Yesterday This was Home: Getting Seated

Posted on by Thor

The girl gets seated. As she does, the narrator is warming up to telling her about their possible predicament. I finished animation on this scene and some of the drawings of the girl have nailed her personality in my mind. The best way to find a character if by digging in an animating them. Many model sheets at Disney Feature Animation are simply drawings lifted from a scene that really worked. This is one of those scenes for me. The boys animation is limited to him tilting his heat to watch as she bounces down into the seat.

This film will be on display at the Orange County Regional History Center (65 East Central Blvd Orlando FL) from  October 3, 2020 to February 14, 2021as part of Yesterday This Was Home an exhibition about the 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history.

Events unfolded on Election Day 1920, when Mose Norman, a black U.S. citizen, attempted to exercise his legal right to vote in Ocoee and was turned away from the polls. That evening, a mob of armed white men came to the home of his friend, July Perry, in an effort to locate Norman. Shooting ensued. Perry was captured and eventually lynched. An unknown number of African American citizens were murdered, and their homes and community were burned to the ground. Most of the black population of Ocoee fled, never to return.

This landmark exhibition by the Orange County Regional History Center will mark the 100-year remembrance of the Ocoee Massacre. The exhibition will explore not only this horrific time in our community’s history but also historical and recent incidents of racism, hatred, and terror, some right here at home.

The content will encourage reflection on a century of social transformation, the power of perspective, and the importance of exercising the right to vote, and will ask what lessons history can inspire for moving forward.

To promote safe distancing, the History Center has implemented new ticketing procedures for this special exhibition. These procedures go into effect after October 3, 2020. For the run of the exhibition, they will have extended operating hours to create a safe viewing experience for a greater number of people. On Sundays after October 3, the History Center will open two hours earlier at 10 am. and stay open two hours later until 7 p.m. On Thursdays, they will be open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tickets for timed entry are available online.

Upcoming events surrounding the exhibition:

AdVOTEcacy in Action
Saturday, October 3, 2020

Coffee with a Curator
Sunday, October 4, 2020
Saturday, January 9, 2021

Celebrating Black Culture: Music, Storytelling, and Poetry
Evolution of Music
Thursday, October 15, 2020

The Legacy of Ocoee: A Panel Discussion
Thursday, October 29, 2020

Lunch & Learn: Crafting the Ocoee Exhibition
Friday, November 6, 2020

The Destruction of Rosewood
Sunday, November 15, 2020

Family Days: Growing a Better Tomorrow
Saturday, November 21, 2020
Saturday, February 6, 2021

Celebrating Black Culture: Music, Storytelling, and Poetry
Storytelling & Poetry
Thursday, February 11, 2021

Yesterday This Was Home: The Timeline

Posted on by Thor

The girl enters the bus. This is a view of the Adobe Premiere Pro timeline. Clips are stacked in the timeline along with the audio. The project started by editing the oral history. That is the base clip under all the animation clips. Some shots require multiple clips for the various elements, like the bus, backgrounds characters etc.

Red lettering in the upper left hand corner of the screen warn that I do not have enough processing power for the program. I am proceeding anyway. Playback of the scenes is often stuttered but the final render of the movie runs smoothly so I just have to live with the stutters for now. If I keep producing animated shorts, I will have to get a better computer. I have not been able to see some dialogue scenes straight through with out stuttering which makes it hard to judge if the lip sync is working smoothly.

I have about 4 large scenes left to animate and I wake up each morning excited to tackle something new.

This film will be shown as part of Yesterday This Was Home a new exhibition at the Orange County Regional History Center (65 E. Central Blvd. Orlando, Florida 32801). This special exhibition on display October 3, 2020 – February 14, 2021.

The exhibition is about the 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history.

Events unfolded on Election Day 1920, when Mose Norman, a black U.S. citizen, attempted to exercise his legal right to vote in Ocoee and was turned away from the polls. That evening, a mob of armed white men came to the home of his friend, July Perry, in an effort to locate Norman. Shooting ensued. Perry was captured and eventually lynched. An unknown number of African American citizens were murdered, and their homes and community were burned to the ground. Most of the black population of Ocoee fled, never to return.

This landmark exhibition by the Orange County Regional History Center will mark the 100-year remembrance of the Ocoee Massacre. The exhibition will explore not only this horrific time in our community’s history but also historical and recent incidents of racism, hatred, and terror, some right here at home.

The content will encourage reflection on a century of social transformation, the power of perspective, and the importance of exercising the right to vote, and will ask what lessons history can inspire for moving forward.

Tickets are now available for timed entry.

Yesterday This Was Home: Animating

Posted on by Thor

This is one of three scenes I animated today. In this scene Sam looks out the window, sees the girl boarding in Winter Park and decides to switch seats so she can sit beside him. The scene is 68 frames or to seconds and 20 frames. I had to act out how you might switch seats and I decided on him leaning forward and hen thrusting himself up on both arms to swing his butt over. It is a classic squash and stretch scene. The squash being his lean forward and the stretch being his thrust upward. I had fun animating his hand move to the far seat. He pauses for six frames looking out the window and then swings across.

In this screen shot from Callipeg, you can see the different levels used in the animation. The bottom level is the background . Above that I put the storyboard so I could reference it for the values used when painting the character. The animation drawings are on a level above the character’s painting level. I am not hiding how the drawings were dome. Some of them are very rough while other inbetweens get cleaner since they are put in to simply slow down certain sections.

It turn out I miss animating. It has been fun getting back into the process without having piles of papers cluttering the desk.

This short film can be seen at the Orange C0unty Regional History Center in the special exhibition, Yesterday This Was Home on display October 3, 2020 – February 14, 2021, The exhibition is about the 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history.

Events unfolded on Election Day 1920, when Mose Norman, a black U.S. citizen, attempted to exercise his legal right to vote in Ocoee and was turned away from the polls. That evening, a mob of armed white men came to the home of his friend, July Perry, in an effort to locate Norman. Shooting ensued. Perry was captured and eventually lynched. An unknown number of African American citizens were murdered, and their homes and community were burned to the ground. Most of the black population of Ocoee fled, never to return.

Yesterday This Was Home: He Was 12

Posted on by Thor

He was 12 and she was maybe 15 or 16. He watched as she s she boarded and he moved to the window seat. I will likely revise this pose when I start animating this scene. I have to decided how a 12 year old would excitedly switch seats.

I animated the protagonist entering the bus station today. I am pleased with his more relaxed walk and the timing I developed to make it clear the door had weight. The length of the scene turned out longer than expected so I will have to trim a following shot. I will likely spend less time at the ticket counter.

I also animated a dialogue scene this morning. It is from a distance, so I simplified the scene with just his head moving and the lips. I am learning what is noticed and what isn’t so I am using these short scenes to save time n the animation process.

I am cross eyed from animating all day so I will cu this short. The demands of animation are unrelenting.

This film will be on display October 3, 2020 – February 14, 2021 at the Orange County Regional History Center for the exhibit, Yesterday This Was Home, an  exhibition about the 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, which remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history.

Events unfolded on Election Day 1920, when Mose Norman, a black U.S. citizen, attempted to exercise his legal right to vote in Ocoee and was turned away from the polls. That evening, a mob of armed white men came to the home of his friend, July Perry, in an effort to locate Norman. Shooting ensued. Perry was captured and eventually lynched. An unknown number of African American citizens were murdered, and their homes and community were burned to the ground. Most of the black population of Ocoee fled, never to return.

 

Yesterday This Was Home: Everyone Behind Him Was Black

Posted on by Thor

This shot is a pan from the boy to the passengers seated behind him. I rather liked the lady with the cat eye sunglasses so she appears in many scenes. Since it a fairly fast pan I will likely not animate anything in the scene. If there is time in the end I cold animate the boys eyes glancing back but that is icing on the cake. Looking at the shot now, I realize I need to add a blurred out background outside the windows. There are so many faast decisions that need to be made, that sometimes I don’t see the forest through the trees.

For the rest of the afternoon I will be animating a passenger walking up the aisle of the bus. That scene appears for shots from this moment.  I also need to animate the boy walking back to his seat. I had some issues compositing yesterday. Callipeg doesn’t export PNG files with transparency in an entire animation. I ended up having to import each drawing and painting of the character individually into Adobe Premiere Pro and reducing the clip sizes to 4 frames. even with that solution I am finding that the images are bleached out a bit making line work drop away. I may need to find another solution. I also need to back up all the files onto an external hard drive from my iPad, but Apple makes that a nightmare scenario. I hope to accomplish that before the iPad freezes up from lack of memory.

This short film will be on display at Yesterday This Was Hoe at the Orange County Regional History Center, (65 E. Central Blvd. Orlando, Florida 32801) on display October 3, 2020 – February 14, 2021.

The exhibit is about the 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history.

Events unfolded on Election Day 1920, when Mose Norman, a black U.S. citizen, attempted to exercise his legal right to vote in Ocoee and was turned away from the polls. That evening, a mob of armed white men came to the home of his friend, July Perry, in an effort to locate Norman. Shooting ensued. Perry was captured and eventually lynched. An unknown number of African American citizens were murdered, and their homes and community were burned to the ground. Most of the black population of Ocoee fled, never to return.

This landmark exhibition will mark the 100-year remembrance of the Ocoee Massacre. The exhibition will explore not only this horrific time in our community’s history but also historical and recent incidents of racism, hatred, and terror, some right here at home.

The content will encourage reflection on a century of social transformation, the power of perspective, and the importance of exercising the right to vote, and will ask what lessons history can inspire for moving forward.

Yesterday This Was Home: Painting The Driver

Posted on by Thor

Though many storyboards are being posed in order, I decided to start posting scenes that I am working on at the moment. Right now I am painting this animation that I completed yesterday. I still need to paint his eye brows, the band around the brim of his hat, and his upper lip and tongue. I tend to do one element at a time going through all the drawing and painting just that one thing at a time. For instance I painted his skin tones from frame one to frame 179. Then I would go through and paint all the coat tones from start to finish. I have one frame fully painted that I reference when starting each step.

This is a dialogue scene with lots of head shaking an a big hand gesture towards the end.  This is about my third dialogue scene and I am getting much better at tying down the subtle movements. In a few hours I should be able to see this cut into the final edit and see how it plays with the sound.

One advantage of Callipeg is that I can carefully paint around the edges and then fill the color quickly by just tapping in the area twice to let it auto fill. As you can see, at this moment the driver is saying, “WeLL”

This short will be on display at the Orange County Regional History Center (65 E. Central Blvd. Orlando, Florida 32801)  for the special exhibition, Yesterday This Was Home,  on display October 3, 2020 – February 14, 2021

The 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history.

Events unfolded on Election Day 1920, when Mose Norman, a black U.S. citizen, attempted to exercise his legal right to vote in Ocoee and was turned away from the polls. That evening, a mob of armed white men came to the home of his friend, July Perry, in an effort to locate Norman. Shooting ensued. Perry was captured and eventually lynched. An unknown number of African American citizens were murdered, and their homes and community were burned to the ground. Most of the black population of Ocoee fled, never to return.

Yesterday This Was Home: Getting Seated

Posted on by Thor

A slow zoom in as the boy makes his way up the aisle to his seat four rows from the back.

Today I have been animating the bus driver’s dialogue. I designed his face to look a bit like a stop sign. The octagonal pattern is pronounces in his jaw and eye lids mostly. Even his eyes are octagons though softened a bit. The animation is going well but I had to stop because my Apple pencil needs to recharge. Such lags in technology are an excuse for me to multi task, in this case, to write a brief article here. My pencil is now 97% charged so I might not write much more. I also have an animation student in a bout an hour, so I may need to work late into the night to finish the scene I started.

The scene I am animating has a large hand gesture and I decided to animate it on a separate level. My thought is to have it pop up hen the driver says, “Pleeeese.” I might slide it forward or backward in the timeline however when I see it play back with the audio dialogue. Callipeg doesn’t have the ability to import audio, so I am just using video reference to find when the mouth shaped hit on which frame numbers. Once I see it play with the audio in Adobe Premiere Pro then I often decided to change timing on mouth shapes to they read clearer. I try not to fuss too long since there are plenty of other shots to get done.

This short film will be on display at Yesterday This Was Home, an exhibition at the Orange County Regional History Center (65 E. Central Blvd. Orlando, Florida 32801) from October 3, 2020 to February 14, 2021.

The exhibit is about the 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history.

Events unfolded on Election Day 1920, when Mose Norman, a black U.S. citizen, attempted to exercise his legal right to vote in Ocoee and was turned away from the polls. That evening, a mob of armed white men came to the home of his friend, July Perry, in an effort to locate Norman. Shooting ensued. Perry was captured and eventually lynched. An unknown number of African American citizens were murdered, and their homes and community were burned to the ground. Most of the black population of Ocoee fled, never to return.

This landmark exhibition by the Orange County Regional History Center will mark the 100-year remembrance of the Ocoee Massacre. The exhibition will explore not only this horrific time in our community’s history but also historical and recent incidents of racism, hatred, and terror, some right here at home.

The content will encourage reflection on a century of social transformation, the power of perspective, and the importance of exercising the right to vote, and will ask what lessons history can inspire for moving forward

Yesterday This Was Home: Boarding

Posted on by Thor

A drivers seat eye view of our character entering the bus.Before bounding up the steps he glances towards the back of the bus then fills the frame as he passes our point of view. Glancing at this and writing about it, I realize that I need to change the angel of the molding on the inside of the bus. I will make that alteration today. That is the thing about animation once you make one change several others have to be made. I finished animating a pivotal scene yesterday and it affected the two scenes that followed.

Toady I will be animating a dialogue scene with the driver. He does a big flourish with his hands and I suspect it will get a laugh. The narrator over acted as he delivered this line so it is a chance to overact and exaggerate a bit the drivers performance.  It is fun each day to wake up to a new challenge. I am hoping to have seven seconds of animation finished by the end of today.

This short will be on display at a special exhibition fromOctober 3, 2020 to February 14, 2021. The show is titled Yesterday This Was Home. It is about he 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history.

Events unfolded on Election Day 1920, when Mose Norman, a black U.S. citizen, attempted to exercise his legal right to vote in Ocoee and was turned away from the polls. That evening, a mob of armed white men came to the home of his friend, July Perry, in an effort to locate Norman. Shooting ensued. Perry was captured and eventually lynched. An unknown number of African American citizens were murdered, and their homes and community were burned to the ground. Most of the black population of Ocoee fled, never to return.

Yesterday This Was Home: Boarding

Posted on by Thor

I woke up this morning realizing how nice it is to wake up to just focus on animation. For the past 4 months I have been doing dark COVID-19 themed illustrations and my research always left me fuming about the incompetence and indifference of America’s response to this global health  crisis. Now I can put that aside and focus on this tale of a bus trip.

Of course 1957 was also a dark time. Emmett Till had just been lynched and the civil rights movement had just begun. Despite this turmoil, a 12 year old boy took a trip up to Detroit on his own and took a stand.

I created this board with the idea of having the viewer a bit lower than waste level, making the adults look tall in relation to the small boy. The protagonist approaches the line, which is being held up as a woman fumbles for her ticket. I’ll   probably have to get rid of that purse under her elbow when i animate to allow some freedom to move her arms.

This short film will be on display at the Orange County Regional History Center (65 E. Central Blvd. Orlando, Florida 32801) from October 3, 2020 to February 14, 2021. The exhibit titled Yesterday This Was Home is about the 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, which remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history. This landmark exhibition will mark the 100-year remembrance of the Ocoee Massacre. The exhibition will explore not only this horrific time in our community’s history but also historical and recent incidents of racism, hatred, and terror, some right here at home.

 

Yesterday This Was Home: Waiting Room

Posted on by Thor

Part of what I am figuring out as I board out this animated short is how tall the character should be. He is 12 years old and my drawing of him vary a bit as I try and recall how tall I might have been at that age. The look of the character slowly becomes clearer as I get further into the project. By the time I got to the pivotal scene I  felt like I had him established. When I go back to ass animation the characters can be refined an put on model which was established on the fly. There ws no time for a prolonged visual development I just had to start and hope it all  falls together.

These first shots in the film are fairly contained, but by the end of the film I was playing with some more complex camera moves and effects. I am learning so much ringing this character  to life. Timing is figured out based on the cadence of the oral history and in this case I decided it should take about four seconds to step towards the door, grab the handle, pull and take one step inside. I’ll let you know how that works out when I actually animate. Scenes I am animating to start are the close up dialogue scenes since they take time and care. By the end of production with the deadline looming, the time for care might be sacrificed.

Days are from about 8AM to 10PM or later but I haven’t started burning the midnight oil yet. Last night I spent an hour or so researching the case of Emmett Till who was lynched a year before this bus trip. Like George Floyd’s death, his senseless murder galvanized a civil rights uprising. In this film when the character refers to historical moments, Black becomes white and white becomes black.

This film will be shown at Yesterday This Was Home, a Special exhibition on display October 3, 2020 – February 14, 2021 at the Orange County Regional History Center.

The 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history. Events unfolded on Election Day 1920, when Mose Norman, a black U.S. citizen, attempted to exercise his legal right to vote in Ocoee and was turned away from the polls. That evening, a mob of armed white men came to the home of his friend, July Perry, in an effort to locate Norman. Shooting ensued. Perry was captured and eventually lynched. An unknown number of African American citizens were murdered, and their homes and community were burned to the ground. Most of the black population of Ocoee fled, never to return.