COVID World Premiere Screening Tonight!

Posted on by Thor

These are the opening shots of the short 2.5D animated film titled COVID, whose world premiere screening is tonight May 19, 2023 at the Orlando Shakespeare Theater, 6pm in the outdoor courtyard as part of the 3rd annual “Film as Visual Art” Fringe event.

Here is the press release about the film:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 Local Artist to Premiere Shocking Film Chronicling Pandemic

Over 200 original artworks detail global experience in four minutes

ORLANDO, Fla. (May 16, 2023) – Central Florida artist Thomas Thorspecken (Thor) who formerly worked for Disney Feature Animation, will premiere his newest project featuring more than 200 original digital paintings in a four-minute film. The premiere can be seen at Fringe’s “Film as Visual Art” event this Friday, May 19, 2023, at 6:00 pm in the outdoor Orlando Shakespeare Theater courtyard.

Since January 2009, as a New Year’s resolution, Thorspecken has created at least one watercolor or digital sketch a day documenting arts and culture in Central Florida for his blog, Analog Artist Digital World, culminating in more than 4,000 individual works of art illustrating the vibrancy of this community and beyond. When the pandemic hit in early 2020, he shifted his focus to creating a daily artistic commentary on COVID, politics, and both the global and local impacts of this devastating and unprecedented time in history.

“From the start of the COVID pandemic, minimizers falsely claimed the virus was no worse than the flu. After more than a million COVID deaths in America and mass infection becoming the accepted norm, minimizers persist,” Thorspecken cited as part of the rationale for his having created the jarring revue. The artist completed the film on May 11, 2023, when the United States officially lifted the COVID Emergency, despite Covid’s persistence. The paintings combat the willful denial and obfuscation of the facts of the past three years. The airborne virus cannot be seen, but in these paintings it takes center stage, a statement that ignoring the virus is deadly.

Inspired by an Artificial Intelligence-generated Tik Tok video illustrating Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” Thorspecken crafted his own AI (Artist Intelligence) generated film to the music from popular local musician, Andy Matchett’s, song “Just Can’t Wait (For the Game to End)” from his apocalyptic rock musical Key of E. Each gripping artwork flashes by, building on the dark time capsule of our shared experience. Though representing a mere fraction of his overall pandemic series, each was meticulously selected and timed to Matchett’s lyrics before being custom depth mapped and animated.

 More information about the making of this film can be found at AnalogArtistDigitalWorld.com. The film will premiere as part of the 3rd annual “Film as Visual Art” on Friday, May 19, 6 – 7 p.m. before becoming available on the artist’s social media channels.

Thomas Thorspecken (Thor), is an artist, Urban Sketcher, animator, and illustrative journalist living and working in Central Florida. He attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City, before working as a freelance illustrator designing magazines and publications. Thorspecken relocated to Orlando as an animation artist for Disney. He currently teaches at Elite Animation Academy and the Crealdé School of Art. Thor is always seeking new challenging projects, commissions, and ways to capture local life through art. Follow Thor on Instagram: @analogartistdigitalworld, Twitter: @analogartist, Facebook: Analog Artist Digital World, and subscribe to his blog: www.analogartistdigitalworld.com

Pandemic Film: Plague Doctor

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The film has been wrapped up and sent off via WeTransfer. I actually spent most of today reworking a number of shots that had minor glitches. The final render was again a head ache to set up but I managed to juggle all the right settings eventually. Rendering the film was without a doubt the most stressful aspect of producing the film although Premiere Pro crashing and erasing all the past saved versions of the film was also a contender.

I actually went back to some of the earliest shots in the film today since I learned what settings worked best over the course of adjusting over 200 shots. I suspect I will hold off sharing the film until the free world Premiere at the Orlando International Fringe Festival. That screening will be on May 19, 2023 at 6pm at the Shakes outdoor courtyard.

The challenge over the next week will be figuring out how to promote the film and then how to distribute it. My primary goal is to get as many eyeballs to see the film as possible. I have never shared video on social media before but it looks like I will need to learn how. It will also reside in the animation portfolio section on this site after May 19th and I am sure to post it on YouTube as well.

Pandemic Film: Another COVID New Year

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This shot was added in the 11th hour, right before rendering the film. Three times in the film I include a new year illustration for each year of the pandemic. I had an illustration of a skeleton leaning over baby new year but at the last minute I decided this works better.

The background had a depth map added and the other layers went on top. All the confetti animates down and on top of it all another layer of confetti was added in VoluMax Pro 7. I added chaos to that animation layer and just realized that some of the confetti is blowing back upwards in the background. That is chaotic but I find it distracting, so I will be dialing back that animation and re-rendering the scene.

After rendering the movie I saw it at a large scale for the first time. There are about 5 other shots I want to revise, so I will be spending the day making those changes. I already submitted a render to the Fringe Film Festival but I have until midnight tonight and I plan to resubmit the changes before that deadline. I spent most of yesterday struggling with technical issues trying to get the film to render. After hours of research I found that I had to change the audio bitrate from 384 to 320. Trusting a youTube video for the settings got me into the trouble to start and another youtTube video resolved the problem.

Anyway the shot above is the first I will be adjusting, I am off to the races to get these in on time.

Pandemic Film: Digital Depth

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Today at the last second this shot replaced a shot of a couch potato lounging with the virus with beer bottles and pizza strewn about. In this shot children inspect the virus with their cell phones. It tied in better with the lyrics. The other issue with the couch potato is that it depicted Mark Wahlberg. Pam picked up on that fact and I realized that if the star caught her attention I might want to change it so the scene would not be about star identification.

This is a depth map I just painted to fix an issue I noticed in the final render of the film. The virus became distorted around the children;s heads so I went in and darkened the negative shapes between them. The fix might not be in the film shown at the free Fringe screening on May 19, 2023 at 6pm in the Shakes outdoor courtyard. I will probably cut this into future edits that will make the rounds at film festivals.

Today I got caught up in trying to complete a final render. The computer kept freezing just as the audio stated in the film. After hours of research I found that the bitrate didn’t match between the audio clip in the timeline and the final output. I had to change the render bitrate from 384 to 320 and then all was well. This type of arbitrary tech stuff is soul crushing but I managed to get the render completed. Pam is going to coach me on how to submit the film using Google Docs. Today I counted and there are over 200 paintings in the animated short I am submitting.

May 11, 2023 the United States is dropping the COVID state of emergency. All future medical expenses are out of pocket for any American infected. The pandemic is not over but the state of emergency is. May 11. 2023 therefor is this films birthday.

Pandemic Film: Wacky Wavy

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In 2021 they literally lined up wacky wavy tube arm men in Times Square since crowds could not gather.This shot in the film seemed fine, but Pam really wanted to see the tube arms wave. I found out that there is something called pin puppet animation in Adobe After Effects. The icon looks like a push pin at the top of the screen. With that tool selected I could place the yellow markers on the layer I wanted to animate. Tube arms seemed like they should be an esy way to learn how to use the tool.

As always I messed up the first several times but persistence pays. The main problem I was having was that I could not find a way to ease in and ease out of the keyframes. A tutorial pointed out that the keyboard shortcut for the tool I wanted was F9 on the keyboard. Well of course my keyboard does not have an F9 key. Since the shot is less than a second long, I decided to get around the issue by simply not stopping an arm wave during the shot. This works since there isn’t time to see the arm accelerate of decelerate if I cut on the movement.

The arms move a bit slow for my taste, but I accepted the shot as is so I could move onto the next shot. In the next shot I will find that darn ease in option come hell or high water. I will be rendering the film tonight or tomorrow night and I suspect that will be it’s own form of torture.

Pandemic Film: Freedom of Religion

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I used VoluMax Pro 7 portrait mode to work on the freedom of religion shot. Though the program works convincingly to create depth maps for the faces, I am limited to just 2 faces. There are a whole lot more people in the shot but they didn’t get screen time largely because the shot is so short. This is happening in many shots where I focus on a detail rather then show the entirety of the painting. The primary goal is to make the story point clear, not to show every detail.

This film isn’t for those who like to linger on details and contemplate the deeper meaning in each shot. I don’t believe many Americans ever take time to contemplate of slow down to think. Mass delusion is a far simpler norm to follow.

Masks caps and gowns were all blocked in as well separate from the mesh work shown here. Noses and lips were hidden by these additional depth maps. Late yesterday I simply painted the details of a depth map and I now realize that that is a far simpler approach to getting facial depth rather than this digital tech approach. I will probably go back and rework shots that lack depth with this in mind as time allows. I have four days to make adjustments. I made a list last night after watching a run through of the film and have 14 shots I would like to rework toady.

Pandemic Film: Stockholm Syndrome

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This shot turned out even better than I expected. That is what I am enjoying about this process, I am often surprised by the results. The couple was separated from the environment behind them. Thankfully I had painted them on a separate level so that was an easy task. Each head was assigned a 3D mesh for the depth mapping. I massively distorted the blue mesh to work with the skull.  The female mesh didn’t require much adjustment at all. Then I drew several depth maps for the bodies.

The shot involved a pan downwards and to add depth I rotated the After Effects camera around the couple. Two separate camera moves were used to get the effect I wanted. The flaming background was scaled and moved independently.

I have just two shots remaining. Both a complex shots. I also have to add more information to the credits at the end. My goal was to finish by May 11, 2023 when the United States would drop the COVID emergency declaration. Yesterday the World Health Organization essentially declared the pandemic to be over. Anyway that is how most people will perceive their declaration. The virus however is not done with humanity. One in ten people infected develop debilitating long COVID. Mass infection and re-infection is not sustainable. A person dies every hour from COVID.

I will be releasing this film as the world embraces mass delusion and denial.

Pandemic Film: Neanderthal

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VoluMax Pro 7  has a portrait mode that makes my painted portraits seem three dimensional as the camera moves. The plug in has a stock 3D blue male mesh and pink female mesh. I decided to see if the mesh could convincingly be distorted to make a skull seem three dimensional. Besides the mesh I also blocked in several different depth maps for the hair.

The end result is indeed convincing. I may go back to several shots that were already finished and add this effect to them. I intend to add some animation to several shots as well, so I need to decide where to invest my time.

Pam wants me to animate a wacky waving balloon arm man, and I might do that on a separate layer. There are dozens of visible wacky waving balloon arm men in the shot and there is no way I will animate them all. I added more depth to the shot and a faster camera zoom which distracts from the lack of waving. I am still not sure how I will resolve that shot.

I should finish the final shots of the film today. Once that step is done I will compile a wish list of shots to improve and refine. With over 168 shots that list might be endless. I will certainly want to re-render some of the earlier shots to add the depth effects that I perfected as I learned how to best use the program.

Pandemic Film: New Year

Posted on by Thor

This is the most fun shot I worked on yesterday. At first I created a depth map that included the skeleton, but when I started animating the confetti, I quickly discovered that it overlapped him in awkward ways. I decided the skeleton had to have his own layer and he was only overlapped by the upper most confetti animation that I added at the end.

The camera pans down and with the parallax, Times Square seems cavernous. Each confetti layer was moved at different rates. The top layer moved the most and less movement occurred moving back in space.  The shot took several hours to composite but it lasts on the screen for less than a second. It was worth it.

In some ways the film is organized chronologically, in that each year with a new refrain a painting is highlighted for that years Time Square celebration. In other ways the film is arranged thematically based on the lyrics of Andy Matchett‘s song, Just Can’t Wait. The song was written in 2017 for the Fringe show Key of E, which was an apocalyptic rock musical. In so many ways the lyrics are prophetic about the way the COVID pandemic unfolded and continues to unfold.

On May 11, 2023 the United States will end its COVID public health emergency. May 11, 2023 will be this film’s birthday. 1,128,404 Americans have died of COVID-19, with about 200 more still dying every week. 250,000 American children have lost a parent. Millions of Americans are suffering from long COVID. Loneliness may not be the worst thing to come from the pandemic.

COVID is airborne, the pandemic is far from over.

Pandemic Film: Demonically Selfish

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This shot shows a selfish Uber passenger knowingly coughing on her driver. The incident was caught on his dashboard camera. The painting is close to how it happened but the visualization of her breath and spatter is missing since I haven’t composited it into the shot yet in After Effects. In most of the shots in the film, breath and spatter are two elements that are animated. The vicious gas expands and the spatter flies through the air as aerosols do. In her case the breath is bright pink. people are selfish and gross.

In some ways social media has helped spread the virus through misinformation and promoting mass gatherings despite the ongoing pandemic. I find it ironic that the CDC just held a superspreader conference to gloat about their victory over the virus. 35 attendees are infected so far. They will get the best possible health care because the CDC doesn’t need it to become more of a public relations train wreck.