COVID: Fun Spot Animation

Posted on by Thor

I executed the front animated walk with students in class. After class, I animated the three other Hazmat clad figures. I used blue screen rather than a green screen to export the scene from Callipeg to After Effects. It turns out the green screen I was using caused the gloves and masks to go partially transparent.

The After Effects was already set up with all the layers arranged in deep space sort of like a diorama. I just replaced the tractor and walkers layer with a new tractor I painted which added spots that had before been hidden by the static figures. The After Effects scene was then rendered as a movie and imported into Premiere pro. I was afraid that animating this walk might distract from the hazmat clad men lifting a body bag. They are walking towards that action, so hopefully they eye is pointed in that direction. There is so much information in each scene which each last for less than a second, that any animation needs to be what the audience looks at.

I have three students in my animation course this week. One student did complete her walk while the others had excuses for not finishing. We will be walking again today to see if the excuses can transform into forward progress. I plan to animate an ape pointing at a large Qanon iPhone. There is another ape using a bone as a weapon, but I am not sure if I will animate him. I want the attention of the ape poking the phone.

COVID: Hazmat Walk

Posted on by Thor

I already animated others in this scene as they lifted a body bag. I thought I could get away with not animating this walk but decided it is necessary to keep things active. This is the first frame of animation called the contact drawing. There is just enough time in the shot for one step.

I am teaching an animation class and this will be used as an example to show students on how to execute a walk fairly effortlessly. It will require 13 more drawings to complete. Once this walk is done I have three more to do as well. I usually teach students how to do a walk near the end of the week of classes but this time I will jump right in on day one with the walk which gives them plenty of time to complete the animation.

COVID Unemployment Blue

Posted on by Thor

With the unemployment shot, I decided to animate the hazmat walkers. They were all in lockstep which made it pretty easy. The walker with the red cross apron was even easier since the legs are out of shot. I just had to bob the figure up and down with the step. I considered moving the arms slightly, but for some reason the pin tool in After Effects wasn’t working.

I also found that the hands and masks were partly transparent because of the green screen. I finally realized that the greenish blue masks and gloves were dropping out because of the green screen. So I experimented with different colored green screens. a purple screen was worse, changing the colors of the shot. This blue screen was what finally worked. There has to be a way to export a shot with transparency, but I haven’t been able to work it out yet.

 

Trailer Portrait

Posted on by Thor

Jon Busdeker created an amazing trailer for COVID. His approach was to document the start of the pandemic and then have a shot of the artist for a solid 4 seconds. The audio he chose of a heart monitor flat lining at the end is actually upsetting and perfect. We are trying be sure there are no copyright issues with the live action shots.

Since this shot is held for so long, I decided to add parallax. By now I can achieve the effect rather fast. The 3D mesh shows the nose and mouth but when the depth map is added to the painting, it just makes the mask seem 3d. Jon cropped the image as an extreme close up. I didn’t crop quite as close but did crop a bit so the Zoom lower panel is only partially visible. There needed to be room for some type to the right of my face.

I sent Jon a whole bunch of footage at 4am Friday since he said me might edit on the weekend. I was shocked to find he had done the edit by the next morning. Jon is a consummate professional. 30 seconds might seem like it could be a simple edit, but there are still thousands of elements that all need to work together. Jon knows how to juggle them all.

Chorus of Death Animation

Posted on by Thor

After looking at this screen grab of animation in progress, I noticed that the right hazmat clad worker was off balance.I immediately corrected that by rotating the drawing while leaving his foot planted. Another issue I am concerned about is that I am used to animating scenes at 24 frames per second. The film however is set to 29.97 frames per second. I suspect that means the walk will appear faster than I am used to. For now the walk is animated over 17 frames per step. The arms will not be swinging much since they are spraying antibacterials.

I think I will set up another scene which plays back at 24 frames per second and play the animations side by side. I know that a few frames difference made huge difference with the runs. I might be able to live with a slightly faster walk. All this experimenting of course takes time, which I really don’t have.

Jon Busdeker created an awesome trailer for the film and I need to go into many of those shots to be sure he has the best resolution version of each shot. I used my trailer to go into each shot and add animation. I will likely do the same for the Busdeker trailer after I finish this scene.

COVID Chipper

Posted on by Thor

I am now animating the COVID Chipper scene. The camera pans quickly down the line of children waiting and I decided I needed to draw attention to the child in the chipper. In twitter, I saw a video of someone putting a fish, head first into a mechanical device. The device drew the fish slowly in as it kept thrashing it’s tail in terror. Then the fish was plopped out of the bottom of the device with it’s belly slit and guts removed. It is probably one of the more horrifying things I have seen online.

So I wanted to recreate that with this scene. The little boys legs kick and then go lifeless with gravity. The action should draw the viewers attention. DeathSantis holding the girl was also separated for animation. The plan is to animate him leaning forward ever so slightly. I plan to do that in After Effects using the pin tool to move him. Pins are added at the joints and re-positioned. It should be just a two key scene.

The legs kicking was a far more complex scene. I animated it straight ahead and then added some inbetweens to slow down a few spots. Rather than paint the individual frames, I instead pasted the painting of the legs which made for a more complex image. The chipper is a separate element which allows me to push the boy deeper into the machine without worrying about a boiling front edge to the paint.

One other thing I still need to add is a spinning blade of a virus inside the machine. That should be a simple matter of pasting a virus on each frame and rotating it. I don’t plan to animate the blood spewing out of the chipper. The scene ends before anyone has a chance to see it.

DeathSantis Napalm Shot

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The next scene being animated in Callipeg is the DeathSantis Napalm Shot. I made sure this shot is only 1920 x 1080 in size which should make it easy to export. I have two more children to animate running today. DeathSantis will remain completely still. The camera isn’t on him for very long. For now the camera pans from screen left to screen right. I am thinking about trucking the camera instead which will add more parallax.

The scene consists of 6 layers right now. All the kids running are on one layer  so there will be no parallax there. I will also distort the explosion when I get the shot into After Effects. The plan is to add animation points into the explosion and expand those pin.

I might add a depth map for DeathSantis to help get his belly to protrude in 3d. Anyway. back to work, I want to have this finished by tonight.

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.

 

Canada Wildfire Smoke

Posted on by Thor

What if COVID was as visible as Canada wildfire smoke? Would people mask up then or would it still me a matter of “freedom” to inhale a level 3 bio hazard virus? Officials are advising people, especially those with pre-existing respiratory conditions, to wear an N95 mask. Canadian Health Minister,  Jean-Yves Duclos said, “So, for all of these people, including others that may want to protect themselves against the bad consequences of bad quality air, wearing an N95 mask is the recommended procedure by health authorities.”

When it comes to filtering out COVID from the air in health care facilities, work or home, no one cares because COVID can not be seen. Hundreds of people continue to die every week but the numbers are far less than the thousands who died every week during COVID spikes of the past. One in five will suffer from Long COVID. To return to normal everyone has surrendered to disability and death.

Biden hopes to get re elected by convincing Americans that the smoke has cleared.

COVID Omaha Run

Posted on by Thor

I decided to start animating probably the most complicated scene in the COVID film yesterday. I started with the larger boy in the foreground since I figure other figures might be partially hidden behind him as he runs. A run is much like a fast walk only both feet leave the ground for several frames. I completed two runs and have 8 more to do.

By the time I complete this scene I should be more of an expert on animating runs. Some of the runners disappear behind the beach barricades set up on screen left. The challenge comes because I have to animate backwards from the final frame of each run as it appears in the illustration. I break each run into 4 keys, the contact pose, down position, passing position, and the up pose.

Finding the right stride is a challenge. Once I have one section of the run complete I can duplicate frames to add the other strides. There are about 3 strides that can happen in the one second of animation. There is another scene similar to this with Ron DeathSantis with children running so I will probably roll right into that shot once this is complete. I suspect this will take several days to complete so you might see it again. You can’t rush a run.