COVID: Burning Liberty

Posted on by Thor

With the Burning Liberty scene, I animated the three black cloak clad skeletons as they ignite the pyre. Each moves in subtly different ways. The rest of the scene is a depth map which pans upward. Liberty’s crown and upper arm had to the protected from warping too much. Since the scene flashes by so fast, the animation might not even be notices so I better go back and make sure there is a slow out on the camera move.

Yesterday was quite productive. I also animated Mike Pence clapping his hands, reworked the end credits a bit, and added subtle animation to the 5G tower scene. Today I plan to work on the woman waiting to vote, three plague doctors and some angel wings.

The list is growing smaller but I keep writing down notes each time I view the film.

Recently when I render scenes in After Effects, a single frame blacks out with a long error message. I should really try and figure out why that is happening. For now I am working around the errors by slowing down the clip speed to crop out the error frame. This isn’t a tech savvy solution, but it keeps me moving forward.

COVID: AntiVax Breakdown

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This is another example of how I break apart a painting for animation. I wanted to animate the two arms pointing so I separated them from the body. I liked how the parallax worked on the people so I imported them into Volumax Pro and worked on making them dimensional separate from the background. I made the background dimensional in a separate pass and then composited them together in After Effects.

Animation on the pointing arms was completed using the pin tool in After Effects. I was rather timid using this tool at first but now I am embracing it as a way to add simple and subtle animation to the paintings. I placed a pin at each joint and moved those pins for each key frame. I found that if I turned off all other programs on my computer I could watch the animation play back in real time. I therefor spent plenty of time refining the animation until it felt just right. Fire and smoke were animated the same way. Now that I know I can play back the animation as I am working on it, I might go back and refine other scenes that could use more work.

I got my first rejection from my 20 or so submissions to film festivals. The film will not be shown at the Global Peace Film Festival here in Orlando. I didn’t think the film was a right fit at first, but a board member of the festival insisted that I submit it. My film clearly does not promote world peace. If anything it is battling a collective world amnesia and denial. I decided that each time the film is rejected, I will submit to another film festival. My film is a hard sell, but I think it needs to be seen. If a festival is holding in person screenings then they are already embracing and helping spread the COVID virus. They will not likely want to screen a film that shows the horror of the ongoing pandemic when they wish the pandemic was over or never happened.

 

COVID: Science Aggression Animation

Posted on by Thor

Yesterday was a very productive day. I finished three scenes and completed the animation for this Science Aggression Animation. This morning I just need to paint the arms and move on to the next scene. Science aggression is a very real thing, and the aggressors have won. All basic attempts to curb the spread of the COVID Virus have been dropped. As a result there is a late summer surge in cases with no testing in place.

New vaccines will be available in September but several new variants are already so mutated that the vaccines will be useless against them. Long COVID continues to disable children and adults alike. You do not need to be vulnerable to develop long COVID.

On the plus side, the economy is purring along. The economy is any politician’s primary focus.

Anyway, back to this scene. I know that this arm animation will be a devil to composite into the final scene. I am using green screens but the glove is green and therefor will become partially transparent. I think a blue screen will change the color of the glove. Transparency is a bear I have yet to tackle. Callipeg has a format called HEVC with an Alpha channel but it does not open in After Effects. I need to find some plug in that converts the HEVC file into something that After Effects can recognize.

I have never tried importing the HEVC file into Premiere but I suspect the same problem will occur. I will try that today. I will try that today, I will do most of the compositing in After Effects and then export it without the arm animation. I will then try and line up the animation in Premiere. It seems insane that I have to jump through so many hoops to try and export an animated scene with transparency.

COVID: Breach

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This scene is quick zoom in towards the zombies around the confederate flag. I animated the flag wave using the wave warp tool in After Effects. It isn’t the most believable waving flag animation in the world but it might do. I am considering importing the file into Callipeg to refine the shape of the flag to exaggerate the folds.

Last night I started working on a new shot that goes with the Lyrics, “Explode”. The image had been a crowd in India desperately storming an oxygen supply warehouse. The crowd is engulfed in flames. The trouble is that the shot is rather amorphous and difficult to read.

The shot I am considering replacing it with is iconic and easily readable. I am using the shot as an excuse to play with animation tools I seldom use in Callipeg. If it all works out it could go in the film. If it doesn’t work then it was just an experiment.

COVID: Lake Eola Zombies Day 3

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If there is one thing I might change in this shot it is the shadows. Since the shadows on the grass were dark green, I decided to use a blue screen behind the animation to transfer it into the final composite. The shadow color changes from the dark green to a dark blue. That color isn’t entirely implausible so I have left it for now.

In the shot with the zombies walking down the steps from the airplane I just discovered that the single masked worker was missing. I will have to re-composite that shot. Right now I am separating out the zombies that are walking through airport security. There are 6 zombies so I will be working on that scene for a few days.

Juggling these zombie scenes is like juggling a dozen balls and once in a while a ball drops to the floor. One step forward one step back. I think after zombies I will be animating the animals in the film. There is a bear and several lions that need to be brought to life.

COVID: Animate Eola Zombies Day 2

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Yesterday was a 2 zombie day. I also finished the keys for a third zombie. This scene will be finished by the end of today and I hope to start zombies going through airport security. I am still debating about the front zombie. I might slow down his forward movement a bit. I will make that decision after seeing all the zombies in the shot moving together.

So far I have submitted the film to about 20 film festivals. In the next couple of days I will get my first acceptance or rejections. I know this is a film that few people want to see, but I think it is a film people need to see.  Keeping track of 20 festivals seems like it will be my sweet spot. Once a film is accepted or rejected, I will apply to another festival.

COVID: Lake Eola Zombies Animation Day 1

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After finishing animation on the zombies exiting the COVID Air plane, I jumped over to animating Lake Eola Zombies.This scene is also less than a second in duration, so there is only time for one stride of a walk. I stated animation of the front zombie and he moves the fastest. The plan is to have each zombie move less as they go back in space. The furthest zombies as well as the couple sun bathing and the paramedics will remain as held cells.

I had to paint quite a bit of the ambulance which was hidden by the zombies which I separated out to animate. I had to draw in the back tires since I think they might become visible once the zombies lurch forward. I am animating the front zombie’s arm but barely. I figure it is tiff with rigor mortis. I will probably add a back arm as well.

I will be using this scene as an excuse to try and encourage a student to walk a character towards the camera. The character was drawn last week and hopefully some animation will happen this week.

I have one more zombie crowd scene inside an airport that needs to be animated and I will jump on that scene once this one is completed hopefully by the end of today.

COVID Air Animation

Posted on by Thor

I reworked the animation on the masking pans at the end of the film by adding an anticipation and making the timing quicker. The subtle changes made a big difference. Then I decided to start animating zombies again. This COVID Air scene is just 23 frames in duration which is less than a second. The zombies are being animated walking down the steps. There is just enough time for one step down.

I actually draw out the legs and feet completely but the background is separated so that the front edge of the stair ramp covers that animation. When drawing I make that level partially transparent. There are about 4 more zombies I need to animate in this scene and I hope to have them finished by the end of today.

I am keeping the arm animation very stiff which makes it go quickly since I can just cut and paste the arms in place. The leg animation is the most challenging to do but by now it is rather second nature. The scene is cropped rather tight in the film right now, because I needed the pan down for movement. With the zombies moving this long shot works quite fine. I am not sure which version I will use for the final edit. Depth should read best with this long shot. I’ll cross that road when I get there. Time to animate four more zombies.

COVID: Back to Normal

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With this scene I decided to add subtle animation to the high priest and the bird men holding the victim in place. The high Priest and bird men heads were isolated in Procreate and I made a new depth mask without them. I animated a parallax effect in After Effects and then imported the high priest and bird heads as a separate layer. These were animated using pins. I just added a subtle bend to the high priests back and also animated the bird me looking up.

I had a quick pan upwards n the shot but decided to play down that camera move after adding the animation. The trouble with animating using after effects is that the computer tends to produce monotonous even timing. Even after adding slow ins and slow outs, I need to experiment quite a bit to get things to feel natural. The other issue is that After Effects isn’t able to play back the animation due to memory issues. I scrub the timeline to guess what the timing might look like. I have to due a render of the scene and import it into Premiere pro to see the animation in real time.  All the extra steps lead me to sometimes settle for a result that could be better with more refinements. I am thinking I will have to go back and rework several scenes from last week after watching them a few times in the overall flow of the film.

COVID: Animating Zombies Day 4

Posted on by Thor

I have no doubt that I will finish animating this scene today. The partially transparent zombie has just had 3 keys blocked in for position. Next I will need to add the contact drawings, and the up and down drawings. After he is fully inbetweened I will need to figure out what to do with the rest of the background crowd. The zombie I will animate today is sandwiched between two more attractive zombies. I may just leave his arms stiff at his sides and see if that works. I will also rick him side to side so his weight is over the weight bearing foot in each step

I have several more zombie crowd scenes to animate so I will get more time to experiment on broken limps and shuffles.