COVID Dystopia: Press Kit Page 6

Posted on by Thor

The Queen’s COVID scene is one of the scenes with less motion in the film, but quite a bit of work went into making her appear three dimensional. Most people will not notice the effect but they will feel it.

I think I will finish the high resolution version of the crowd running from the robotic virus today. I have put two days of work into the scene so far,, but yesterday wasn’t really a full day. I work on layers in Callipeg redrawing sections that need refining. The low resolution green screen movie is on a bottom layer so I can work on top of it. One problem with Callipeg is that the green screen layer flickers on an off when the scene is played. This makes it seem like the scene will not render correctly. The last scene I did this way flickered as well but the render was fine. I have to just keep working and hope that it turns out fine in the end. It seems I keep pushing the limits of what the tech can handle.

The newest render of COVID Dystopia is now up on Film Freeway as we head into the new year. Once I finish the final scenes I need to get very serious about finding the early deadlines for film festivals in 2024. I have one year to get this film circulating at film festivals worldwide. Like very other aspect of the film’s production, I am on a steep learning curve.

I just noticed several more typos. I should go through the whole press kit one more time today and make corrections. Posting here is always a goo chance to catch mistakes as they try and slip by.

COVID Dystopia: Press Kit Page 2

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This contents page of the pdf has links to each of the other pages in the press kit. I spent the afternoon figuring out how to get those links to work. The press release has links to Analog Artist Digital World along with Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts. Now I am wondering if I should have a page devoted to just those links and basic film information kike format, duration etc. I might throw that together today.

I thought I might be dome with the film yesterday, but I found that the Lake Eola Zombie scene was blurry. I am doubling the scene resolution today and reworking that animation in Callipeg. I discovered that exporting high resolution images from Procreate as PNGs and then importing them into Callipeg resulted in the image losing resolution. I tried exporting the same image as a PNG File image and the resolution was better. It would have been nice to learn this on the first day of production rather than the last day. UGH!

I am happy that a better version of the film is now on Film Freeway and any revisions from now on are just issues in improving resolution. I am going to add a single white frame into the last scene in the film where the virus explodes. I think that flash will add some extra punch when the scene is projected in a dark theater.

COVID Film: Takes One

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I am continuing to experiment with animating fire. This one is based on a slow motion shot of a fire starting. Fire happens so fast that it changes faster than the shutter speed. This means the action is happening faster than it can be observed, creating jarring quick spikes. This was slowed done a bit to allow for smoother action.

Most tutorials I have been looking at promote a smooth waving motion and I have resisted that cliche for more chaos. The painting of the fire has been done on two layers, one being the base which is orange and then a much brighter yellow. I bring those two layers into procreate and add more brush strokes to add more texture and chaos.

I may skip the yellow layer today and simply paint with more texture from the start. I am trying to get as natural a feel as I can in the way it is painted without spending too much time on every cell. I honestly don’t know if the animation I am doing is accurate. I am just playing with the shapes and experimenting. I favor chaos over a simple repetitions pattern of motion.

I am animating a torch today and the goal is to simplify the motion in some ways. I have adopted a perspective blur effect to radiate a blur away from the base of the fire. This saves me from having to smudge the edges of the fire shapes to keep the share from looking like a hard cut out. I am trying a different work flow on every animation I do and when I find one that works really well, I will adopt it across the board.

COVID Film: Flaming baby

Posted on by Thor

This morning I forgot to do a write up since I wanted to get right into animation on COVID Dystopia. I am slowly learning the intricacies of animating fire. I am probably making some mistakes but the animation flows so fast that I am hoping no one notices.

I based this animation of the flaming baby on a scene of a curtain burning in a living room. I have been using various methods to plan the animations and this is the first time I just worked straight ahead. In general the flickering action moves upwards but I think I can do better.

The next scene is a close up on the babies face. Hopefully I can get the flames to rise upwards as if in a forest fire. I am also trying to get the flames to appear as I painted then in the illustrations. That means adding lots of extra textural strokes. I am importing each frame into procreate to continue the painting process. I love the brushes in that program so it is worth the extra effort.

I am finding that deep blue screens are best for transferring the flame animations. I might actually go back to the first flame animation I did since it got greyed out and washed out with a green screen. Trail and error is the best way I have to figure out what works when animating flames. I have many more flame animation scenes to continue the experiments.

I am teaching eight hours of virtual classes tomorrow so I might not get a scene done tomorrow. Maybe I can update the first fire animation scene before classes start. If I had an animation student tomorrow they would be learning how to animate fire since that is the ongoing creative challenge I am facing.

COVID Film: Asteroid Fire Trail

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In this shot an asteroid enters the Earth’s atmosphere. I animated the fire trail in Callipeg and then exported each of the frames into Procreate where I continued to paint them. This is a time consuming process that involves making copies of every asteroid and adding them to groups. I end up spending far too much time turning groups off an on.

The flaming hot front face of the asteroid was fun to do. I added a clipping mask over the asteroid and then gave that layer a subtract mode setting. I used the flame brush in Procreate to get the more textured strokes. All of the animation is fast and furious and over in less than a second.

In this animation I once again used a bubble technique to keep the energy flowing outward. I want to get to the point where I am working more straight ahead, allowing the shapes to change organically. I have so many fire scenes to animate that I am hoping I will loosen up even more and act with more instinct rather than control.

I still have to add this animation to the final composite. A glow will need to be added. Then I will be off an animating another fire. At some point I will find the perfect work flow.

COVID Film: First Fire

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Yesterday I animated fire for the first time. I like the motion but the timing might be a bit fast. Next time I might reduce the spacing a bit between drawings. I am not quite satisfied with the painting effect since it is rather flat. I might bring these drawings into Procreate and paint them again there. It might make sense to simply animate fire in Procreate as well.

This animation was done in Callipeg and the painting brush choices are limited. I painted it flat on two layers and used After Effects to add a glow effect. Today I plan to animate an asteroid trail which had much linger spikier tendrils. It is much more textured and will require greater care when painting each frame.

I have many fire scenes to animate and paint so the best workflow will evolve as I learn more. I can say that even if not fully satisfied with this first experiment, it certainly sparks extra life into this scene.

I am still unable to render the full film in Premiere Pro. Fifty one shots render incorrectly with large portions of each shot being cut off and thrust into darkness. Pam said she should be able to resolve the issue when she has time to look at it. I therefor will just keep animating and hope this can be solved.

COVID Film: Death of Democracy

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With the Death of Democracy scene I have isolated Jamie Raskin and a background protestor so far.Some subtle animation in the upper right hand corner of the scene should draw the audience eye so they are looking in the right spot of the next scene.

Jamie will arch his back ever so slightly to show pride and a protestor will raise a fist in defiance. Since the protestor is so small I will have to animate him at double the resolution. I will also scale him up making him easier to draw.

The main reason I need to rework the scene is because some of the heads of the representatives were warping due to the depth map I applied. I will isolate and eliminate that warping.

COVID Film: Let Them Breath COVID

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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.

COVID Film: Finishing the Ambulance

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This opening scene had a complete overhaul because of pixelation issues. Every ambulance was redrawn in a 4K scene that was twice the resolution of the last pass. Since I re-timed some of the animation the entire scene had to be repainted as well.

In Callipeg I scaled up the background so I knew how the colors would read against the cityscape. Because the background was scaled up, it is slightly pixelated, but I will be using the original Procreate file in the final render. I will probably have to make the After Effects scene double the resolution, since last time I had to scale down the background painting to place it in the 1920 by 1080 scene window. The actual background is rather square in proportions so there was a lot of blank space in the After Effects scene.

When the ambulence drives down from the distant horizon I used the transform tool rather than redrawing all the keyframes to the distance. One thing I wish Callipeg offered was an ability to set the timing of the transform tool on 2s or 3s if needed. It always animated the movement evenly on 1s. I used to transform tool to move things like the headlights and a blinking red spotlight. The transformed elements moved on ones while the animated ambulance moved on 2s. That lead to some stair stepped movement. I ended up having to go into every other fame and adjust the movement by hand anyway.

The camera move was done in Premiere Pro last time. I might try and do the camera move in After Effects this time since it will be a very high resolution scene. All this is experimentation to try and get around the loss of resolution that happens between Callipeg and After Effects.

COVID Film: Another Pixelation Issue

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After resolving a glaring pixelation problem in the Satanic Ram shot, I decided to go back and take a look at the opening shot. This close up shot shows how horribly pixelated the ambulance was. I decided I had to redraw each ambulance and I am now in the process of repainting each of them.

The green screen allows me to transfer animation to the final composite in After Effects. I turn off the green screen while I paint to see how the colors work with the background. Reworking the shot was also an opportunity to smooth out some of the animation timing. I left out details on the front grill since that will all be covered by headlight  beams and glow effects.

So yesterday I finished redrawing and painting the ambulance body. Today I get to paint lighting effects. Last time I transferred each of the paintings into Procreate since I like the brushing available in that program. This time I will see if I can get the same effects using the brushes in Callipeg. I will be watching videos of NYC ambulances to see the timing of the lights as they blink. With more resolution I can pay closer attention to each of the lights.

I just learned that YouTube and other social media sites censor any mention of the words “COVID” and “Pandemic”. Tic Tokers refer to it as “the “vid” or “during the panini”. With such censorship, this film will have a hard time finding an audience. I need to keep the film off of social media since many of the largest film festivals require that the screenings be a premiere. They will not show films that are being shown online. It feels awful holding the film back while festivals refuse to screen it.

Novavax was approved today. That will be my vaccine of choice to combat the new COVID variants. I asked my doctor about Novavax last time I was in for an appointment and he didn’t know what it was. The more expensive mRNA vaccines, Moderna and Pfizer only influence the spike proteins. Novavax is more like traditional vaccines and it affects the entire COVID virus.