COVID Dystopia: New Flames for Canada Convoy

Posted on by Thor

I asked Pam to view the film with an eye only towards the flames and she found the flames I had in the previous COVID Convoy scene were her least favorite. This is the reworking of those flames. It involved five new layers and using all that had been learned form all the previous fire scenes.

Color is the most difficult aspect to control when there are three glow effects added to the fire. I finally learned that I could duplicate the entire flame and add a tint and hue effect to it to warn it up. I then use a multiply blend mode to blend the colors with the pre-existing flame.

She tended to like that all the fires were subtly different. I might go back and revise several of the earlier fires using what I learned along the way.

For now however I will be tackling the out of focus scenes. I looked at the Minotaur scene last night and it will involve re-animating the scene from scratch. There is no easy patch to fix the anti aliasing that caused the blur. I suspect that will be the case with zombies walking on the beach as well. These are two of the most complicated animations in the entire film and they both need to be redone at 4k.

If I remember right these scenes had so many layers that they started to have memory issues. I am not sure my computer will be able to handle the same scenes at twice the resolution. I might have to animates small groups of Minotaurs and zombies and export them is small batches to later be composited together in After Effects. I will push the program until it breaks and then start a new scenes. I’ll probably save daily versions of the scenes in case the program just seizes up.

I thought I was almost done with the film but that goal post had moved off in the distance.

COVID Film: Re-Animated at Higher Resolution

Posted on by Thor

Last night I re-animated this scene. This image is of the scene being exported from Callipeg so that I can use the animation in an After Effects composite. The important number in the stats on the export is the 3840 x 2160. That is twice the size of the first animation which was done at 1920 x 1080 resolution.

Pam noticed about 5 scenes that are noticeably fuzzy. The one I dread redoing the most is the Minotaurs running up the street. There must be a dozen Minotaurs that might need to be re-worked. The scene is saved but if it is at the lower resolution, I might need to redo tons of animation. If I can get away with patching the worst offending areas and leaving the rest, I will of course do that. I will leave that scene for last to give myself plenty of time to consider the options.

Today I might tackle some Canadian flames that need to be reworked. Other scenes needing work include, fuzzy monkeys, fuzzy zombies, and a fuzzy lion. Only as I dig into each will I see how much work is involved.

COVID Film: Restaurant Robot Resolution

Posted on by Thor

As I started adding flames to this scene I noticed the robot animation was rather pixelated. There is no way to increase the resolution other than re-animating the shot at double the resolution. I imported the existing animated scene into Callipeg and plan to animate right on top of the existing animation which works fine.

The foot, circled in red is the only thing added into the next animation so far. Every body part is a separate shape that is moved into place for each frame of the walk. This foot is stationary the whole time, so it is a held cell for the full 25 frames.

The guy and table in the foreground will also have to be revised to increase his resolution. The flames will have to wait until I get this worked out first. I never noticed this resolution issue playing the movie on my laptop, but on the big screen this pixelation will be glaringly noticeable.

I put the depth map behind the animation and did a quick green screen removal to show this shot. There is still green around the edges of the robot which will be cleaned up when I composite the final animation.

COVID Film: Lollapalooza Pyrotechnics

Posted on by Thor

Last night I felt I had finished this shot in After Effects, and retired to eat dinner and relax. However when I woke up this morning I felt I could do better with the flames. This site offers me a chance to compare scenes I am working on to previous scenes by scrolling back over the last weeks work. I really likes the flames I produced with the Pearl harbor scenes, so I went back to that scene and wrote down all the settings used in the flames. There are dozens of setting so I wrote them all down on a slip of paper.

I then returned to this scene and started using those settings across the board. Some settings like the brightness had to be adjusted because these flames are so much more intense.  I am much more pleased with the results today. Part of me wants to use these shapes to hand animate the flames in Callipeg and use these textures inside, but the violent shapes do stand on their own. I have to weigh weather the subtle refinements would be noticed. For now I am accepting what I have with the fractal and displacement tools that I have.

COVID Film: Alpha Matte Fire Solution

Posted on by Thor

Last night I had a major breakthrough when I found out how t use track mattes in After Effects. I already had the candle flame working with hand drawn animation, and I had hand animated the flames fairing up the edges of the Constitution. However I didn’t like how the Constitution flames were painted.

I had imported every frame as a PNG into Callipeg and hand painted each in that program. However I didn’t have any way to see what the previous frame’s painting looked like, so I had to guess how to paint the next frame. Despite spending a solid day painting and repainting each frame, I wasn’t satisfied.

I decided to try and redo the animation using a displacement map to control the shape of the flames. However that shape had too many separate tendrils that animated straight upward. The shape didn’t look natural. So I used the animation I had already drawn and used it as a tracking matte. I created a fractal noise layer below it and worked out how the flame interior texture should look and move. Then I turned on the track matte on the animation layer I had drawn above it. This offered the best of both worlds. I had full control over the shape and movement of the flames and a fractal noise pattern animated upward inside offering texture and complexity, color and glow.

I suspect this solution will be used throughout the film to animate the flames. It offers control and chaos which is exactly what I need.

COVID Film: Rudy Meltdown

Posted on by Thor

Yesterday I animated the candle flame in this shot of Rudy melting down using Callipeg.I animated the flame with an animation student. I found a youTube video that showed a candle flame flickering for an hour for mediation. I let that video play the whole time I animated. My first pass at the animation was a bit to extreme, so it dialed it back with a second pass at the animation.

Two of the lawyers in this scene, Jenna Ellis and Sydney Powell,  recently pleaded guilty in the election subversion case in Georgia. They pleaded guilty to avoid jail time. Amazingly their “boss” is the Republican front runner in the presidential election next year.

I had previously animated the candle flame in After Effects using the pin tool. However by animating the flame by hand I had more control over the flame tip movement and the squash and stretch. The difference is subtle but to me very noticeable.

I kind of like the scene with just the candle flame being animated, but it is too peaceful. Today I will be igniting the constitution as well. My fear is that the new inferno might upstage the candle flame but it is needed. I will likely use the pin tool to animate Rudy’s face melting as well.

I got a thank you e-mail from the Chicago International Reel Shorts Film Festival today. They had a very successful year with largely sold out screenings for each show block. They were helped by Chicago Magazine and The Daily Herald who promoted the festival in their “things to do this weekend in Chicago”. I must say, my screening was packed full.

COVID Film: Takes One

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I am continuing to experiment with animating fire. This one is based on a slow motion shot of a fire starting. Fire happens so fast that it changes faster than the shutter speed. This means the action is happening faster than it can be observed, creating jarring quick spikes. This was slowed done a bit to allow for smoother action.

Most tutorials I have been looking at promote a smooth waving motion and I have resisted that cliche for more chaos. The painting of the fire has been done on two layers, one being the base which is orange and then a much brighter yellow. I bring those two layers into procreate and add more brush strokes to add more texture and chaos.

I may skip the yellow layer today and simply paint with more texture from the start. I am trying to get as natural a feel as I can in the way it is painted without spending too much time on every cell. I honestly don’t know if the animation I am doing is accurate. I am just playing with the shapes and experimenting. I favor chaos over a simple repetitions pattern of motion.

I am animating a torch today and the goal is to simplify the motion in some ways. I have adopted a perspective blur effect to radiate a blur away from the base of the fire. This saves me from having to smudge the edges of the fire shapes to keep the share from looking like a hard cut out. I am trying a different work flow on every animation I do and when I find one that works really well, I will adopt it across the board.

COVID Film: Crying Baby Fire Animation

Posted on by Thor

Today is my day off, so I am committing to animating the flaming baby close up scene. I tried animating ti with a rising bubble technique, but wasn’t satisfied. Instead I referenced a burning curtain. Animating fire involves absolute chaos with principles of waving motion and rising currents.

I started by animating the chaos on twos. With that pass finished, I returned to add inbetweens to put the scene on ones. These inbetweens should smooth out some of the motion and make it more fluid. I also change the animation to try and get the rising motion to work better.

Will all this work? I honestly have no idea. I am proceeding as if it will all fall in place but ti could very well fall apart since I am not a seasoned effects animation. I should be able to wrestle any scene into submission if I simply keep correcting things that feel wrong.

I now have a work flow that can paint the flames pretty convincingly, but it is the motion that will really sell the shot.

COVID Film: Asteroid Fire Trail

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In this shot an asteroid enters the Earth’s atmosphere. I animated the fire trail in Callipeg and then exported each of the frames into Procreate where I continued to paint them. This is a time consuming process that involves making copies of every asteroid and adding them to groups. I end up spending far too much time turning groups off an on.

The flaming hot front face of the asteroid was fun to do. I added a clipping mask over the asteroid and then gave that layer a subtract mode setting. I used the flame brush in Procreate to get the more textured strokes. All of the animation is fast and furious and over in less than a second.

In this animation I once again used a bubble technique to keep the energy flowing outward. I want to get to the point where I am working more straight ahead, allowing the shapes to change organically. I have so many fire scenes to animate that I am hoping I will loosen up even more and act with more instinct rather than control.

I still have to add this animation to the final composite. A glow will need to be added. Then I will be off an animating another fire. At some point I will find the perfect work flow.

COVID Film: First Fire

Posted on by Thor

Yesterday I animated fire for the first time. I like the motion but the timing might be a bit fast. Next time I might reduce the spacing a bit between drawings. I am not quite satisfied with the painting effect since it is rather flat. I might bring these drawings into Procreate and paint them again there. It might make sense to simply animate fire in Procreate as well.

This animation was done in Callipeg and the painting brush choices are limited. I painted it flat on two layers and used After Effects to add a glow effect. Today I plan to animate an asteroid trail which had much linger spikier tendrils. It is much more textured and will require greater care when painting each frame.

I have many fire scenes to animate and paint so the best workflow will evolve as I learn more. I can say that even if not fully satisfied with this first experiment, it certainly sparks extra life into this scene.

I am still unable to render the full film in Premiere Pro. Fifty one shots render incorrectly with large portions of each shot being cut off and thrust into darkness. Pam said she should be able to resolve the issue when she has time to look at it. I therefor will just keep animating and hope this can be solved.