COVID: NY State of Emergency Animation Day 4

Posted on by Thor

Yesterday I animated two men darting away from the virus in the background. Maybe half of the animation I did will be visible in the final shot. I still have dozens of people to animate in the background. I am hoping that I can get away with just animating their heads bobbing up and down along a motion path. Each will still have to be animated individually to maintain the level of chaotic motion that is needed.

So it looks like I will spend a solid week on this one scene which will flash by in the final film in just over a second. Is all this work worth it? Only time will tell. I am now thinking of animating one of the claws firing off a laser blast. That can be accomplished much easier than any one of these runs I am animating.

I am learning quite a bit about what works and what doesn’t work when animating runs. For instance in one run I animated the second half of a run with slow ins and slow outs for the arm movement. The front end of the same scene I used even timing by mistake. The difference is glaring and obvious. Thankfully the mistake is covered by other runners so I left the mistake in place.

The trouble with animation is that there are always things that could be improved with an infinity amount of time. I however need to prioritize since there are hundreds of scenes that I need to finish in a short amount of time.

Most people are “DONE” with COVID, but COVID is not done with them. This core message of the film is one that most do not want to hear. I suspect most film festivals will not want to screen it.

COVID: NY State of Emergency 3

Posted on by Thor

On the third day of animation, in Callipeg, I finished just shy of 3 runners minus an arm swing. After I get his arm swinging, I will step back to row B, the folks running behind this forward phalanx. If I am lucky some of these secondary runners will only be partially visible. I will still have to figure out all aspects of their run but only bits and pieces of that animation will be visible.

When I step back even further, I might get away with just bobbing heads up and down, but I want each runner to have their own unique animation. Animating is a bit like watching grass grow. Who knows exactly how many more days might be spent on this scene that will flash by in about a second.

I finally managed to get a new render of the film up on filmFreeway. I discovered that the render was stalling on shots that were imported as After Effects comps. By importing the comps Adobe claimed that so much time would be saved since the scene could be updated in After Effects and those changes would automatically update in the final Premiere Pro edit. Well it turns out this is not a time saver. It is buggy and useless tech that can halt a production dead in it’s tracks.  Searching forums I found this is a known issue that has been infuriating users for years. Adobe hasn’t bothered to fix the problem.

COVID: NY State of Emergency Animation Day 2

Posted on by Thor

I seem to be able to animate just 2 people running each day. With the previous scene I was able to animate 3 people a day, but that scene had a much shorter duration, which meant less drawings were needed. With this scene each character has one more stride to their run.

My hope is to finish the front row of runners today. With that done the people behind then are less visible and I should be able to finish their runs faster.

I have also been trying to render the full movie with animation to upload to FilmFreeway. Adobe Premiere has thousands of choices when it comes to render settings and I have not been able to complete a full render. Each time the render stops at the screaming monkey.

Wastewater surveillance is showing a spike in COVID cases across the county. Since there is no COVID testing and hospitals are no longer required to report COVID cases, the country is flying blind into yet another surge. Recently New York decided to continue their state of emergency. It is one of the few sane decisions to come at a time of complete denial and absolute amnesia. President Biden requires that anyone he sees must be tested for COVID though he claims the pandemic is over. This is hypocrisy comes as over 700,000 Americans have died from COVID since he became president.

COVID: NY State of Emergency Animation

Posted on by Thor

I spent the day animating the run of the woman in the light purple dress. The shot is just short of two seconds long so there is more time that will be needed to animate. I thought I could get away with animating three strides of the woman’s run but when that was complete, it looked like she was running in slow motion. I had to animate one more stride to liven up her run.

I had also plotted out her run to start rather far to the right of the robotic leg. I changed my mind and had to move all the animation drawings to the left so she starts her run right next to the leg.

The run of the man turned out much smoother and I didn’t have to alter timing as much for his run. Much of the woman’s run had to be put on ones to speed things up but his run worked out fine on twos. I just put several drawings on ones when his foot slaps had down on the pavement. That added a little snap and weight to each stride. His animation will be what I strive for with all the other runs.

I will start out today figuring out his arm swings. His right arm will often hide some of the woman in purple. I have four more people to animate running in the foreground, I might finish three of those today. Folks in the front row I label A1, 2, 3 etc and then Row B is B1, 2, 3 etc. I have about a down animations to consider.

COVID: Tip of the Iceberg Animation

Posted on by Thor

I decided to animate the blue whale swimming below the iceberg. This shot is only 24 frames in duration, so that involved doing just 12 drawings. I just animated the tail swiping downward and kept the whale in place. I then exported that animation with a green screen and imported the animation into After Effects. That is where I then moved the whale forward.

At first I animated a full sweep of the tail but realized that for 24 frames the tail moved far too fast for such a huge lumbering creature. I ended up throwing out much of the animation and only sweeping the tail for about one eight of the movement.

When the shot plays in Premiere pro what is noticed is just a slight forward movement of the whale. I probably could have gotten away with just drifting the whale forward without the tail movement. Maybe on the big screen some will notice the tail move.

The tail was a separate layer and I tried to paint it to blend with the existing painting of the whale. The tail paint tends to flicker and crawl a bit so I also painted the highlights across the back of the whale to there is some flickering of light on the whales back. This made it look like the light was flickering because of the ocean waves above.

Today I will be animating a dozen people running through Times Square that scene will take days to complete.

COVID: Vaccine Inequality Animation

Posted on by Thor

I animated the hands in his shot rising up and then sinking below the ocean surface in Callipeg.I got away with using copies of each arm and turning the wrists a bit to loosen up the action. I did have to animate one hand since it turned as it rose from the water. This project is becoming a lesson for me on when full animation is needed and when it isn’t.

I decided not to animate the woman in the three life preservers. She is dimensional thanks to some parallax and she seems to sink a bit because of the wave, thanks to a camera move.

The frantic hand movements will capture the audience attention. The hand animation is done but now I need to animate the splash effect. That is a huge challenge but I now have a plan of attack for the day. I tried randomly painting in a splash effect but it didn’t turn out very well and I threw it out. Today I will actually animate the curves of the splash and the circular patterns around the arms on the ocean surface.

The splash seen above is just a held cell and that will not due. I am hoping that by tonight I will have something in place that is worth seeing. I also plan to set up the virus attacking a crowd in Times Square. That will involve animating another crowd running towards the camera. That should be second nature by now but will take days to complete.

COVID: The Trouble with Transparency

Posted on by Thor

I finished the animation on this scene this morning. In all there are 17 separate layers that needed animation. This shot doesn’t show the shadows which is the final thing I animated. Exporting this scene with a green screen proved problematic. If I used a green screen the masks would become partially transparent. I then tried a blue screen but then the masks turned blue and the policeman became partially transparent. I also tried pink and purple thinking any other color might work, but those changed the skin tomes to a sickly green.

Callipeg has an option to export with a HEVC with Alpha setting but After Effects doesn’t recognize the file. Pam finally came up with an option I had not considered which was to export using GIF. I assumed that file would not have a high enough resolution but it seemed to work fine.

This scene is 28 frames long. That is just short of one second. For some reason the GIF file was just short of 28 frames when I imported it into After Effects. It seemed to be just a frustrating 3 frames shorter than needed. I exported the composite into the final Premiere Pro file anyway and had to slow the animation down to 80% to fill the slot allotted in the film. When animating I put a lot of thought into how fast or slow things should move so it is frustrating to have to slow down a fast paced run just because of a technical glitch in how files are transferred.

Back in After Effects I found a time remapping feature which just hold the last frame for the duration. That is what I used to get the GIF to play at the right speed. Since the shot ends with a fast paced zoom cut the held frames will not be noticed. I will have to keep this in mind for future animations on this film in that a slight hold at the beginning and end of the scene should give me some wiggle room for this strange GIF timing fiasco.

COVID: NYC Run Animations

Posted on by Thor

Yesterday I animated three men running down the street. Today I am animating a police man who is running but stops to turn and look at the Omicron Tsunami wave. To animate quickly I usually move copies of the upper body and head, scaling them bigger as they move forward. Since the police man turns I had to animate him head to toe. The woman in front of him had to be fully animated as well since she turns as well.

After I finish the policeman I have about 4 other people to animate and a bunch of very small people in the distance. I am hoping I can get away with just bouncing their heads and shoulders since they are mostly hidden by other running in front of them. If they are at any point fully in view I will have to fully animate them.

I have a few more of these scenes with crowds of people running from a threat, so I have my work cut out for me.

COVID: NYC Omicron Tsunami

Posted on by Thor

This shot will take some work. I estimated yesterday that I likely have about 168 drawings to do to complete the animation on everyone running. On my first day I animated the three foreground runners. The tie on the middle guy is a bit stiff and I am debating on weather I should do an animation pass to loosen it up. I need to finish all the runners before I commit to such subtle tweaks however.

I had to change the animation on how he swings his arms already. The first version I created just didn’t feel right, so I simplified it to get it to work. I was very pleased with the animation on the woman turning to look over her shoulder at the wave while she runs. She tends to get lost when the camera zooms in so I decided it was alright to take more chances on her since the animation might not be seen if I got it wrong. Since it works I will have to change the camera move so she doesn’t run out of the scene.

The guy running with the yellow package was the easiest to animate since his arm movements are so constrained. I have the people arranges into three separate layers with layer 1 being in the foreground. The three people I animated are 1A, 1B and 1C. The folks I plan to animate today are on layer 2 and they might at times disappear behind the foreground figures. Animation even further back might get even more lost,  which means I can relax as I get into the scene more.

All this animation is being done in Callipeg. The program does have it’s quirks. When I flip between drawings the program tends to leave one frame always in place hiding the other frames I am trying to see. The only way around this is to close down the scene and open it back up.

Anyway, I have a lot of drawings to complete today and I have to avoid distractions. It is amazing how often my phone will buzz when I have tons of work to do.

COVID: Burial Crew

Posted on by Thor

This shot consist of a dozen separate layers which are all moving independently. To allow the coffin to be lowered into the hole, I had to make a layer for the dirt edge in the foreground so the coffin would disappear behind it. The guy with the pic ax has three separate layers of hips, torso and arms holding the pic ax. I tried animating the movement in After Effects but the pivot point is a bear to deal with. I could move the pivot point for one frame and rotate the arms from the shoulder but when I moved to the next frame the arms would move to the center of the screen. There might be a work around but I didn’t have time to deal with the research.

I imported the pic Ax guy into Callipeg and animated him there instead. In Callipeg the pivot point stays where it is placed. The rest of the guys lowering the casket were animated back in After Effects using pin points at each of their joints. I bent each guy forward and bent their knees to allow the casket to be lowered.

Today will be much more challenging, since I have a crowd of people running towards the camera. I will be very lucky if that shot gets finished.

I submitted the film to a film festival in Leeds England yesterday. I read that the festival often shows films of geo-political importance, so I had to get COVID into that mix. Humanities inability to battle a virus has been a geo-political disaster.  I have submitted to about a dozen festivals so far and have screened the film twice. Acceptance or rejections are months away. Many of the heavy hitting festivals submission dates are already closed so I might not screen the film at those festivals until 2024. Just researching which of the 9000 festivals to submit to is a full time job.