Viral Touch Animation

Posted on by Thor

This is a scene in progress. The clown pastor has been duplicated and the second layer painted white so he becomes completely opaque. He was then turned off and the background was painted behind him. I only really needed to paint the area behind his arm since the only action is him reaching towards the woman. I decided to keep the motion minimal so his arm only bends at the elbow a tiny bit.

The shot is less than a second long, so I didn’t want an over the top movement. After I finished working on him, the drawing for the woman and the background was turned back on. For an animation this simple, I just used the puppet pin tool in After Effects. I put a pin at his elbow and at his hand and a third pin at the base of his body to keep his body from moving.

By animating the clown, I lost the subtle 3D parallax effect on him. I needed to substitute animation for parallax. With such a short scene no one will miss the 3d effect. The woman and screaming skeletons all have the parallax effect.

Morgue Start Animation

Posted on by Thor

For this scene, I painted out the two central Hazmat workers who were lifting a body bag. The painted in details didn’t need to be particularly accurate since they would mostly be covered by the workers except in a few spots where it might peak through as the workers moved.

I discovered that in these early paintings I didn’t always paint figures completely opaque. I often would let the back ground color show through. To make the figures opaque I had to duplicate the painted layer and alpha lock it. I then painted that second layer white and put it behind the other painted layer. This makes the figures opaque so that the bright windows for instance don’t show through the paint.

The first scene I did with these steps, I didn’t follow through on making the figure opaque. The scene is of a woman floating above her hospital bed on a respirator. I decided the fact that she was partially transparent added an ethereal effect to the scene. I might go back and paint her body more opaque and just leave the dress transparent. Then again she is rather ghostly now and I might live with that look.

Sweep it Under the Rug

Posted on by Thor

After three days of experimenting with the animation, the opera scene is done. That shot had me develop a new workflow to allow me to paint the cells in Procreate and then re-import those paintings back into Callipeg to work out the timing. It is now my favorite shot in the film.

Next up was the sweeping scene. This involved animating the squirrel tail and the skull bouncing under the rug. Once I decided to bounce the skull, I had to change the tail animation so that the tail would hit the skull much sooner. The scene is only 28 frames which is less than a second long. I couldn’t get the skull to settle in that time, so I cut on the action.

Watching the scene in the final edit, I realize that most people will not have time to catch the details action, but will notice a flurry of motion. I suspect people will have to freeze frame the scene to catch exactly what is happening.

My plan for today is to finish the animation on Cinderella getting her nose swabbed.

COVID: Fat Lady Sings Repaint

Posted on by Thor

When I hand painted each cell in Callipeg I found that the paint would crawl and flicker from frame to frame.In this scene she simply throws her head back and opens her mouth more to belt out the final note. The paint flickering was distracting. All of my illustrations were done in Procreate which has much better brushes.

I decided ti import all the animation drawings I had done into Procreate. I then took this first frame and used it throughout the scene. Rather than repaint the flesh each time, I simply stretched and morphed this existing painting. The result was exactly what was needed.

Exporting frames with transparency is still something I am trying to work out. I exported the scene back to Callipeg to get the timing right but a white background exported with each frame. I had to erase all the white since Callipeg does not have a magic wand selection tool like Photoshop. That is a painful and unnecessary step. The clip I imported into the final edit had some white flickering from small spots I had misses with the eraser.

Now I am considering cleaning up the shot in Procreate and exporting with transparency directly. This could be a good workflow, but I am still working out the kinks.

COVID: Fat Lady Sings Paint

Posted on by Thor

I animated the fat lady sings shot yesterday. I decided I could live with 13 drawings and a held cell while she held the note. At first I held the drawings for 4 frames each to span the length of the animation. When I saw the animation with the sound, it felt off, so I shortened the duration of each drawing on 2s. I am contemplating even putting the drawings on 1s to give it even more punch. I’ll try that today and see which version works beast.

I also considered having her face turn red, but 2 seconds go by very fast so I abandoned that idea. The body held cell is actually included with the painting of the background and that image was depth mapped. Her COVID breastplates are given extra prominence in the depth map.

When I animated the camera move in Volumax Pro. her arm holding the axe ended up moving a bit screen right. That is a happy accident I kept in the shot. Another camera move is used inn Premiere pro to zoom out from her face. That move tends to make the parallax effect less.

Painting these cells are a challenge. In a feature animated film the colors are very flat. I am however trying to blend the animation so it feels like the painting that I originally did. That is a challenge since the it is almost impossible to keep the values painted on each cell consistent. The paint tends to jitter and crawl a bit, and I just need to fiddle with the painting of each cell to tone down the earthquake.

It helps to paint on thing at a time, like the shadow down the side of the nose on each cell with the same brush and brush size. It is always a guessing game. Since the shots are so fast, I am thinking maybe I could paint one cell and copy that painting onto each other cell and morph them slightly. Then again I kind of like seeing the human touch. I am figuring this out as I go.

COVID: The Fat Lady Sings

Posted on by Thor

I am now scattering animation throughout the film. Rather than work from start to finish, I am jumping around in case I need to screed the film before all the animated scenes are in place. The fat lady sings is one of the the last shots in the film. This is a longer short at about 2 seconds so I have about 30 drawings to do today to complete the animation.

Ultimately the head, shoulders and the braids will be Animated while the breastplates and lower body will be a held cell. I will have to go back into the painting to separate out the lower body elements and erase the upper body which will be an animation layer.

I am considering having the singers face animate a beat red as she holds the sustained note. I have done this before and it is pretty easy by just changing the color on each frame as I go through the scene painting the face color.

COVID: Theater Animation

Posted on by Thor

This shot already has a sweet zoom and pan in with parallax that shows the directionality of the theater.I felt the need for some motion in the playbill to draw the eye over to the cleaning ladies in the hazmat suits. The scene is just a second long and to draw the eye I simply added the animation of a page being flipped in the playbill. Thankfully the playbill is in such a position so that it is conceivable that a hidden hand is flipping the page.

This is the final shot in the trailer, so mow I need to re-edit the trailer to include all the animated shots. I uploaded the film to filmFreeway with the animation added to this point. I have submitted to about 8 film festivals so far and have been accepted to two. Notification dates for most festivals are still months away, so I continue to layer animation into the film over time.

COVID: Bar Yell Animation

Posted on by Thor

This is not the largest character in a crowded bar scene, but she is the only one wearing a mask. To get the viewer to notice her in the crowded scene I decided to animate her. The only thing she does is glance at the viewer, and lower her phone. She is partially covered by expanding clouds of infectious breath which helps integrate her into the scene.

Her entire body s a held cell and the painted layers of her Head and arm are above that. The animation came out smooth a butter. It isn’t a complex animation but it felt like I was back in the saddle and drawing on a tablet screen is starting to feel as natural as when I drew in paper back in my Disney Animation days.

There are several much larger characters in a row in front of this woman and I decided to move them slightly so they don’t block the view of her phone as she lowers it.

This has set the standard of how I plan to proceed with the animation. I will only animate the character I want the viewer to look at and the rest can remain still. Perhaps as I go I might animate more but since each scene is a second or less, the viewer really doesn’t have time to notice more that on aspect of each scene. Many scenes don’t even require animation since the people are standing still. I’ll see how it unfolds.

Scenes are being animated and painted in Callipeg. However the painting brushes in Callipeg aren’t as good as the brushes in Procreate. I am considering animating in Callipeg and then painting the cells in Procreate. The issue is that I want the characters to be three dimensional just as they were painted. I will try this work flow on the next scene and see if it works better.

COVID: Social Media Audience

Posted on by Thor

This small bit of animation is being added to the Social Media Audience shot at the opening of the film.There are multiple rows of people in the audience laughing and having a great time and then this person who is the only one in a mask.

I the animation I have him anticipate by leaning forward slightly and dipping his head and then he leans back in the theater seat. With this scene I got used to the brushes that work best form my animation on this project. Most of the line work is put down at 88% opacity which makes it feel like I am drawing with a pencil. For delicate lines inside the figure I knocked back the opacity to 44%. That more delicate line work helped as i worked on details of the face for instance.

I painted a held cell where the arm touched the guys leg since I didn’t want the paint boiling in that area. The head and boy were then painted on a separate layer.

COVID: Fortune Teller Head

Posted on by Thor

After three days of wrestling with a black sheep head turn, I finally decided to dial back the scene. The music builds slowly to a crescendo and the first scene with the sheep is the quiet before the chaos breaks loose. Rather then animating the head turn, I decided to paint a depth map and subtly turn the painting of the sheep’s head. Along with the parallax zoom in effect it is enough motion for the scene.

I isolated the black sheep from the herd and added him to the composite with a green screen. This was my first attempt to use a green screen with a depth effect. It played back fine at first but the next day it broke down in Premiere Pro. The scene scene still worked in after effects so I exported the scene as a movie which baked the effect into place.

Premiere Pro crashed today and the edit reverted to one of the earliest versions of the movie when nothing moved. It was a terrifying moment, but thankfully edits have been backed up onto oneDrive which is online. The last time a crash like this happened it was impossible to recover because all the back ups disappeared. Back ups don’t dispersal when they are online and separate from the computer the program is running on. This tenancy of Adobe Premiere Pro to arbitrarily trash past versions of an edit are a real draw back.

The fortune teller scene worked well enough but I decided the head could be more dimensional so I repeated the steps taken with the sheep head. I also decided to animate the hands downward a bit. The effect was achieved by placing the rotation point at the elbow and keying the arm rotation. It worked for one arm but when I went to the end of the scene the arm rotated way out of place. I fudged things by guessing where the arms should be at the beginning and end of the scene.

The fortune tellers depth map grid was stretched out over the face mask so that it turned along with her face. It looks strange here but it worked fine in practice.