COVID Film: Infected Lions Inferno

Posted on by Thor

I am quite pleased with how this animated inferno turned out in After Effects. I used a layering of different fire animations to complete the shot. The result isn’t photo real but the animation is convincing. For now I have decided that the flaming manes on the lions don’t need to be animated. All that motion might distract from the animation of them pacing.

I still have about a dozen scenes that need fire animations added, but since I can quickly animate this inferno, the remaining shots should be a relative breeze.

I chose a more refined type face for the title yesterday as well and added it to the opening and end credits scenes. I am debating about adding some sort of motion graphics effect to the opening title but that is only in the dream phase. I will need to train myself on more motion graphics techniques to pull it off. The poster for the film looks cleaner and more professional with the new title treatment.

Anyway I am off to satisfy my pyrotechnic lust. I just animated one fire scene this morning, and I am off to ignite another. I need to learn more about how to use tracking mattes today.

COVID Film: Lollapalooza Pyrotechnics

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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: Vote Fire

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The fire in the Vote scene was surprisingly easy to animate. I thought this would take several days, but I had it finished before lunch. In the previous version of the shot I simply added a black and white depth map to the shot and that offered the illusion of depth.

My approach this time was to only apply a depth map the the people standing in the forest. They were then rendered and imported into After Effects with a green screen background. The forest, I broke apart into multiple layers. Furthest from the camera was the background and then three different layers of trees. There are distant trees, mid ground trees and then two foreground trees. There are also two painted layers of smoke.

All these layers were stacked in 3D space like dominos with the background furthest from the camera. The amount of movement in the depth map of the people gave me a hint on how much to move the camera. I just needed to keep everyone’s feet in the same place on the ground. That subtle camera move from left to right, offered the needed parallax effect.

For the fire I imported the painting I had done of the flames. I found a free displacement and fractal noise fire effect online from RocketStock, and imported it into my After Effects presets. I simply applied that fractal noise to my flames and with a series of adjustments had some convincing flames.

I went back into several previous scenes and used this new effect multiple times. It is most convincing with small flames. I also stated using it behind other animations I had done to add more break away flames at the tops of the fires. Most fires now consist of multiple animation layers to add chaos. None of the fires are perfect but this is the style I am looking for.

The painted smoke was animated using pins and then I created a fractal noise smoke effects which I layered on top. The opacity of the added smoke was dialed way down. This shot which passed as “good enough” now feels exceptional. With all these effects shots being refined that is how I am feeling about the film as a whole.

COVID Film: Fifth Horseman Flames

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This is the fifth shot in a row of flames in the animated short. It follows the Pearl Harbor scene where a bomb drops and a large explosion is heard.By now animating displaced flames has become a bit second nature. In each scene the flames are subtly different because there are so many variables to the glow effects and the level of displacement I choose for each scene.

In this scene the flames are brighter and bigger than i n the previous scenes since I wanted to match the way the painting looked. I discovered I could layer the flames. I made two duplicates of the fire. One was scaled up a bit and put behind the main body of fire. I changed the hue of this fire to be more orange and I reduced the brightness. Then I scaled down a fire and made it super bright. This became the core of the fire.

I used the painting I did of smoke and animated it expanding using pins in After Effects. I then decided to add another layer of fractal noise smoke and animated it on top of that smoke. This added a nice subtle moving texture which brought the smoke to life.

I tried adding sparks using the particle world effect but they moved too quickly and I didn’t like the look. I returned to the splatters that I have used in so many other shots.

As a final touch I animated the statue of the former president tipping backwards. The guys pulling the rope are out of the field of view in the final cut, so I didn’t bother animating them.

COVID Film: Animating Restaurant Flames

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After figuring out how to animate the flames in the Pearl Harbor scene, this scene became a breeze to do. The flames still could use more chaos to the shape they form but since it is only seen for less than a second, I think this works. If I learn some new trick to deform the flames I can return to refine the scene some more.

This morning I added the smoke to the scene. Surprisingly smoke it rather easy to animate with a fractal noise layer with a soft light blend mode. I am thinking I can animate the rising shape of the smoke with hand drawn animation and use that as a matte for this effect. I might do that in a future scene. In this scene I simply let the smoke fill the upper half of the room.

There are quite a few scenes where this style of smoke will do the trick, so I should be able to animate several scenes a day.

COVID Film: Zeros Fire displacement

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I spent the day working on the flames in this Pearl harbor scene in After Effects. After tweaking the three largest flames I discovered that I could cut more mattes with the pen tool and fore instantly cropped up in the new locations.  I kind of wish I could get the flames to lick a bit more to the right but since the scene is so short I doubt anyone will will notice how upward they are.

These fires are all created with displacement maps, mattes, and expressions for some minor animation. I am learning as I go and I might return to the scene when I learn more about how to create natural movement to the flames. I am resisting using stock flames with alpha channels that are sold online. Each scene with flames with either be hand animated or created with displacement maps like this scene.

What I learned form this scene was instantly applied to a scene that I thought might take forever. The scene is in a super crowded bar and everyone is on fire. I managed to finish most of those flames in two hours. I am gradually combining different techniques to solve the problems that are unique to each scene.

COVID Film: Winter Fest Displaced Fire

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This scene has a fractal displacement map to shape the flame and another fractal map for the inner flame detail. I am just starting to learn about how to use track maps and I used a gradient map to add transparency to the top of the flame.

I am slowly becoming better at adding glow to the flames I create. This one took three separate glow effects to get the right look. Since I have so many flames to create I should be an expert by the time this film is complete.

I made a duplicate of the flame and blurred it out underneath to add more glow. Even that wasn’t enough, so I created a yellow orange oval and blurred it out below the flame to add more light.

The shows I watch in the evening on TV all have many fire effects. Agents of Shield just featured a ghost rider whose head bursts into flames. I might not be creating effects on that scale but it is something to aspire towards.

Each fire has literally hundreds of settings that can be tweaked. This week I should have more time to tackle the problems that come up. For instance I want to find a way to break off the fire tendrils as they rise. I found a tutorial where a fractal noise could create those gaps but I haven’t been able to get it to work yet.

In the scene above, I abandoned some hand drawn animation that I had done because the shapes didn’t feel natural enough. This displacement flame feel better and I will accept it for now. As I learn more I might come back to it. That is what is happening to every fore I animated over the last few weeks, I am returning to add complexity to what was a hand drawn solution. It is the final 10% of any project that pushed it to the next level. I am there now, refining, learning and tinkering until I get it right.

COVID Film: New Fire

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I animated perhaps six scenes with fire. By doing so I learned quite a bit about how fire moves but I was not quite satisfied with these initial hand drawn effects. I can control the outside shape of the fire well enough but the interior texturing was something that was a challenge with paint.

I decided to experiment with creating fire using fractal noise and displacement maps. This was my first attempt an it is indeed better than the hand drawn fore that proceeded it. I still need to figure out how to apply a gradient that will make the fire more transparent as it rises and another gradient that can make the fire slightly darker as it rises. I think this can be done with tracking mattes but I don’t know how to make that work yet. Research is needed.

I am also thinking that it will be nice to hand draw the fire shapes but use the fractal noise inside the flames as the rising texture. I am using expressions for the first time to animate the upward movement. I am hoping I can use existing animation as a matte that the fractal noise animation can show through. I don’t have all the answers yet but I am getting close.

Next week my schedule will open up and I will fill that week with research and experimentation until I have a good method of animating flames. In some cases the hand painted flames look good, so I might combine techniques to get the look I want.

Chicago Reel Shorts Film Festival

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This Historic Chicago Firehouse is home to the Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival. This is where my short film, COVID Dystopia has it’s Midwest Premiere. Our bed and breakfast was just a block away, so getting to the festival each evening was a breeze. When walking to the theater the first night we saw a sweet husky in the firehouse side yard wearing a glowing blue collar. The pup sat as far away from its owner as it could.

The building is also home to Chicago filmmakers, which is a not-for-profit media arts organization that fosters the creation, appreciation, and understanding of film and video as media for artistic and personal expression, as well as media of important social and community impact. One of the shorts in the Friday night screening titled 3:00AM by Ricardo Albarran, was filmed entirely inside this building. I recognized some of the locations as I searched for a men’s room between screenings.

I think my favorite film of the festival, other than COVID Dystopia of course, was Get Away, director by Michael Gabriele. This live action horror film features three young women get away to a secluded stone cabin in the desert. With no wifi, they find a single VHS tape and decide to watch it. The movie was filmed in the cabin they are. The action in the VHS tape intertwines in their reality in strange and unexpected ways.

Many of the shorts including Get Away had a 3 day shooting schedule. That makes it sound like a short film is a breeze to produce. Compare that to doing a painting a day for three years and then animating for another seven months and counting.

When I got back to Orlando, my online students started asking how people reacted to my film. Certainly no one laughed at my film and there was a long pause of silent horror followed by applause to break the spell. One of my students told me that both parents are infected with COVID right now. I decided to show her a silent version of the film since the soundtrack has several expletives.  When the silent version was over she was silent and I decided not to press her for feedback. The film is intended to fight the pervasive amnesia and denial that surrounds the COVID mass infections that continue. The message probably bounces off of COVID deniers but lingers with the few who know the long term repercussions of repeat infections. COVID continues to be a train wreck happening in slow motion. However most prefer to go think life has returned to “normal.”

COVID Film: Burn It Down

Posted on by Thor

I finished animating the torch in this scene. I worked that into the final comp but when I went to open it today I got a warning that stated. “After Effects Error: The file you are attempting to open was created in After Effects version 24.0.2 (Windows 64) and cannot be opened with this version. See www.adobe.com/aftereffects for information on upgrading your software. Hell I created the file yesterday. It isn’t like this is an ancient file created in the distant past. Hopefully Pan can figure out tonight why the software is once again crashing and burning.

I thought I could get away with only animating the torch flame but once I saw the scene with that animation in place. I decided I would have to animate the boat flames as well. What I am showing here is early on in that process. I imported all the drawings into Procreate and I will be painting the flames this afternoon. The action is chaotic enough and now I just need to make the painted flames more believable.

I was looking at fire animation from the movie Bambie and surprisingly the fire isn’t an element that is smoothly animated. I also looked at fire animation in Hunchback and that has some stellar fire scenes. My fire is based on live action footage and isn’t very stylized. As I continue animating fire it will hopefully become more intuitive and fluid.

Most online tutorials show flames as cartoon teardrop shapes that wiggle back and forth. What I want is more sharp and violent.

Tomorrow Pam and I are flying to Chicago to screen the film at the Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival. I plan to share some sketches of our dogs that I did with a student while we are gone. I am sure I will sketch at the film festival, but I will not do any write ups until I get back.