COVID Dystopia: Flesh Dropped Like a Waterfall

Posted on by Thor


The full lyrics for this shot of the film, COVID Dystopia are, “Flesh dropped like a waterfall from every Nazi face.”

I hand animated the candle falem in this shot and the flames around the edges of the Constitution were animated in After Effects.

Rudy simply rotates a bit using a depth map. I am considering opening his mouth a bit and it might be good to hand animated a couple of drips flowing downward. If I fully animate the hands that might help as well. The consideration is always weather the move is actually needed.

I am going through the whole film now and making sure the camera moves work the way I want. Since I deleted all the snap zoom effects there are often hold at the beginning and end of each shot where those transitions happened. I just need to expand each of those markers out for the duration of the shot.

As I am doing all those camera move tweaks I am also compiling a spreadsheet so I can keep track of all the things I might consider improving in each shot. I will go back through all these posts since I often shared those considerations here.

This past week I have been swamped with moving the studio but now I can start animating again. I watched the film through this morning without the snap zoom effects and it is starting to grow on me. By the end of today I hope to have any camera move timing issues cleaned up. I also need to finish cleaning up the Times Square Hazmat shot. I am just making sure the line work in that shot is crisp. They say you learn from your mistakes. Well on this film, I seem to have made every mistake possible.

COVID Dystopia: Hazmat Cleanup

Posted on by Thor


This scene from COVID Dystopia was animated at a resolution of 1920 by 1080. Unfortunately when scaled up in After Effects the line work became pixelated and blurry.

To fix the animation I had to re-import the blurry mp4 file into Callipeg and clean it up. This involved going back to the original art to find the high resolution bodies and go through frame by frame adding them over the blurry footage. The three guys to the left have been reworked and I have two more to do.

I had almost finished the scene earlier in the week but I pinched all the separate layers together so that it would play back correctly. Callipeg has a glitch where layers that are not completely filled with art will cause the program to flicker on playback.

I discovered that several of the layers had shifted by a frame or so causing the clean up animation to fall out of sync with the blurry footage. Then the program wouldn’t let me move anything. I decided to start over and avoid merging layers. I am living with the flickering effect since I know that it will render correctly in the end.

I have just two more hazmat suited guys too go. I should finish tonight. However I plan to head out today to go to a solar eclipse viewing party. The plan is to sketch the crowd outside looking up. I don’t have protective goggles, but I will be sketching the people not looking up. At least I think I can resist looking up.

COVID Dystopia: Virus Over Manhattan

Posted on by Thor


In this shot from COVID Dystopia, a huge virus enters screen left and settled in over Manhattan. Animation was done in After Effects. The only possible thing that could make ths shot better would be for the shadows of the skyscrapers to change as the virus settles over Manhattan. I don’t think that is needed however.

I have one more day of working on a shot that has given me hell. I will write about the trails and tribulations tomorrow. Today I should be moving the last of the art and a filing cabinet into the studio. Then I can relax and start hanging paintings. I also have a small Mexican fire pit int he backyard and I plan to burn some paper items from my past.

I have started putting events on my calendar which should be good to sketch. Since I am animating I keep canceling any sketch outings.

I arranged all my sketchbooks chronologically yesterday. They were well organized through 2016 but then the system had been abandoned. I decided to arrange the books bases on the date of the last sketch in the sketchbook. I think the sketchbooks b=prior to 2016 had been arranged according to the date of the first sketch in the sketch books. I have a sketchbook in my bag now that was started way back in 1981. It fell off my bike as I was starting a cross country bike trip. Someone found it in the snow and packed it away in their garage. 30 years later they realized the book was signed and they returned it. When I finish the last sketch in that sketchbook the date of the last sketch will affect how I catalogue it. Is this the right system? I don;t know. Life is short beginning or end of a sketchbook, even with a 30 year gap is a infinitesimal fraction of time.

 

COVID Dystopia: There Were Lasers

Posted on by Thor


This scene from COVID Dystopia has an alien virus enter from the top and fire off one large laser blast. The explosion quickly expands. It has always bothered me that the scene cuts on the blast and that the farm house is unaffected.

If I go back into this scene it will be to animate the farm house exploding. That is a tall order, but could also be quite fun. The advantage is that the are probably only 6 to 12 frames that need to be animated.

I finished refining all the timing of camera moves through out the film yesterday. I want to finish off the clean up of the hazmat suit Times Square clean up crew. I cleaned up two of the hazmat suited workers last night but I have like 6 more to go.

Two drinking mugs that came to the new studio in the move. I have been using a white one with orange inside the cup every day. I woke up this morning and for the life of me, I can not find it. I know I drank from it at dinner last night. I wandered through every room looking at every surface where I might place a mug.

I must be going nuts. I finally gave up and started using the second mug which is a black coffee mug. I don’t know, but when I drink Mountain Dew out of the black mug, the Dew looks dark and menacing. I am used to my Dew being a bright nuclear glowing green.

I have two other white mugs that I now use to store things like scissors and X-Acto blades. One cup shouts CALM and the other shouts CREATE. I think I will use one of those instead, but I can’t decide which message is most relevant. I will not decide today. I figure if I don’t think about the missing cup it will just pop up unexpectedly.

COVID Dystopia: Flesh Dropped Like a Waterfall

Posted on by Thor


This shot from COVID Dystopia pans down from the boat on the surface to a large COVID mine chained to the characters ankle. He sinks fast.

I am waving on the idea of having removed all the snap zoom transitions in the film. Maybe I should add back snap zooms between the different stanzas of the lyrics. In my mind the lyrics are arranges with an introduction which this scene is a part of, then year 1, year2 and year 3 of the pandemic. Of course the pandemic is still ongoing but that is the point of the lyrics at the end… “I can’t wait for the game to end so we can start it again.” In other words the game hasn’t ended. Or if you have a darker outlook, the game of life is not yet over.

While people are busy ignoring COVID, a new threat is spreading across America in the form of H5N1 or the Bird Flu. This virus has been around for decades but mostly effected birds.

Since January 1, 2003 to February 2024 there had been a total of 254 cases of human infection. Of those cases 141 were fatal. That is a fatality rate of 56%.

In the last week America dairy cow herds in distant states are becoming infected with the H5N1 virus. Herds have been infected in Michigan, Texas, Kansas, Idaho and New Mexico. Cats have also been infected. This is a very new development. Now a man has been infected in Texas. This is a very sudden timeline for the spread of the virus. The virus found in the Texas man was found to have a unique mutation associated with adaptation to mammalian hosts. In other words the mutation developed in the man and is not from a bird or cow. It is unclear if human to human transmission is possible. Some believe the man may have been infected through his eyes but influenza is traditionally an airborne virus. If the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention’s response to this virus is similar to their response to COVID we can expect things to continue to escalate. If the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention’s response to this virus is similar to their response to COVID we can expect things to continue to escalate.

An advisory has been issued to NOT drink raw milk and be sure eggs are fully cooked.

H5Ni symptoms:

  • Fever (100+ fever and chills)
  • Cough
  • Sore Throat
  • Runny or stuffy nose
  • Headaches
  • Fatigue
  • Eye Redness (conjunctivitis)
  • Difficulty breathing
  • Diarrhea
  • Nausea
  • Vomiting
  • Seizures

 

 

COVID Dystopia: Vaccine Inequality

Posted on by Thor


In this shot from COVID Dystopia, The hands animate as they flail and then sink below the surface. I like how this shot lines up with the sound effect in the music.

The woman just stays still but bobs up and down a bit on the water’s surface. It would be nice to fully animate the waves, but I don’t think I will go that far.

I am pleased with how the hand drawn splash animation turned out.

Since I went back through the whole film and took out the fast zoom transitions, there are a few glitches that I need to repair. I tried opening the Premiere Pro file this morning and got the threatening warning the the file is broken and can not be opened. I did manage to open it by going through the history of recent files however. I don’t know what that would work if the file is broken. I need to figure this out beg=fore I push forward. I have had too many instances where Adobe products cause permanent damage to a scene.

Today is actually the first day of the Cleveland International Film Festival. I am not flying up there until the end of the festival when my film COVID Dystopia will be shown during a late night screening. Ironically the festival chose to use the scene I am working on right now for the header to promote the film. I am hoping to finish refining that shot today.

COVID Dystopia: I saw Cthulhu Break the Surface

Posted on by Thor


This scene from COVID Dystopia shows a giant octopus though the lyrics refer to Cthulhu. A single giant tentacle raises an oxygen canister. This scene was first painted when India had people dying in the streets unable to get oxygen. A religious organization took it upon themselves to offer oxygen in the street.

Cthulhu, first created by H.P. Lovecraft was a gigantic entity worshiped by cultists, in the shape of a green octopus, dragon, and a caricature of the human form. My depiction doesn’t quite live up to that description but I felt it was close enough to tie in with Andy Matchett‘s lyrics.

I picket on particular oxygen canister to animate so that it would tie in with where I wanted the audience to be looking on the next scene.

I was surprised at how well the depth map worked on this scene, the Earth actually looks like it is turning and the foreground tentacles follow that rotation.

I am satisfied with the scene. All the tentacles could be animated but then the audience would not be sure of where to look. I am following the KISS rule. Keep It Simple Sally.

COVID Dystopia: From the Observation Dome

Posted on by Thor


This scene from COVID Dystopia has a waves crashing against a lighthouse. The movement was created using animation pins in After Effects. I think the shot works as it is.

I made a drastic change to she whole film yesterday. I got feedback from a viewer from South Africa that he felt the film moves too fast. His wife kept asking him to pause each scene so she could take in the details. He wanted me to do an entirely different version of the film that runs half as fast.

I am not going to go back into each shot and add twice as many drawings to extend the animation. I did however decided that all the snap zooms that transition between each shot might not be needed. Each snap zoom happens over 3 frames, so each shot loosed 6 frames to the quick transitions. Most of the transitions were on a separate layer in the timeline, so I simply turned off the visibility of that layer and watched the film again.

Nothing was lost when the snap zooms were dropped. As a matter of fact the animation became the focus since it is no longer competing against the fast transition effects. I still need to do quite a bit more tweaking since the timing of each shot has to be adjusted, but the next cut of the film will be much cleaner and focused.

I discovered that an out of focus scene needs to be re-animated to make it 4K high resolution. I thought I had revised the scene already but apparently the work was never done. I have to move my studio in a couple of days so that scene might start after my Disney Animation Desk is set up in the new studio space.

COVID Dystopia: As the Scientists Stared in Horror

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This NYC tsunami scene is based on 9/11. The black steeple is Saint Paul’s Chapel downtown which was just a few blocks from the collapsing towers but miraculously was unscathed.

In the early height of the pandemic NYC was ground zero for the unchecked spread of the virus in America. The Republican president at the time offered little help since NYC is known to be a Democratic stronghold. The thought was to let the Democrats die. The policy of denial and minimization however backfired since Republicans began taking no precautions and died like flies. We have surpassed 1.5 million deaths from COVID in America and that number continues to rise. America leads the world in weekly confirmed COVID deaths. According to Our World in Data 890 Americans are dying every week from COVID as of the start of March. On average airlines carry 300 passengers per flight. In terms of the number of deaths,  COVID is still resulting in about 3 airline crashes a week. Yet this is no longer news worthy as the economy is the priority. With an election coming up it is better to ignore the virus, claiming victory than to clean the air in schools and public buildings.

This scene was reanimated to be sure the resolution was high enough for a large movie screen. When I started animating I thought 1920 by 1080 would be a high enough resolution for each scene but I was wrong. Many scenes needed reworking so they are double that resolution.

COVID Balast

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America has surpasses 1.5 Million dead due to COVID. That number is likely much higher since COVID causes brain, heart and other vascular issues that result in death long after the initial infection. Those deaths are not attributed to COVID.

Politicians are satisfied with the number of deaths. These people will not need social security. Politicians are promoting mass infection in the hope that herd immunity will set in and eventually stop the cull. Politicians are presenting the vulnerable at less than the average American. The problem is that every American becomes vulnerable after repeat infections with COVID. The number of disabled Americans due to COVID continues to grow. On Long COVID awareness day the media promoted the idea that we should no longer use the term Long COVID. The first social group the Nazis murdered on mass during WWII were the disabled. Care wards were emptied and the Nazis experimented on killing the disabled using carbon monoxide from auto exhaust. This next election cycle we have a former president who fancies himself becoming a dictator.

For minimizers Long COVID is not a problem until is has seized a member of their own family. For them COVID is not a problem unless they see bodies piling up in the streets. America is however very efficient at disposing of bodies. The government has done an excellent job of convincing people that they should not care about the vulnerable. The vulnerable are to be discarded so the nation can “return to Normal”.