COVID Dystopia: Breach the Grave to Claim the Crown

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Queen Elizabeth died after a bout of COVID 19. Her cause of death was listed as “Old Age”. She died 7 months after her initial COVID infection. She reported that the virus left her feeling very tired. Old Age is not a cause of death. It is a shame no better report is available.

One online gossip site, website Hollywood Unlocked, falsely reported in February of 2022 that the she had died at the age of 95 from COVID-19. The site didn’t credit any official royal sources, but Hollywood Unlocked CEO and founder Jason Lee took to his Twitter at the time to back up the outlet’s report. “We don’t post lies and I always stand by my sources,” he wrote at the time. After the palace reported that the Queen was still alive, Hollywood Unlocked issued a statement on social media apologizing for the incorrect story and blaming the report on an “intern journalist” who “published the draft post by mistake.

The queen did die 7 months later on September 8, 2022 at 96 years old. I am not saying the COVID infection killed the queen,  but it didn’t help her health. COVID attacks the heart, the brain and every organ that is a part of the vascular system. Even “Mild” cases of COVID damage the immune system and damage organs that can cause death months or years later.

In this shot from COVID Dystopia, I used Volumax Portrait to build a depth map of the queens face. She gently rotates for the duration of this one second shot. No other animation is needed since it is simply a portrait shot.

Today I am working on making a framework rural home explode. I have it worked out where I need to animate 14 frames of the building expanding and roof tile flying upwards.

The challenge is in deciding how much of the house I should hide behind the explosion and how much of the framework I should keep showing. I worked until I dropped last night and I hope to finish that today.

I have started getting to rehearsals to sketch, so those are being interspersed among the film I shots I am posting in order.

I looked back at a Facebook post from back at the beginning of the pandemic. Back then people loved what I was doing and suggested I should make a book of the work. Today, I am convinced people hate the work and wish it would quietly go away since they are pretending that life is back to normal, just with more sickness and death.

Pandemic Film: Queens Depth

Posted on by Thor

This is the depth map I created for the shot of Queen Elizabeth in the pandemic film. 13 days of production remain. I am now averaging 10 shots a day and I should finish with some extra time to refine some shots. In the above depth map I have not yet added detail to the mid and far depth layers.

Since I had a debilitating Premiere Pro crash in which most of the auto saves were lost, I now back up the file onto an online storage site for safety twice a day. I no longer trust Adobe products to maintain safe back ups on their own. For painting, I have abandoned Photoshop for doing my painting, and it looks like I will have to find another software for the next time I edit a film.

I didn’t bother blurring the harsh line under the queen’s chin, but in the final render with the painting, it really isn’t noticeable. I kind of wish there was a way to generate a depth map for the background and combine that with the portrait mode for the face. I could probably accomplish it with some green screens to comp together several different animated renders. I will try it on a future shot. Since the shot is less than a second long, I can get away with some imperfections as I continue to learn the nuances of creating and using depth maps.

I have managed to have two days where the files were not lost by clearing the cache and saving over the same file repeatedly. I no longer can save iterations of the file with with the date. Every morning I open the program I have some dread that the program might have erased the previous days work.

Mayson’s Tender Brought the Maritime Tradition to Canada’s North West

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The group Mason’s Tender, a maritime group from New Brunswick, Were at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel to perform each evening. The band members are, Bryon Chase on lead guitar, Gabriel Caissie on bass and Chris Daigle on Drums. All of the band members are of mixed French and English background. They
performs a mix of East Coast traditional, roots, folk and country based
songs forged from a shared passion of place. This sketch was done in the main bar area on the ground floor near the back of the hotel. I decided to sketch from a second floor balcony looking down. It turned out that I was right next to the main spot light that ended up illuminating the band. Terry ordered a drink and sat at the base of the stairway.

For the second set, we sat together in the cushy leather seats sipping custom mixed drinks. I had a drink similar to a Mojito but with a fresh twist. The traditional Irish tunes had me wanting to dance a jig but no one was on the dance floor in this ritzy upper crust hotel. After a few drinks, Terry and I wandered the halls. We wandered across a party where Queen Elizabeth was residing and greeting guests. Terry didn’t notice the queen but when I pointed her out, Terry wanted to walk up and shake the queen’s hand. We walked down a line of mounties in red coats and one finally stopped us a few yards short of the queen and asked if he could help us. That is never a good sign. Ive always found that people who offer help actually are offering the opposite. He told us that this was a private party and that we would have to leave. I’m sure the queen was actually an actress as were the mounties.