COVID: Flat Earth Policy

Posted on by Thor

In this shot, everything moves. The moon wobbles a bit, The waterfall cascades down, the virus and ships sail. My first pass at the animation had the larger sailing ship falling over the edge of the earth. Since it is such a short shot, there isn’t time for an all out fall. This morning I dialed back the animation having the ship sail right up to the edge but not over. I think it is better ti imply what is about to happen rather than my first blunt pass.

In the previous version of the shot, I had the camera move from left to right. I decided instead to have it move from the top down which rotates the flat disk a bit towards the audience.

Another issue with the first animation was that I treated it like cut out animation moving the boat image frame by frame. That tends to be noticeable if the image bumps up or down from frame to frame. I used the transformation tools in Callipeg for the second animation which gives motion graphs which can create slow ins and slow outs. The resulting motion was much smoother.

The image above is from After Effects. I imported the Callipeg animation with a greed screen and put it on top of a parallax view of the scene. The parallax made the scene more dimensional. The fact that the background was now in motion meant I had to make some adjustments to the animation which was done on a still version of the background. I had to put some pins in the waterfall to get the top edge to stay tightly knit to the edge of the earth. Since the earth now rotated a bit, I had to move the satellite as well.

I am amazed at the number of things that went into a single one second shot.

COVID: Swinging Pig

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I was debating weather this shot needed to be animated. The slaughterhouse workers are just standing around. I finally decided the pig needed to swing to garner some attention. The hazmat worker drops his hand to his side and the pig swings as a result.

I fully animated the arm swing, but with the pig I used some transformation tools in Callipeg that I have seldom touched. I set the rotation point and simply set several keys for the swing. Again the shot is only about 27 frames so I downplayed the animation so the swing wasn’t highly erratic. This was my first time using a graph editor in Callipeg to control the slow ins and slow outs of the swing. I rather like this feature and plan to play with it some more.

I am animating about three scenes a day now so the film is in full production. Each night I also research a film festival to submit the film to. My plan right now is to keep submitting to a different festival each day until I reach 300. Maybe 10% might accept the film. I need to harden myself to the inevitable rejections that are to come.

COVID: Restaurants Reopen

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I added animation of the hazmat bartender serving a drink to this shot. To save time, the upper body and head are copy and pasted onto each frame of the animation. The body was moved like a puppet and the arm is the only element that needed full animation. This shot kike most others is less than a second long and the animation helps draw the audience eye to the lower let corner of the screen.

This shot was done in Key West along with an animation student. My student was doing studies of Spiderman themed characters. Today I am animating a zombie walk and that is a real challenge since it is more of a limp while favoring one foot. For reference I am looking at videos of drugged out street walkers on youtube. It is amazing what reference is available online.

COVID: Takes One Two

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The second, Takes One, shot has the exact same couple holding hands and on fire. The background painting is the same but has warm washes over it4 to give an orange glow. I thought I could replace elements in the previous After Effects scene but that scene wasn’t saved properly. I had to start from scratch and create a new depth map for the background.

There are three separate layers of smoke clouds and I exported each separately in case I wanted to inmate them. Flames needed to be animated to get them to work with the walking figures and to keep them in place as background people moved due to parallax.

I debated about animating a second step but that would be overkill. Each shot flashes by for just 25 frames so no one will have the time to see if the scenes have different animations. I think people will just notice the couple with the fire shot and they will actually notice the Animation with the second shot.

I still think full Animation on some flames could help and I might add that with a later pass at the scene. Breath and spatter effects are kind of lost in all that is happening and I might take a second look at how they are looking when I get back from Key West. I am writing this article on the drive back to Orlando.

COVID Assembly Line

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I worked on the Assembly Line shot with my animation students. I decided to create an assignment where they would break apart a robotic character and move the individual pieces to create the motion. That is what I did in this shot with one of the robotic arms, The base does not move but I broke it into the foreground base and background base. The Upper Arm segment rotated from a round hinge at the base, then the forearm moved at the elbow.

This type of animation can be done in After Effects by assembling a forward kinematics skeleton, but I didn’t want to take the time to set up such a complicated rig. Forward kinematics is where you can move the wrist and the other sections of the arm will follow along with the action.

Instead I animated each section independently. The scene is only 25 frames long so that could be done fairly quickly. An issue that came up is that the center of rotation had to be moved into position for each frame. I placed that center pretty consistently but when the slow in became close there was some jiggling which had to be smoothed out.

I also used the robotic arm to teach anticipation which is when an object moves in the opposite direction a bit before moving forward. The forearm rotates s light bit down before the arm thrusts forward. Anyway animating with the cut out parts did create a robotic feeling animation which is what I needed.

The robotic arm thrusts screen left and then the guy in the hazmat suit moves his arm. I animated that arm move with the students. I had him raise his hand. But in 25 frames I had to end the action before he could place his hand anywhere. That animation that I abandoned made it look like he might slap the woman. I threw out some of the drawings to reduce the speed of the action. During the lunch break, I threw out that animation entirely and decided that he already had his hand on the woman’s forehead and he would draw his hand back and drop it to this side. I decided that was a much more compassionate gesture.

There is tons more action that could be added to the scene since the beds could lurch down the assembly line track, but the robotic arm and gentle touch are all I feel are needed.

Takes One After Effects

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I animated this couple walking during an animation class. The couple walks towards the camera for just one step. The flames move along with the guy wearing the HOAX shirt. I animated the flames a bit using pin tools in after effects. It would be better to fully animate the flames but for now the light movement will do.

The next shot is identical but with the entire crowd on fire. I thought I could just place this couple into that shot, but it looks like After Effects crashed and the After Effects scene wasn’t saved. I will have to recreate the scene from scratch. I hope to have that scene composited by tonight. I also animated a robotic arm yesterday and plan to composite that into that scene. I will see what can be accomplished by 3pm.

COVID: It Just Takes 1 AnimationStart

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I started setting up this shot for animation. The plan is to only animate the couple taking one step forward. Of course everyone in the crowd would be walking, but I want to draw attention to the couple by only moving them. I didn’t complete the animation since I was in a car ride down to Key West. I taught my animation class from the back seat of the car and found I could not do decent drawings with the car bumping and swerving. I also started getting car sick trying to draw.

Instead I animated a much simpler scene for the students with a ball and cube animation. I could cut and paste the shapes which meant I only had to do accurate drawings once. I did the sketches at stop lights. My  students are doing some amazing work.

I plan to work on this scene today from the Bed and Breakfast. The man in the foreground is on another level so that the girl can animate and disappear behind his arm a bit. The scene is only 25 frames so I have about 13 drawings to do.

COVID: Fun Spot Animation

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I executed the front animated walk with students in class. After class, I animated the three other Hazmat clad figures. I used blue screen rather than a green screen to export the scene from Callipeg to After Effects. It turns out the green screen I was using caused the gloves and masks to go partially transparent.

The After Effects was already set up with all the layers arranged in deep space sort of like a diorama. I just replaced the tractor and walkers layer with a new tractor I painted which added spots that had before been hidden by the static figures. The After Effects scene was then rendered as a movie and imported into Premiere pro. I was afraid that animating this walk might distract from the hazmat clad men lifting a body bag. They are walking towards that action, so hopefully they eye is pointed in that direction. There is so much information in each scene which each last for less than a second, that any animation needs to be what the audience looks at.

I have three students in my animation course this week. One student did complete her walk while the others had excuses for not finishing. We will be walking again today to see if the excuses can transform into forward progress. I plan to animate an ape pointing at a large Qanon iPhone. There is another ape using a bone as a weapon, but I am not sure if I will animate him. I want the attention of the ape poking the phone.

COVID: Hazmat Walk

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I already animated others in this scene as they lifted a body bag. I thought I could get away with not animating this walk but decided it is necessary to keep things active. This is the first frame of animation called the contact drawing. There is just enough time in the shot for one step.

I am teaching an animation class and this will be used as an example to show students on how to execute a walk fairly effortlessly. It will require 13 more drawings to complete. Once this walk is done I have three more to do as well. I usually teach students how to do a walk near the end of the week of classes but this time I will jump right in on day one with the walk which gives them plenty of time to complete the animation.

COVID Unemployment Blue

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With the unemployment shot, I decided to animate the hazmat walkers. They were all in lockstep which made it pretty easy. The walker with the red cross apron was even easier since the legs are out of shot. I just had to bob the figure up and down with the step. I considered moving the arms slightly, but for some reason the pin tool in After Effects wasn’t working.

I also found that the hands and masks were partly transparent because of the green screen. I finally realized that the greenish blue masks and gloves were dropping out because of the green screen. So I experimented with different colored green screens. a purple screen was worse, changing the colors of the shot. This blue screen was what finally worked. There has to be a way to export a shot with transparency, but I haven’t been able to work it out yet.