errors was performed at the Orlando Shakespeare Theater from September 6 to October 1, 2023. Since I have been so focused on my film, I didn’t get to the theater to sketch. Photos I saw on Facebook clued me in to the fact that I was missing a fun time.

COVID Film: Pixelation Problem

Posted on by Thor

I came close to completing this shot yesterday. However when I imported the Callipeg animation into the final Premiere Pro edit, The hands seemed glaringly pixelated. The painting this scene is built around is vertical but the film is horizontal 1920 by 1080 pixels. In After Effects I had placed the vertical image into the 1920 by 1080 frames which meant the image was reduced by about 50%. That 50% reduction insize is enough to make pixelation an issue.

With that slightly pixelated image imported in Callipeg, I started copying and pasting the hands to move them around. Moving those copies around resulted in further pixelation. In Callipeg the ram image only took up maybe 1/8th of the screen real estate. To try an overcome the pizelization i decided to redraw each of the hands. The end result is what you see above with full animation but still blurry hands.

My next choice was to scale up the image in Callipeg and redraw the arms again. I saw a video that showed an ability to scale multiple layers all at once, so I did that to get the job done fast. Unfortunately Callipeg could not scale the layers all at once. Some were scaled and others reverted back to the small size. On top of that some frames were shuffled to other layers. The result was that all the drawings were scrambled and impossible to reassemble into the smooth animation I had worked so hard on.

Today I will likely re animate the scene but at a much higher resolution. The Procreate files are at a high enough resolution. I think the problem began when I scaled the image down in After Effects. I will have to double the image size in After Effects to maintain the initial resolution. then in Callipeg I will fill the screen with the ram character rather than the entire painting. I will have to redraw every hand to keep the crisp line work.

The final After Effects composition will also have to be reworked. Having the depth map a bit blurry is fine but the image will have to be at double the resolution. I just hope my laptop can handle a scene so large. I made the mistake of creating a 4K scene earlier and it caused my computer to crash.

COVID Film: Animating the Ambulance

Posted on by Thor

Yesterday I finished the background painting for this shot. I added a depth map but for a long shot like this it added little to the overall depth of the scene. The right wall was painted as a separate layer as well as the interiors. The shot opens on a close up of the window. As the sound of the ambulance becomes audible the virus rills up to the window as if to look out. Then the camera slowly pans to the left while zooming out, following the ambulance.

I finished keying the animation for when the ambulance turns the curve in Callipeg. The plan is to use the transform tool to move and scale down and up the final keys to the horizons. Animating the blinking lights is going to be the biggest challenge of the scene. I suspect I will want to import the keys into Procreate where there are much better brushes for painting bright lights.  Actually Procreate is coming out with an animation program called Dream in November of this year. It is a shame I can’t use that program for this shot.

Anyway I have a lot to figure out today, so I better get to it.

COVID Film: Animating Genie

Posted on by Thor

My main objective with this scene was to have the Genie’s arm move so it ties in better with the previous shot. With that accomplished I then animated the the lower red cloud, sand the four COVID protons circling the large virus. The Genie’s head was then thrown back and the pixie dust was morphed to add movement. All this was easy enough to do in After Effects.

When I watched the scene the Genie’s hair seemed lifeless. I therefor imported the skull into Callipeg and hand animated the hair overlapping. Part of me wonders if I over animated the overlapping action, but it works so I accepted it. Aladdin, on stage I left alone. He isn’t the focus of attention.

The next shot I worked on was the cell tower conspiracy shot. I had under animated that shot and had to go back  in to punch up the movement to make it noticeable. Animation seems to be a non stop balancing act of finding just the right amount of movement for each shot.

COVID Film