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.

COVID: Flat Earth Policy

Posted on by Thor

In this shot, everything moves. The moon wobbles a bit, The waterfall cascades down, the virus and ships sail. My first pass at the animation had the larger sailing ship falling over the edge of the earth. Since it is such a short shot, there isn’t time for an all out fall. This morning I dialed back the animation having the ship sail right up to the edge but not over. I think it is better ti imply what is about to happen rather than my first blunt pass.

In the previous version of the shot, I had the camera move from left to right. I decided instead to have it move from the top down which rotates the flat disk a bit towards the audience.

Another issue with the first animation was that I treated it like cut out animation moving the boat image frame by frame. That tends to be noticeable if the image bumps up or down from frame to frame. I used the transformation tools in Callipeg for the second animation which gives motion graphs which can create slow ins and slow outs. The resulting motion was much smoother.

The image above is from After Effects. I imported the Callipeg animation with a greed screen and put it on top of a parallax view of the scene. The parallax made the scene more dimensional. The fact that the background was now in motion meant I had to make some adjustments to the animation which was done on a still version of the background. I had to put some pins in the waterfall to get the top edge to stay tightly knit to the edge of the earth. Since the earth now rotated a bit, I had to move the satellite as well.

I am amazed at the number of things that went into a single one second shot.

COVID: Swinging Pig

Posted on by Thor

I was debating weather this shot needed to be animated. The slaughterhouse workers are just standing around. I finally decided the pig needed to swing to garner some attention. The hazmat worker drops his hand to his side and the pig swings as a result.

I fully animated the arm swing, but with the pig I used some transformation tools in Callipeg that I have seldom touched. I set the rotation point and simply set several keys for the swing. Again the shot is only about 27 frames so I downplayed the animation so the swing wasn’t highly erratic. This was my first time using a graph editor in Callipeg to control the slow ins and slow outs of the swing. I rather like this feature and plan to play with it some more.

I am animating about three scenes a day now so the film is in full production. Each night I also research a film festival to submit the film to. My plan right now is to keep submitting to a different festival each day until I reach 300. Maybe 10% might accept the film. I need to harden myself to the inevitable rejections that are to come.

COVID: Restaurants Reopen

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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.

COVID: Takes One Two

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The second, Takes One, shot has the exact same couple holding hands and on fire. The background painting is the same but has warm washes over it4 to give an orange glow. I thought I could replace elements in the previous After Effects scene but that scene wasn’t saved properly. I had to start from scratch and create a new depth map for the background.

There are three separate layers of smoke clouds and I exported each separately in case I wanted to inmate them. Flames needed to be animated to get them to work with the walking figures and to keep them in place as background people moved due to parallax.

I debated about animating a second step but that would be overkill. Each shot flashes by for just 25 frames so no one will have the time to see if the scenes have different animations. I think people will just notice the couple with the fire shot and they will actually notice the Animation with the second shot.

I still think full Animation on some flames could help and I might add that with a later pass at the scene. Breath and spatter effects are kind of lost in all that is happening and I might take a second look at how they are looking when I get back from Key West. I am writing this article on the drive back to Orlando.

COVID Assembly Line

Posted on by Thor

I worked on the Assembly Line shot with my animation students. I decided to create an assignment where they would break apart a robotic character and move the individual pieces to create the motion. That is what I did in this shot with one of the robotic arms, The base does not move but I broke it into the foreground base and background base. The Upper Arm segment rotated from a round hinge at the base, then the forearm moved at the elbow.

This type of animation can be done in After Effects by assembling a forward kinematics skeleton, but I didn’t want to take the time to set up such a complicated rig. Forward kinematics is where you can move the wrist and the other sections of the arm will follow along with the action.

Instead I animated each section independently. The scene is only 25 frames long so that could be done fairly quickly. An issue that came up is that the center of rotation had to be moved into position for each frame. I placed that center pretty consistently but when the slow in became close there was some jiggling which had to be smoothed out.

I also used the robotic arm to teach anticipation which is when an object moves in the opposite direction a bit before moving forward. The forearm rotates s light bit down before the arm thrusts forward. Anyway animating with the cut out parts did create a robotic feeling animation which is what I needed.

The robotic arm thrusts screen left and then the guy in the hazmat suit moves his arm. I animated that arm move with the students. I had him raise his hand. But in 25 frames I had to end the action before he could place his hand anywhere. That animation that I abandoned made it look like he might slap the woman. I threw out some of the drawings to reduce the speed of the action. During the lunch break, I threw out that animation entirely and decided that he already had his hand on the woman’s forehead and he would draw his hand back and drop it to this side. I decided that was a much more compassionate gesture.

There is tons more action that could be added to the scene since the beds could lurch down the assembly line track, but the robotic arm and gentle touch are all I feel are needed.

Takes One After Effects

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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: It Just Takes 1 AnimationStart

Posted on by Thor

I started setting up this shot for animation. The plan is to only animate the couple taking one step forward. Of course everyone in the crowd would be walking, but I want to draw attention to the couple by only moving them. I didn’t complete the animation since I was in a car ride down to Key West. I taught my animation class from the back seat of the car and found I could not do decent drawings with the car bumping and swerving. I also started getting car sick trying to draw.

Instead I animated a much simpler scene for the students with a ball and cube animation. I could cut and paste the shapes which meant I only had to do accurate drawings once. I did the sketches at stop lights. My  students are doing some amazing work.

I plan to work on this scene today from the Bed and Breakfast. The man in the foreground is on another level so that the girl can animate and disappear behind his arm a bit. The scene is only 25 frames so I have about 13 drawings to do.

COVID Apes Animation

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I animated this shot while my animation students worked on their assignment. I thought it would be good for them to see a shot develop from start to finish. I finished (animated and painted) the foreground ape and the ape poking the iPhone screen by the end of class.

I only animated the up swing of the ape holding the bone weapon. This is only the lower third of the painting, and the camera pans up to a ballet dancer with wings who is floating effortlessly. The shot opens with a quick zoom transition effect, so I thought I should hold the apes for a moment before they started to move. However when I brought that timed render into Premiere Pro I found that the animation was lost as the camera panned upwards.

I had to change all the ape animation to begin from the start of the shot so the animation could be seen. Then I ran into the situation that the upraised bone was visible as a held cell for a moment. I considered animating the down swing, but then decided instead to zoom in a bit more into the ballet dancer until the bone was out of the shot.