I discovered the best way to animate Marie Antoinette was to lop her head off. I spent an afternoon animating her head turning but left out all the rivets since they would be a nightmare to inbetween. I thought I might be able to take the paint of the mask and us if it as the base for each or the frames as color. However when I transformed the painting in Procreate, it got pixelated. The animation and the paintings I had done were abandoned.
Instead, I lopped her head off and made it a separate layer. Her right arm wads also animated to slap down on the globe as if she was being emphatic about saying, “let them breath COVID.” The head turn was then done by applying a few pins in After Effects and key framing a very subtle head tilt. That simple head tilt accomplished everything I was trying to do with all the animation I had done in.
I treated the hand slap as a cycle so it repeats in After Effects but in the final film, just the initial slap is shown. Now this is one of my favorite shots in the film.