Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival

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The Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival is the first screening of my film, COVID Dystopia  outside of Orlando Florida. Pam and I took the trip to Chicago to attend the festival. The screenings were in a beautiful historic fire house.

In all, 50 short films were screened. I printed up 50 cards with the movie poster on it and only one card was picked up. The buttons I printed with the laurel and the COVID title did much better since 12 of those buttons were picked up. For the next festival I will be printing small url stickers to place on the back of each button. scanning the url symbol would link directly to the film.

There were about 79 people in the theater for the screening of my film titled COVID Dystopia. In my film block there was a film about building schools in Uganda. In the audience was the wife of the man who is spearheading this effort to improve education in his home country. She stood up in the question and answer session and said she was amazed by the quality of the films but some of the films frightened her. I have no doubt she was talking about COVID.

The staff and volunteers that ran the screening were amazing. In one day, Pam and I sat through ten hours of short films in a row. When you see that many shorts in a row, you become thankful for the shorts that are extremely concise.

The only thing I regret about the festival is that there was no opportunity to meet the other film makers. It would have been nice to meet the other film makers in a local bar or restaurant or even a tent outside the theater with a food truck for food.

Seeing my film o the big screen I decided I need to make on change at the beginning. The music came on so strange to start that the sound system couldn’t quite handle it. I will reduce the volume a bit and let it build. All the animation being added helps direct the audience’s eyes but I am sure it is still overwhelming.

Several older ladies came up after the screening to ask more questions about my film. Pam pointed out that the older members of the audience have experienced more and aren’t as likely to fall prey to the amnesia and denial that fuels the “back to normal” mindset of the majority of Americans.

In some ways I feel I am hiding the messaging of my film by only showing it at film festivals. If I shared it on you tube it will become ineligible for many of the larger festivals. I am committed to the festival circuit and hope the film will start to pick up some steam.

Sprout Halloween Nap

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The last drawing I did during a virtual online course with a student pulled everything together. Donkey got off of this seat and Sprout took her place. Thankfully he was facing me as he dozed off. He is rather small on the page which allows the setting to tell more of the story.

In the corner is an umbrella for a rainy day. Next to the umbrella is a six foot long stick which I used to bring to Crealde Classes to be sure students were spaced apart. COVID is airborne and can linger in the air for much further than six feet but at least I tried to keep my students safe.

What makes this sketch work is the contrast between the bright outdoors and the dark interior. It allows for more impressionistic colors and moody greys. Hopefully the student walked away with an understanding that a good sketch is more about the story than just getting the thing on the page.

Donkey

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As I sketched my dogs as a demo for my online student, Donkey was curled up across from me with her back to me. Most of the time she was a shapeless lump. When I got up for a moment to change positions, she took notice and glanced at me.

That was the moment I started to raw her. I knew the moment wouldn’t last long, so I threw lines down as fast as possible. Donkey had a crazy grey haired mow-hawk which I wanted to catch. She lost interest after a few minutes of starting at me and so I focused on the rest of the sketch.

There are things I would like to improve, but instead of obsessing over this one sketch I will just do another. This is more scribble than sketch.

Sprout 2

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For a second sketch with my virtual student, I sketched Sprout when he lay right next to me.Again, I stressed working fast and furious. Sprout has a strange way of lying like a human when he sleeps. His back legs are not foled up under him like most dogs. Instead. he lays with his back legs extended. I think this must ne rather uncomfortable, but he can lay like this for hours.

Light was low in the late afternoon, so I made the whole sketch rather dark. There is no pure white, instead everything is in muted greys. I timed each sketch based on how ling Sprout remained in that particular position. There is a sense of panic that the moment might be lost that is never achieved by working from a photo. My student was unfortunately sketching from a photo and got a decent result, but there is a stiffness that always surfaces from the photo real.

Today my film COVID Dystopia is being screened for the first time at an international film festival.

Sprout Afternoon Nap

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In a virtual portfolio class I am encouraging my student to draw from life more.Many of my younger students are stuck in a world of video game art. They constantly draw characters from their favorite game. My goal is to get them to look away from the computer screen and sketch from life.

While my student drew her dog, I went to the living room and sketched our dogs. I wanted to encourage the student to work quickly and rather loose. I did three of four of these quick studies, while my student worked on a single sketch.

Working quick and loose is a message that never sinks in right away. I hammer away at the message over and over while showing them how I approach a sketch.

COVID Film: Burn It Down

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I finished animating the torch in this scene. I worked that into the final comp but when I went to open it today I got a warning that stated. “After Effects Error: The file you are attempting to open was created in After Effects version 24.0.2 (Windows 64) and cannot be opened with this version. See www.adobe.com/aftereffects for information on upgrading your software. Hell I created the file yesterday. It isn’t like this is an ancient file created in the distant past. Hopefully Pan can figure out tonight why the software is once again crashing and burning.

I thought I could get away with only animating the torch flame but once I saw the scene with that animation in place. I decided I would have to animate the boat flames as well. What I am showing here is early on in that process. I imported all the drawings into Procreate and I will be painting the flames this afternoon. The action is chaotic enough and now I just need to make the painted flames more believable.

I was looking at fire animation from the movie Bambie and surprisingly the fire isn’t an element that is smoothly animated. I also looked at fire animation in Hunchback and that has some stellar fire scenes. My fire is based on live action footage and isn’t very stylized. As I continue animating fire it will hopefully become more intuitive and fluid.

Most online tutorials show flames as cartoon teardrop shapes that wiggle back and forth. What I want is more sharp and violent.

Tomorrow Pam and I are flying to Chicago to screen the film at the Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival. I plan to share some sketches of our dogs that I did with a student while we are gone. I am sure I will sketch at the film festival, but I will not do any write ups until I get back.

COVID Film: Takes One

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I am continuing to experiment with animating fire. This one is based on a slow motion shot of a fire starting. Fire happens so fast that it changes faster than the shutter speed. This means the action is happening faster than it can be observed, creating jarring quick spikes. This was slowed done a bit to allow for smoother action.

Most tutorials I have been looking at promote a smooth waving motion and I have resisted that cliche for more chaos. The painting of the fire has been done on two layers, one being the base which is orange and then a much brighter yellow. I bring those two layers into procreate and add more brush strokes to add more texture and chaos.

I may skip the yellow layer today and simply paint with more texture from the start. I am trying to get as natural a feel as I can in the way it is painted without spending too much time on every cell. I honestly don’t know if the animation I am doing is accurate. I am just playing with the shapes and experimenting. I favor chaos over a simple repetitions pattern of motion.

I am animating a torch today and the goal is to simplify the motion in some ways. I have adopted a perspective blur effect to radiate a blur away from the base of the fire. This saves me from having to smudge the edges of the fire shapes to keep the share from looking like a hard cut out. I am trying a different work flow on every animation I do and when I find one that works really well, I will adopt it across the board.

Neil Gaiman and Art Spiegelman

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The Friends of the Orange County Library celebrating 100 years of the Orange County Library System sponsored Niel Gaiman in Conversation with Art Spiegalman at the Dr. Phillips Performing Arts Center. I know Art Spiegalman best for the graphic novel Maus which has been on my book shelves for decades. Niel Gaiman is also a literary genius.

This informal conversation was inspiring and profound. Both authors are advocates for libraries and horrified at the authoritarian need of American legislators to demolish the institutions when they can. Spiegalman’s Maus was banned from school curriculum, but I was pleased to find out that the author profited from the scandal.

The evening was like sitting in at an informal gathering where the authors got to meet again and share stories. Both grew up in the crucible of NYC and worked as journalists and cartoonists. I likes how they both described boiling down the essence of a story so it might fit on the confines of a graphic novel page. Being overly verbose isn’t eh goal but to state the case simply and boldly.

When asked about what it takes to overcome writers block. They both said that what is most needed is to always put in the work, daily and without question. Art never felt Maus would be published. He collected the rejection letters. It was a monster that he had to keep wrestling. It was created despite his reservations.

I had to reschedule a virtual animation class to attend the evening and I am so glad I did. This was a truly inspiring conversation to sit in on.

COVID Film: Crying Baby Fire Animation

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Today is my day off, so I am committing to animating the flaming baby close up scene. I tried animating ti with a rising bubble technique, but wasn’t satisfied. Instead I referenced a burning curtain. Animating fire involves absolute chaos with principles of waving motion and rising currents.

I started by animating the chaos on twos. With that pass finished, I returned to add inbetweens to put the scene on ones. These inbetweens should smooth out some of the motion and make it more fluid. I also change the animation to try and get the rising motion to work better.

Will all this work? I honestly have no idea. I am proceeding as if it will all fall in place but ti could very well fall apart since I am not a seasoned effects animation. I should be able to wrestle any scene into submission if I simply keep correcting things that feel wrong.

I now have a work flow that can paint the flames pretty convincingly, but it is the motion that will really sell the shot.

TOSCA

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Orlando Opera is “All for Art” in the 2023-2024 season. No opera better exemplifies the tragic artistic spirit than Tosca. The new Steinmetz Hall is in many ways unsettling. I asked to see the play from the highest possible vantage point. Each of the upper levels has a knee high railing, and from this height vertigo set in. Pam and I sat on the end and had to stand to let late comers squeeze by. Gathering my art supplies became a challenge as people pushed by. I am amazed no one was pushed over the edge.

Coughing echoed throughout the hall.

The singing in Tosca is in Italian. I sketched through the first act, so I didn’t have the advantage of reading the subtitles above the stage. I had seen Tosca many years before however so I had a general idea of what was happening. An artist worked on a sensual portrait of a Madonna. His lovers, a famous singer, was jealous because the eyes in the portrait did not match her own dark eyes. When the artist was not in the studio she climbed the scaffold and painted a dark slash over the eyes.

Sketching in absolute darkness, I think my sketch doesn’t come close to capturing the gorgeous set. I suspect I would have capture the gorgeous candle light better with a digital sketch, but I didn’t think I could get my digital sketchbook into the hall. Huge paintings defined each plane of the set. A child in a gasket, perhaps Moses was placed at the back of the stage, I think Jesus was on house left and the Rape of the Sabine Women on house right. The floor was also a framed painting and I think it repeated the painting at the back since the child’s face repeated on the floor.

The opera was absolutely tragic.