COVID Film: Animating Uber Driver

Posted on by Thor

In this shot I decided to simply animate the driver rubbing his temple. The shot is just over a second long and many people will probably not notice the animation, but it adds some subtle life to the scene. I might animate the trashy lady’s fake cough today. It would be easy enough to do with pins in After Effects.

COVID was rejected by the Warsaw Film Festival and the New York City Short Film Festival. I get that this film is a hard sell. Most people think the pandemic is over and want desperately to get back to their 2019 lives. This film rather rudely reminds them that the pandemic is very much not over. If it were a light comedy, it might get screened in more festivals. But it is what it is.

Today I plan to start off by animating the genie arm which is a scene that follows the Times Square skeleton selfie. The Times Square skeleton is moving his arm to aim the camera and this scene will follow the same motion. I might animate the magical genie viruses but we will see. Most of the big animated scenes are completed and now I am going back and refining animation and adding subtle touches like the temple rub.

If you want to see COVID on filmFreeway, here is the link... This particular scene might not be cut in yet.

COVID: Burning Liberty

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With the Burning Liberty scene, I animated the three black cloak clad skeletons as they ignite the pyre. Each moves in subtly different ways. The rest of the scene is a depth map which pans upward. Liberty’s crown and upper arm had to the protected from warping too much. Since the scene flashes by so fast, the animation might not even be notices so I better go back and make sure there is a slow out on the camera move.

Yesterday was quite productive. I also animated Mike Pence clapping his hands, reworked the end credits a bit, and added subtle animation to the 5G tower scene. Today I plan to work on the woman waiting to vote, three plague doctors and some angel wings.

The list is growing smaller but I keep writing down notes each time I view the film.

Recently when I render scenes in After Effects, a single frame blacks out with a long error message. I should really try and figure out why that is happening. For now I am working around the errors by slowing down the clip speed to crop out the error frame. This isn’t a tech savvy solution, but it keeps me moving forward.

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.