COVID: Two More Walks to Animate

Posted on by Thor

I finished three walks in Callipeg yesterday and have two more to do today. One of the men waves his wand faster than anyone else but it isn’t an impossible movement so I am going to live with it. Two frames in one of the layers shifted out of position with no prompting from me, so the possibility of a random crash seems imminent.

The background will have a parallax effect added in After Effects as the camera pans downward. Once this scene is done I might move on to animating a shot of the former president tapping on his cell phone as he sits on a golden toilet. I will only animate his hand tapping the screen and leave the rest as a held cell. It is a much easier scene to animate than the hazmat walkers above.

I also need to re-render a few scenes which have artifacts from applying too much parallax. I need to assemble a full list next time I view the film. The COVID film now has animation scattered throughout, so it coming together nicely.

For those who are interest a late summer-fall COVID surge has begun. The only way to know this now is through wastewater testing. All other testing has been halted. The nation is going into the next surge blind. COVID has risen by 50% in wastewater nationally and it is estimated that there are now about 350.000 cases a day. Of course an exact count is impossible. Biden has declared the pandemic over, and most Americans a glad to believe him, yet it is still raging for anyone who is paying attention. Arrogance and ignorance are a deadly combination in the ” new normal”.

 

COVID: The Trouble with Transparency

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I finished the animation on this scene this morning. In all there are 17 separate layers that needed animation. This shot doesn’t show the shadows which is the final thing I animated. Exporting this scene with a green screen proved problematic. If I used a green screen the masks would become partially transparent. I then tried a blue screen but then the masks turned blue and the policeman became partially transparent. I also tried pink and purple thinking any other color might work, but those changed the skin tomes to a sickly green.

Callipeg has an option to export with a HEVC with Alpha setting but After Effects doesn’t recognize the file. Pam finally came up with an option I had not considered which was to export using GIF. I assumed that file would not have a high enough resolution but it seemed to work fine.

This scene is 28 frames long. That is just short of one second. For some reason the GIF file was just short of 28 frames when I imported it into After Effects. It seemed to be just a frustrating 3 frames shorter than needed. I exported the composite into the final Premiere Pro file anyway and had to slow the animation down to 80% to fill the slot allotted in the film. When animating I put a lot of thought into how fast or slow things should move so it is frustrating to have to slow down a fast paced run just because of a technical glitch in how files are transferred.

Back in After Effects I found a time remapping feature which just hold the last frame for the duration. That is what I used to get the GIF to play at the right speed. Since the shot ends with a fast paced zoom cut the held frames will not be noticed. I will have to keep this in mind for future animations on this film in that a slight hold at the beginning and end of the scene should give me some wiggle room for this strange GIF timing fiasco.

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: 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

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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: Fun Spot Animation

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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.

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.

Viral Touch Animation

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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.