COVID Film: Fifth Horseman Flames

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This is the fifth shot in a row of flames in the animated short. It follows the Pearl Harbor scene where a bomb drops and a large explosion is heard.By now animating displaced flames has become a bit second nature. In each scene the flames are subtly different because there are so many variables to the glow effects and the level of displacement I choose for each scene.

In this scene the flames are brighter and bigger than i n the previous scenes since I wanted to match the way the painting looked. I discovered I could layer the flames. I made two duplicates of the fire. One was scaled up a bit and put behind the main body of fire. I changed the hue of this fire to be more orange and I reduced the brightness. Then I scaled down a fire and made it super bright. This became the core of the fire.

I used the painting I did of smoke and animated it expanding using pins in After Effects. I then decided to add another layer of fractal noise smoke and animated it on top of that smoke. This added a nice subtle moving texture which brought the smoke to life.

I tried adding sparks using the particle world effect but they moved too quickly and I didn’t like the look. I returned to the splatters that I have used in so many other shots.

As a final touch I animated the statue of the former president tipping backwards. The guys pulling the rope are out of the field of view in the final cut, so I didn’t bother animating them.

COVID Film: Animating Restaurant Flames

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After figuring out how to animate the flames in the Pearl Harbor scene, this scene became a breeze to do. The flames still could use more chaos to the shape they form but since it is only seen for less than a second, I think this works. If I learn some new trick to deform the flames I can return to refine the scene some more.

This morning I added the smoke to the scene. Surprisingly smoke it rather easy to animate with a fractal noise layer with a soft light blend mode. I am thinking I can animate the rising shape of the smoke with hand drawn animation and use that as a matte for this effect. I might do that in a future scene. In this scene I simply let the smoke fill the upper half of the room.

There are quite a few scenes where this style of smoke will do the trick, so I should be able to animate several scenes a day.

COVID Film: Zeros Fire displacement

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I spent the day working on the flames in this Pearl harbor scene in After Effects. After tweaking the three largest flames I discovered that I could cut more mattes with the pen tool and fore instantly cropped up in the new locations.  I kind of wish I could get the flames to lick a bit more to the right but since the scene is so short I doubt anyone will will notice how upward they are.

These fires are all created with displacement maps, mattes, and expressions for some minor animation. I am learning as I go and I might return to the scene when I learn more about how to create natural movement to the flames. I am resisting using stock flames with alpha channels that are sold online. Each scene with flames with either be hand animated or created with displacement maps like this scene.

What I learned form this scene was instantly applied to a scene that I thought might take forever. The scene is in a super crowded bar and everyone is on fire. I managed to finish most of those flames in two hours. I am gradually combining different techniques to solve the problems that are unique to each scene.

COVID Film: Winter Fest Displaced Fire

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This scene has a fractal displacement map to shape the flame and another fractal map for the inner flame detail. I am just starting to learn about how to use track maps and I used a gradient map to add transparency to the top of the flame.

I am slowly becoming better at adding glow to the flames I create. This one took three separate glow effects to get the right look. Since I have so many flames to create I should be an expert by the time this film is complete.

I made a duplicate of the flame and blurred it out underneath to add more glow. Even that wasn’t enough, so I created a yellow orange oval and blurred it out below the flame to add more light.

The shows I watch in the evening on TV all have many fire effects. Agents of Shield just featured a ghost rider whose head bursts into flames. I might not be creating effects on that scale but it is something to aspire towards.

Each fire has literally hundreds of settings that can be tweaked. This week I should have more time to tackle the problems that come up. For instance I want to find a way to break off the fire tendrils as they rise. I found a tutorial where a fractal noise could create those gaps but I haven’t been able to get it to work yet.

In the scene above, I abandoned some hand drawn animation that I had done because the shapes didn’t feel natural enough. This displacement flame feel better and I will accept it for now. As I learn more I might come back to it. That is what is happening to every fore I animated over the last few weeks, I am returning to add complexity to what was a hand drawn solution. It is the final 10% of any project that pushed it to the next level. I am there now, refining, learning and tinkering until I get it right.

COVID Film: Alpha Matte Fire Solution

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Last night I had a major breakthrough when I found out how t use track mattes in After Effects. I already had the candle flame working with hand drawn animation, and I had hand animated the flames fairing up the edges of the Constitution. However I didn’t like how the Constitution flames were painted.

I had imported every frame as a PNG into Callipeg and hand painted each in that program. However I didn’t have any way to see what the previous frame’s painting looked like, so I had to guess how to paint the next frame. Despite spending a solid day painting and repainting each frame, I wasn’t satisfied.

I decided to try and redo the animation using a displacement map to control the shape of the flames. However that shape had too many separate tendrils that animated straight upward. The shape didn’t look natural. So I used the animation I had already drawn and used it as a tracking matte. I created a fractal noise layer below it and worked out how the flame interior texture should look and move. Then I turned on the track matte on the animation layer I had drawn above it. This offered the best of both worlds. I had full control over the shape and movement of the flames and a fractal noise pattern animated upward inside offering texture and complexity, color and glow.

I suspect this solution will be used throughout the film to animate the flames. It offers control and chaos which is exactly what I need.

COVID Film: New Fire

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I animated perhaps six scenes with fire. By doing so I learned quite a bit about how fire moves but I was not quite satisfied with these initial hand drawn effects. I can control the outside shape of the fire well enough but the interior texturing was something that was a challenge with paint.

I decided to experiment with creating fire using fractal noise and displacement maps. This was my first attempt an it is indeed better than the hand drawn fore that proceeded it. I still need to figure out how to apply a gradient that will make the fire more transparent as it rises and another gradient that can make the fire slightly darker as it rises. I think this can be done with tracking mattes but I don’t know how to make that work yet. Research is needed.

I am also thinking that it will be nice to hand draw the fire shapes but use the fractal noise inside the flames as the rising texture. I am using expressions for the first time to animate the upward movement. I am hoping I can use existing animation as a matte that the fractal noise animation can show through. I don’t have all the answers yet but I am getting close.

Next week my schedule will open up and I will fill that week with research and experimentation until I have a good method of animating flames. In some cases the hand painted flames look good, so I might combine techniques to get the look I want.

Chicago Boat Tour

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On the last day of our Chicago trip, Pam and I went on a Chicago boat tour. We had our carry on luggage with us and sat in the back of the boat. I discovered that wearing a mask also helps keep my face warm in colder weather. As the passengers loaded onto the boat I sketched them. I realized that I should have been sketching the buildings first since the boat did a u-turn and took off once the passengers were loaded.

The tour was of the Chicago architecture. The only old architecture was the tiny homes attached to bride overpasses. Any one of those tiny home would make a great studio if I could get used to the sound of traffic. Several skyscrapers have a thin footprint and lean out over the river. Apparently there is a reservoir of water in the building which sloshed back and forth to stabilize the structure and keep it from falling over. No thank you.

The Chicago Tribune has sold off its huge printing press building and is moving out to the burbs. It is another sign that the news industry is in a death spiral. People don’t want news, they want rumor, innuendo and anything that supports their blindfolded denial.

After the boat tour we walled down to the Navy Pier to look around and then caught a Lyft to the airport.

Back in Orlando I found out that my film COVID Dystopia had won the award for Best Short Animation. It was quite a roller coaster of a trip. It is now 7 days since my screening and I don’t have any COVID symptoms, so it looks like basic precautions like masking, helped even in a crowded theater.

Chicago Symphony Orchestra

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The day Pam and I arrived in Chicago for the Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival, we decided to head downtown immediately to go to a Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert early in the afternoon. We had a Lift ride to our B&B which was an adventure in itself. Our driver who was originally from Central Florida loved Chicago because of the ethnic  and cultural diversity. She wore bright blue sunglasses and the car was decked out in glittery blue highlights everywhere. Thinking back I really should have sketched that car ride but I knew I would be sketching at the concert.

We got seats in the highest balcony. It turns out that meant we had to climb six flights of stairs. I was massively winded by the time we got up to the stratosphere. I am clearly spending too much time behind an animation desk and not enough time exercising. The seating up there is at an amazing incline with metal bars between each row to keep patrons from falling forward. With sigh a steep incline there is no chance of a tall person seated in front from blocking a view. I wonder if that inverted glass dome above the performers offers a unique way to disseminate the sound. I doubt it is just decorative.

The woman seated next to us always likes sitting in this section. She explained to Pam that she used to come up here as a child and for that reason loves seeing concerts from this high vantage point. The seating in these heights was half full, so we had some social distancing from other audience members. Pam and I stayed masked for the concert. About 5% of the Orchestra performers were masked.

Pam’s mom claimed Chicago is walking distance to where Pam grew up in Iowa. When Pam wanted to go to a big city, she went to Chicago. She therefor knew how amazing the Chicago Philharmonic was since she had been there many times before. She was a trombone player in her past and she loves to hear a rock solid horn section live.

The concert featured Rachmaninov’s poignant Third Symphony which evokes the Russia that he loved. In my sketch is Violinist Karen Gomyo, who joined the CSO for Philip Glass’ Violin Concerto No. 1. The third performance was of Sibelius’ atmospheric Pohjola’s Daughter.

Chicago Reel Shorts Film Festival

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This Historic Chicago Firehouse is home to the Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival. This is where my short film, COVID Dystopia has it’s Midwest Premiere. Our bed and breakfast was just a block away, so getting to the festival each evening was a breeze. When walking to the theater the first night we saw a sweet husky in the firehouse side yard wearing a glowing blue collar. The pup sat as far away from its owner as it could.

The building is also home to Chicago filmmakers, which 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. One of the shorts in the Friday night screening titled 3:00AM by Ricardo Albarran, was filmed entirely inside this building. I recognized some of the locations as I searched for a men’s room between screenings.

I think my favorite film of the festival, other than COVID Dystopia of course, was Get Away, director by Michael Gabriele. This live action horror film features three young women get away to a secluded stone cabin in the desert. With no wifi, they find a single VHS tape and decide to watch it. The movie was filmed in the cabin they are. The action in the VHS tape intertwines in their reality in strange and unexpected ways.

Many of the shorts including Get Away had a 3 day shooting schedule. That makes it sound like a short film is a breeze to produce. Compare that to doing a painting a day for three years and then animating for another seven months and counting.

When I got back to Orlando, my online students started asking how people reacted to my film. Certainly no one laughed at my film and there was a long pause of silent horror followed by applause to break the spell. One of my students told me that both parents are infected with COVID right now. I decided to show her a silent version of the film since the soundtrack has several expletives.  When the silent version was over she was silent and I decided not to press her for feedback. The film is intended to fight the pervasive amnesia and denial that surrounds the COVID mass infections that continue. The message probably bounces off of COVID deniers but lingers with the few who know the long term repercussions of repeat infections. COVID continues to be a train wreck happening in slow motion. However most prefer to go think life has returned to “normal.”

COVID Film: Rudy Meltdown

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Yesterday I animated the candle flame in this shot of Rudy melting down using Callipeg.I animated the flame with an animation student. I found a youTube video that showed a candle flame flickering for an hour for mediation. I let that video play the whole time I animated. My first pass at the animation was a bit to extreme, so it dialed it back with a second pass at the animation.

Two of the lawyers in this scene, Jenna Ellis and Sydney Powell,  recently pleaded guilty in the election subversion case in Georgia. They pleaded guilty to avoid jail time. Amazingly their “boss” is the Republican front runner in the presidential election next year.

I had previously animated the candle flame in After Effects using the pin tool. However by animating the flame by hand I had more control over the flame tip movement and the squash and stretch. The difference is subtle but to me very noticeable.

I kind of like the scene with just the candle flame being animated, but it is too peaceful. Today I will be igniting the constitution as well. My fear is that the new inferno might upstage the candle flame but it is needed. I will likely use the pin tool to animate Rudy’s face melting as well.

I got a thank you e-mail from the Chicago International Reel Shorts Film Festival today. They had a very successful year with largely sold out screenings for each show block. They were helped by Chicago Magazine and The Daily Herald who promoted the festival in their “things to do this weekend in Chicago”. I must say, my screening was packed full.