COVID Clap

Posted on by admin

This animation is for the Rhinos in the Audience shot. The one person wearing a mask is clapping so I decided that should be the first animation I did. For reference I looked at Citizen Kane. There is one scene where Orson Wells claps after the opera and He is essentially the only person to do so. I figured out that he clapped four times in the 1 second and 25 frame shot.

I then figured out where each clap hit on the timeline. For instance above you can see a clap falls on frame 29 and on frame 37. Then I dug in and started figuring out the timing and mechanics of an individual clap. The hand moves quickly to clap but slower when it is pulled back for the next clap. This section of animation shows the pull back as it slows into the pulled back position.

The elbow should lead the motion, followed by the wrist and then the hand. However I wanted to get away with only animating the hands and arms if I could, while leaving the head and body a held cell. I animated subtle elbow movement but it drew attention to itself. Animating just the arms felt unnatural so I added a head turn to distract from the elbows.

After painting the hands I felt the thumb was distracting on the character’s left hand so I ended up erasing it. Since I animated the head I then added a subtle animation around the collar. I repainted the whole body as a held cell since the original painted hands would have to be painted over anyway.

Sheep

Posted on by admin

AS I have been submitting my COVID film to film festivals, I have started to wonder which category it best fits in.I have been submitting it into animation and yet most of the scenes are still though three dimensional with camera moves. Another category is music videos which sort of makes sense since it is set to one piece of music. The film is also documentary though in a rather surreal way.

I decided to sneak more hand drawn animation into the film. The is is the second shot I experimented with. There are tons of sheep in this shot but I want the audience to notice the black sheep wearing a mask. I decided to animate the sheep’s head turning which will draw the eye.

The first shots I am playing with are in the trailer. I hand animate each in Callipeg and then export as an MP4. I decided the easiest way to get the animation into the existing After Effects shots was to use green screen. IN this case only the heat turns so I didn’t touch any of the other sheep. They are already moving because of the paparazzi zoom in that I had already worked out.

Most of the shots in the film are less than a second, so I might have to do 12 drawing each day to add just a bit more movement to each frame. Many of the shots however do not require movement. I will have to make a judgement call for each as to how much I want to add.

I might have opened up Pandora’s box by deciding to add more animation because there are huge crowd scenes through out the film. I have to be selective to stay sane.

COVID: Shot 9

Posted on by Thor

The hazmat suit theme dominates the opening shots of the film. This shot shows a huge crowd of people crushed together as they rushed to get back to the United States before borders were closed. The move to close the border happened far too late to stop any spread of the virus. The crowd in actuality was unmasked, and unaware they might be bringing the virus back home to family and friends. The airports did a horrible job of checking for the virus since the tests the United States had developed were faulty. This was just one of many absolute fiascos that lead to the United States becoming the most infected and deadly place on earth.

I executed the shot using landscape mode in VoluMax Pro. It is a rather fast pan down the crowded hallway and because of that movement some of the parallax depth is less noticeable but it is there. From this point forward all the shots incorporate a fast zoom transition which adds to the frantic pace of the film.

I have submitted the film to about 5 film festivals so far. Researching which festivals might be a good fit for the film is a full time job. The goal is to possible submit to about 100 festivals. My thought is that maybe 10% might accept the entry, which means I would travel to 10 different festivals. I will have to harden myself to a high rate of rejection. I know this is a film that no one wants to see as everyone wants to delude themselves that life has returned to “Normal.”

COVID: Shot 8

Posted on by Thor

Shot 8 shows Fun Spot which refused to close its doors when the pandemic hit hard. They put out some hand sanitizer stations and called it a day. For those who aren’t aware, COVID is airborne, it floats through the air like smoke waiting to be inhaled to infect a new host. Sanitizer is a nice gesture but it does not stop an airborne virus.

This shot was created with landscape mode of VoluMax Pro 7. I then re did the shot using a depth map for the background and separate layers of each group of hazmat workers. The challenge then became to keep the workers solidly placed on the ground. It took some work to get that right.

Things never got quite this bad in Orlando but with well over one million deaths in America, I wasn’t far off the mark in the paintings I produced in the first weeks. According to USA Facts,  Orlando Florida has had 88,288 COVID deaths so far and that number continues to grow. Where are they all buried? Someone dies about every three minutes from COVID.

Americans have been duped into accepting mass infection. They can accept the risk of infection as no worse than a possible auto accident. However with an auto, you at least can wear a seat belt and steer clear of oncoming traffic. There is no steering clear of COVID when literally no one masks.\

 

I am starting to enter this film in Film Festivals. I have come to realize that it is a film no one wants to see. I therefor have to pay festival entry fees to get an audience to see it.

 

COVID: Shot 7

Posted on by Thor

In the first weeks of the pandemic people rushed to the store to hoard toilet paper and fist fights broke out in the aisles. Videos of fights broke out all over social media. Of all the survival needs this seems to be the most mundane.

This was the first shot in the film that used a fast paced zoom transition that I used for the remainder of the film. This effect at first was done by zooming in 75% each time. The timing of that zoom was consistent over time but very quick. After the whole film was edited together I abandoned that technique and instead used adjustment layers to create a transition that ramped up to happen super quick.

Most of the shots would involve a quick zoom in a settle and then zoom in again. This gave each shot the impression that they were part of a much bigger scene. I listened to the whole soundtrack and put down beats on the timeline by pressing the M key on the keyboard. Each shot would last for one or two beats at most.

The pandemic rushed towards us at an insane pace with some crazy story popping up each day. The pandemic continues with a person dying from COVID every 3 minutes but the media has become complicitly silent. The only way Joe Biden can get re-elected is if the country believes the war against COVID is over. Over 700,000 Americans have died since Biden became president but that is never discussed.

I have come to realize that what I have created is a film that no one wants to see. In the rush to return to normal, the nation has suffered a complete amnesia of what has happened and is still happening today.I offer harsh realities but people prefer false hope and denial.

COVID: Shot 5

Posted on by Thor

I was amazed at how quickly mass gathering for sports became the norm. COVID infected players can literally have their hearts explode and collapse on the field and the fans still cheer. Entitled players were some of the first to express their ignorance about vaccines and the virus. Positive roll models are rare. Most celebrities are required by contract to hide their COVID infections. Bruce Springsteen and a rash of other musicians are forced to cancel concerts due to a mystery illness. Don’t think I am bashing Bruce because I respect him also canceling a concert to protest North Carolina’s newly signed anti-gay bill.

COVID-19 has hit the Giro bicycle race hard. 16 riders to date have headed home after falling ill with the virus, which returned in the peloton in the weeks leading up to the race. This seems to be the new normal with athletes and performers dropping like flies.

This shot was completed like the previous shots with each row of audience members isolated by erasing around them and touching up areas that might usually be hidden. I did try and animate each layer to get the effect but that didn’t result in a natural movement. Stacking them three dimensionally and moving the camera gave the the natural movement I needed.

When played at speed in the film, no one has the time to pick out all the subtle details in each shot. Each scene happens in quick succession much as the pandemic itself unfolds like a freight train on a collision course.

The entire COVID film is now viral on youTube. You can see the entire film here.

 

COVID: Shot 4

Posted on by Thor

This shot consists of 5 rows of audience members. Each row was isolated by erasing the audience behind them. Each row then had to be touched up so that they might appear as the camera zoomed in. Sometime I had to make judgement calls about who was in what row. For instance is the guy picking his nose in the second row of the third row? The right choice could make or break the scene. The cool effect I learned was to arrange the layers in a three dimensional space in After Effects sort of like the multiple curtain wings on a theater stage.

I could then simply animate the camera moving it forward and up or down as needed to get a string sense of parallax. If I wanted I could also add depth maps to each layer which would make for instance the knees appear closer to the camera but for such a quick shot I felt that was overkill.

I spent my birthday adding closed captions to the film since someone made that request. It turned out that was a more challenging process than I expected. It look two tries but I got it done.

COVID is now going viral on youTube, you can see the entire film here.

 

COVID: Shot 3

Posted on by Thor

The third shot of the film is inspired by Rhinoceros, a play by Eugène Ionesco, written in 1959. In the play people begin turning into Rhinos one by one in a city. The main character refuses to become a rhino and he is the last human remaining. A movie was made of the play staring Zero Mostel of Fiddler on the Roof fame and Jean Wilder as the protagonist Berenger.

As the American population has been repeatedly mass infected with COVID, those who remain uninfected are a minority. The infected seem to loose empty and an ability to avoid repleaded infections. They actually brag about how many infections they have survived as their gray matter deteriorates and their arteries harden.

The last hold out for information from the COVID conscious community seems to be on the ever failing twitter platform. Those like myself who have been shouting into the void still have a narrow platform to issue warnings which go ignored by the ever growing herd of rhinos.

I had to do this shot twice. The first time I relied on Photoshop to fill in missing information once I cut out foreground elements. The program didn’t do a good job. I was better off painting in the missing rhinos by hand. These much looser painted passages are barely noticed as the camera zooms in on the audience.

This image shows the Rhinos shot in progress. The first two rows have already been isolated and the third row is in the process of being isolated by erasing the far rhinos. The rather transparent green rhinos are being used to show where I need to do some touch up painting on the row of rhinos behind the green row. In all I think this shot had 6 rows of rhinos that needed to be isolated.

See the full COVID film now!

COVID: Shot 2

Posted on by Thor

This is the first shot I created in the film. It was used as a way to learn how to use Adobe After Effects. I had to separate the sheep into four separate layers going back in space. I did this in my painting program in my by isolating each layer using a pen tool in Photoshop.

For instance the black sheep and the four or so sheep in the foreground were separated by using a pen tool in Photoshop. I later abandoned the pen tool preferring to simply erase what I didn’t need to see. I think I did this shot twice. The first time was done entirely in Photoshop by allowing the program to sort of expand the image behind foreground layers. I wasn’t satisfied with the computers, choices to create a sort of hint of what is behind each layer. I much preferred to paint this myself by hand. I t gave me more control to imply what the background sheep might look like behind the foreground sheep.

I learned a lot from doing and re-doing this one shot. I chose this shot since the soundtrack sounded a bit like a sheep baaaahhing.

I imported the layers into Premiere Pro the first time and moved them to try and get a feeling of three dimensions as the camera moved in. I wasn’t satisfied with the result. I ended up re-importing the layers into After Effects and effectively created a three dimensional diorama. The animating was then just done by moving the camera. I learned as I proceeded. I knew what I wanted to accomplish and had to watch youTube videos to accomplish each task.

I discovered I could animate the breath and spatters separately. If I ever go back into this shot I would move those two elements more. I got more liberal with animating breath as I got into the next shots. Do people notice? Probably not, so for now I am leaving it as it is. With over 200 shots, I am always agonizing about whether I should keep nitpicking each shot.

See the full COVID film here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQWz4umY4QA

COVID: Shot 1

Posted on by Thor

The COVID film editing did not begin from shot 1 and proceed in a linear manner. I scoured three years of illustrations and began picking out images that worked with the lyrics to Andy Matchett’s, song “Just Can’t Wait (For the Game to End)” from his apocalyptic rock musical Key of E. The idea for the film was sparked when @IamPoliticsGirl posted on March 24, 2023 a TicToc video on Twitter that was set to the music of Billy Joel‘s “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” Digital Resonator used AI to create each fast paced image which appeared three dimensional. I figure I could used the same effect to pace my images to Andy’s apocalyptic music. You never know where inspiration will come from.

I had used depth maps on a few of my illustrations I posed on Facebook and I liked the effect. There had to be a way to do something similar and edit the images together to create the film. I had Photoshop and After Effects. I needed a filter to create depth maps for each shot. I searched the internet for several night and settled on VoluMax Pro 7 to do the job.

This opening shot was done with Volumax Pro 7 using the auto depth map feature. The illustration was imported into Photoshop and a script added to the actions menu created a button which automatically creates a black and white depth map. I moved a camera from left to right to get the parallax effect and was done.

For the opening shot I originally I had a shot of ground zero from 9/11. A globe shape sculpture was half destroyed by the collapsing towers. That sculpture was repainted to look like the virus as workers gathered around it. Over that scene I had the tile zoom in quickly and expand then zoom over the camera.  I liked it but the image above is far simpler and straight forward. The 9/11 image was cut and  hit the editing floor.

See the full COVID film here.