COVID Film: Animating Santa’s 3

Posted on by Thor

Yesterday was another 2 Santa day. There is one Santa who is further back in space and largely blocked by a foreground Santa. Since he is blocked I didn’t have to animate his arm. I discovered that he seemed to jitter a bit in relation to the Santa in front of him. He was partly on ones while the foreground Santa was on twos. I had put him on ones to add more weight to his steps. Since he is blocked that weight isn’t as important so I decided to match his animation lockstep with the Santa that was blocking him. This resulted in much smoother motion between them.

The second Santa was animated as a demo as one of my virtual students worked on inbetweens for her scene. She is doing amazing work and next week we animate a walk, step by step,  together. Pun intended.

Well this scene has just passed the halfway point so I better get busy and animate a couple of more Santas.

I have been watching effects animation tutorials, so I suspect I will be animating fire soon. There are lots of fires in the film, so I might be opening Pandora’s box.

COVID Film: Animating Santa’s

Posted on by Thor

Sunday I started animating Santa’s. I almost finished animating 2 Santa’s but still have to finish a waving arm. So my goal is to animate 2 Santa’s each day. I am working right to left. The first animation seemed slow so I had to put some drawings on ones to add some weight.

The second animation has the same number of keys but the spacing was slightly different so there is more weight to the animation and I could keep everything on twos. The slightest changes make a big difference in the weight of an animation. I like that they are walking differently, so no changes will be made.

COVID Film: Polishing Opening Shot Animation

Posted on by Thor

Yesterday I got a note on social media from a conspiracy theorist minimizer complaining about the messaging in my art. It makes me feel good knowing this film can make minimizers skin crawl. I wanted to finish this shot yesterday, but I started going cross eyed late at night.

Several issues remain and they relate to the difficulty of using After Effects. I thought that rolling a ball would be a simple task using transform tools. I accomplished the ball roll in Callipeg but noticed that the ball had become insanely pixelated when I saw it play back in Premiere pro. It turns out that any time you rotate or scale an object in Callipeg it becomes more pixelated.

So at the end of the day I was trying to re-animate the ball roll in After Effects. Sliding the position of the ball is easy, however rotating the ball happens around an anchor point in the center of the screen. that anchor point can be manually moved to the approximate center of the ball but when I go to the next key frame the ball moves to the center of the screen where the anchor point was first located. I wrestled with the setting for about an hour with the ball flying off in all direction. Who knew that animating a quarter inch ball roll would become such an issue? I gave up in frustration and went of bed.

Since there is no printed manual, I will be watching a slew of youTube videos about the rotation tool with few of the videos addressing the issue. I did tackle this issue before with the wood chipper scene. I just have to figure out what I did. So my goal for today is to roll a ball a fraction of an inch. Time to face the digital hydra.

COVID Film: Animating the Ambulance

Posted on by Thor

Yesterday I finished the background painting for this shot. I added a depth map but for a long shot like this it added little to the overall depth of the scene. The right wall was painted as a separate layer as well as the interiors. The shot opens on a close up of the window. As the sound of the ambulance becomes audible the virus rills up to the window as if to look out. Then the camera slowly pans to the left while zooming out, following the ambulance.

I finished keying the animation for when the ambulance turns the curve in Callipeg. The plan is to use the transform tool to move and scale down and up the final keys to the horizons. Animating the blinking lights is going to be the biggest challenge of the scene. I suspect I will want to import the keys into Procreate where there are much better brushes for painting bright lights.  Actually Procreate is coming out with an animation program called Dream in November of this year. It is a shame I can’t use that program for this shot.

Anyway I have a lot to figure out today, so I better get to it.

COVID Film: Animating Genie

Posted on by Thor

My main objective with this scene was to have the Genie’s arm move so it ties in better with the previous shot. With that accomplished I then animated the the lower red cloud, sand the four COVID protons circling the large virus. The Genie’s head was then thrown back and the pixie dust was morphed to add movement. All this was easy enough to do in After Effects.

When I watched the scene the Genie’s hair seemed lifeless. I therefor imported the skull into Callipeg and hand animated the hair overlapping. Part of me wonders if I over animated the overlapping action, but it works so I accepted it. Aladdin, on stage I left alone. He isn’t the focus of attention.

The next shot I worked on was the cell tower conspiracy shot. I had under animated that shot and had to go back  in to punch up the movement to make it noticeable. Animation seems to be a non stop balancing act of finding just the right amount of movement for each shot.

COVID Film

COVID Film: Animating the Skull Toss

Posted on by Thor

In the previous version of this shot I only animated the skull arching towards the crowd.I decided I need to animate the former president throwing the skull as he slowly walks the stage. In the previous animation I did I moved the skull in After Effects. The trouble is that there is little opportunity to change the timing of the animation. I got it to move on the arch but with very even timing.

I tried animating the skull in Callipeg using the transform tool but a very similar problem arose in that the timing was too even. Computers seem to insist one even timing. I finally decided I had to animate frame by frame repositioning the skull for each position so I had control of the spacing between frames.

I am half way finished with animating the former president. His arm moves fast but the walk is ponderous and slow. I am assuming the audience will only have time to see the skull movement and will not pay attention to the walk. I am debating about some tie movement. That will be subtle if I move it at all. For now the idea of animating the crowd or flags is overkill.

COVID Film: Animating a Flying Cow

Posted on by Thor

In this scene I am animating the flying cow. I had animated it previously but that pass had only a leg move. I decided to get the cow into a full on gallop as it flies through the air backwards. I animated the gallop as a cycle in place. The cow will be much smaller and moving backwards. Once the animation is complete and painted, I plan to merge all the layers and move the existing animation. I might also rotate the cow a bit.

The tail animation still needs to be done. I am imagining a rather frantic tail movement since it is wagging and also being buffeted by high velocity winds. The funnel of the tornado was animated as well and I plan to paint it rather roughly to tr and replicate the spinning shape. I will likely add a subtle movement to the virus as well using pins in After Effects.

I have to still animate the flying tractor and broken boards. I will see if I can do this using the transformation tool. I could also do this animation in After Effects. The house is already animated. I used the transformation tools in Callipeg to move it on a simple arc. It moves rather slow so a camera move was added to the first shot to speed up the scene. I will probably keep the same camera move after animation is complete.

COVID: SS Texts Final Composite

Posted on by Thor

I finished compositing this shot yesterday. It all came together as I had hoped. The third SS agent I animated had the largest arm swings and that kept the scene from being too stiff. Since some elements are rock solid, I am always looking for a delicate balance between stillness and action.

Today I am editing in an entirely new shot into the film. I decided that one shot is too controversial to be included. Many of my paintings are insanely controversial, but I need to find the right balance that will start getting accepted into festivals. The new shot I am pulling together is grim but has some warmth. The shot now in the film was chosen simply because a figure was mummified and in a hospital. The new shot still had a sickly patient but they are surrounded by caring parents. I also can add some simple animation to the shot which will add the the ongoing chaos as the film speeds forward.

COVID: Animating SS Agents

Posted on by Thor

I considered animating the SS agents in slow motion but that looked to unnatural. Instead I kept fast motion through the run and then spent one third of the time getting them to settle into a final stance. It worked out well. I haven’t added shadows yet under the agents. That will anchor then to the ground plane. The shadow of the agent leaping over the cell phone will be painted on a layer behind the held cell of the phone. That will allow the opaque phone to cut off the shadow cleanly.

With the second agent I tried the run with the agents arms stiff as a held cell. That looked very unnatural, so then I tried flailing the arms about but that looked too crazy. I finally animated the arms straight out front but going up and down a bit and then slapping down at the end. That was just enough action to work without looking distracting.

I painted the background to fill in where the agents once stood. This allows for me to move them all without a hole appearing behind them. That new painting was used to create the depth map. I didn’t bother painting the tire on the car since the tire will never be seen. The two foreground agents will be very still although I might shift their weight a tiny bit.

I have one more agent to animate today. My plan is to have that agent fill in the empty space behind the other tow agents thus filling in the empty space. I would cut off that animation without settling the action at the end. That means I will have to space out the keys further apart to get a fast run. He will have to start from behind the car of perhaps even off screen to make that happen. Each run has three primary keys so I will compare the spacing to the previous runs.

I should have the scene finished and composited before I start virtual teaching in the afternoon.

COVID: Lion’s Den

Posted on by Thor

Yesterday as another day of animating lions. I noticed that the human skull on the floor is a bit lost in the quick shot, so I animated the male lion stepping on it. If there was time I would have him bat it about like a kitten with a toy.

I just need to add more paint to the second lioness to tie her into the look of the scene. I do this by first painting shadows and then highlights. The challenge is to try and do this consistently from cell to cell so that the paint doesn’t crawl too much.

Getting the lioness to walk away from the camera was quite a challenge and I am happy that I pulled it off. Other lions in the background will move subtly but I plan to animate then using pins in After Effects. The nurse will also lean forward ever so subtly again using pins to key frame the existing painting.

Yesterday I got a congratulatory note form filmFreeway with animating balloons ext to let me know COVID was a Finalist with the FilmQuest Film Festival in Utah. The note had buttons to share the news on Facebook and Twitter. I punched both buttons in my excitement. After some research on being a finalist, I found out that the film was not accepted to be screened. It was just one of the top 75 films that was cut at the last minute. There is still a possibility that the festival might screen the film online. This makes sense since those who would appreciate the film are likely COVID cautious and thus would not attend a crowded indoor festival.

My list of rejections so far include, Global Peace Film Festival, Film Quest and Saint Louis International Film Festival. My record now is 2 screenings and 3 rejections. I am coming to terms with the fact that I have created a film that no one wants to screen, since everyone wants to forget and move on. Most are vaxed and relaxed. However vaccines do not stop infections or long COVID symptoms. The main point of my film is that the pandemic is not over, and no one wants to hear that. Every rejection hurts, but every time I get bad news I apply to another festival until I find judges brave enough to screen COVID.