COVID Dystopia: Burn It Down

Posted on by Thor

Crisis Eve was a productive day for film production. I finished revising five shots for the film. In this shot, titled, Burn It Down, i felt the large flames on the boat were not vibrant enough. The timeline for this shot was rather complex. I believe this was one of the earliest flame shots I worked on. The shapes of the flames are hand animated but the interiors of the flames have Fractal noise for texture. I also had hand painted the flames but those paintings seemed rather flat. The paintings were layers on top with the transparency turned way down.

I ended up throwing our many of the hand painted elements and adding techniques I had learned form doing about 30 other flame scenes. I could add fractal noise but when I added a displacement effect it changed the shape of the flames since the animation was a green screen element thus all the pixels were effected.

What I did instead was layer another flame element on top which added more flickering. I experimented with all the layering modes and settled on Linear Dodge. Both fires on the boat are now darker than the torch, but have more interesting and animated textures.

I also animated the cloud of smoke rising from the fire by adding turbulence to it. I added a turbulence adjustment layer to the waves as well which helped bring them to life. If I really wanted to go crazy I could animate the flags waving. I have them moving slightly now using pins to change their shape. The camera zooms in rather quickly into the scene and my assumption is that the flaming torch will catch the eye of the audience. They will not have time to look for the waving flags. Everything else in the scene is in wild motion.

It is very possible I might finish revising the final shots on this Crisis Day. On the list are animating sperm tails and revising the shirt on a guy in the audience early in the film. I might dream up other revisions, but end is in sight.

COVID Dystopia: ZOE Depth

Posted on by Thor

Yesterday I started the morning knowing I wanted to add some animation to the Gladiator scene. I separated out each of the gladiators in Procreate and exported each as a PNG file. I then patched the background where gladiators had left holes in the painting.

As I was working I stumbled on a youTube video that showed how to use a free depth generator online. The freeware is called ZOE Depth and is easy to use. I imported the background into the engine and with a click of a button it generated a fully dimensional image that can be rotated. Every pixel is pushed back into space. It is like a 3D diorama with a floor plane an walls. The 3D model is darker than the original art but that can be corrected.

I had to upload the newest version of Adobe After Effects which can work with the 3D model. Once it was imported, I then created a 35mm camera which could be moved through the setting. There are limitations, in that things tend to stretch and distort if you move the camera too much. But for the tight one second shot I wanted to accomplish it was perfect. I tracked the camera down and moved it in slightly towards the action.

The youTube video I watched was just 10 days old and the Adobe After Effects update was brand new. It is exciting to get to play with brand new technology using my traditional art. I continue to dabble in the digital world. The gladiator scene I completed with ZOE Depth turned out amazing. This morning, I listed 5 shots which I will try this new technology on. I am giddy and delighted to continue the experiment. Seeing the ZOE Depth video I shared, I also decided to try and make the foreground Gladiator more dimensional. This isn’t critical but I will give it a try.

COVID: Shot 2

Posted on by Thor

This is the first shot I created in the film. It was used as a way to learn how to use Adobe After Effects. I had to separate the sheep into four separate layers going back in space. I did this in my painting program in my by isolating each layer using a pen tool in Photoshop.

For instance the black sheep and the four or so sheep in the foreground were separated by using a pen tool in Photoshop. I later abandoned the pen tool preferring to simply erase what I didn’t need to see. I think I did this shot twice. The first time was done entirely in Photoshop by allowing the program to sort of expand the image behind foreground layers. I wasn’t satisfied with the computers, choices to create a sort of hint of what is behind each layer. I much preferred to paint this myself by hand. I t gave me more control to imply what the background sheep might look like behind the foreground sheep.

I learned a lot from doing and re-doing this one shot. I chose this shot since the soundtrack sounded a bit like a sheep baaaahhing.

I imported the layers into Premiere Pro the first time and moved them to try and get a feeling of three dimensions as the camera moved in. I wasn’t satisfied with the result. I ended up re-importing the layers into After Effects and effectively created a three dimensional diorama. The animating was then just done by moving the camera. I learned as I proceeded. I knew what I wanted to accomplish and had to watch youTube videos to accomplish each task.

I discovered I could animate the breath and spatters separately. If I ever go back into this shot I would move those two elements more. I got more liberal with animating breath as I got into the next shots. Do people notice? Probably not, so for now I am leaving it as it is. With over 200 shots, I am always agonizing about whether I should keep nitpicking each shot.

See the full COVID film here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQWz4umY4QA