COVID Dystopia: Shrunken Brain

Posted on by Thor

COVID-19 has a nasty habit of fusing and shrinking brain cells. Most people are happy to overlook this since their brain cells have already been damaged.

This shot done in Volumax Pro had some dimension but when I redid it using ZOE Depth the scene rally pops. When I was first throwing together the shot I was in a mad rush to finish before May 11, 2023 when the United States lifted the COVID Emergency Declaration. In that rush I forgot to add the breath and spatter and going back I reconsidered.

Last night I thought I had just one more shot to go in the film, but after watching the film one more time, I jotted down a list of seven more tweaks. This is all a matter of “good enough” as opposed to exceptional. After all these months of work, I now know how to use all the tools at my disposal to bring each scene to life.

I will probably be working through Christmas day to refine and correct the final shots. I saw a great Christmas lawn sign, it read, MERRY CRISIS.

COVID: AntiVax Breakdown

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This is another example of how I break apart a painting for animation. I wanted to animate the two arms pointing so I separated them from the body. I liked how the parallax worked on the people so I imported them into Volumax Pro and worked on making them dimensional separate from the background. I made the background dimensional in a separate pass and then composited them together in After Effects.

Animation on the pointing arms was completed using the pin tool in After Effects. I was rather timid using this tool at first but now I am embracing it as a way to add simple and subtle animation to the paintings. I placed a pin at each joint and moved those pins for each key frame. I found that if I turned off all other programs on my computer I could watch the animation play back in real time. I therefor spent plenty of time refining the animation until it felt just right. Fire and smoke were animated the same way. Now that I know I can play back the animation as I am working on it, I might go back and refine other scenes that could use more work.

I got my first rejection from my 20 or so submissions to film festivals. The film will not be shown at the Global Peace Film Festival here in Orlando. I didn’t think the film was a right fit at first, but a board member of the festival insisted that I submit it. My film clearly does not promote world peace. If anything it is battling a collective world amnesia and denial. I decided that each time the film is rejected, I will submit to another film festival. My film is a hard sell, but I think it needs to be seen. If a festival is holding in person screenings then they are already embracing and helping spread the COVID virus. They will not likely want to screen a film that shows the horror of the ongoing pandemic when they wish the pandemic was over or never happened.

 

Pandemic Film: Portrait Mode

Posted on by Thor

A shot early on in the film has this woman in the foreground of an operating room that is flooding with water. Other nurses and doctors are in the background up to their chins in water. a mother screams as she clutches her child. The shot is less than a second ling, but I have reworked the scene multiple times. Now that the woman’s head appears three dimensional, I am having a debate about how much I should turn her head as the camera moves.

Another creepy aspect of the VoluMax Pro Portrait program is that I can have the woman look directly at the camera as her head turns. Not many will ever notice this subtle detail. With this scene I separated this woman on her own layer and comped in the animation later using a green screen. It is the first and so far the only time I have used a green screen. The nose and lips though visible in the digital mesh do not render. They might exist three dimensional but my painted mask camouflages them, so I didn’t bother touching up any more.

I executed this portrait effect in another shot that is from the waste up and I found it wasn’t worth the effort. The painting already had enough information so the digital element was just overkill.I am learning I can let many things go and keep tweaking things that will stand out visually.

The film has been accepted to be shown at the Orlando International Fringe Festival, so I need to finish the edit and animation by May 11, 2023. I am about 1/8th of the way done as of today. Thankfully the shot counts are rising as I get used to the process.

Pandemic Film: Landscape Masks

Posted on by Thor

This shot is using Volumax Pro Landscape to set up depth maps in three successive layers. The yellow mask is closest to the camera. The orange layer is the mid ground and the red layer is the furthest away. Anything beyond the red layer is even further still.

The parallax effect is most noticeable when the camera trucks from side to side. I wanted to zoom in slightly on the two men in the hazmat suits so I zoomed in and trucked a bit at the same time. The landscape mode has an advantage over using AI which automatically generated a depth map in Photoshop. The Photoshop generated depth maps often have strange distortions. This technique of drawing the depth maps using a pen tool offers more control and this less distortions. I am learning as I go which technique works best for each shot.

Sometimes I will try doing a shot several different ways to see which technique works best. The pace is picking up as I am refining my use of the programs. The film has been accepted to be shown at this year’s Fringe on May 19th in the courtyard at the Orlando Shakes. I need to finish the film by May 11, so I have my work cut out for me.

Pandemic Film: Fun Spot

Posted on by Thor

This shot shows me lining up hazmat suited workers in deep space in After Effects. The top layer is the background set to a blend mode of difference. Once the individual layers are lined up along the Z axis of depth they turn black when scaled up to the size they should be.

I had tried to create this scene in VoluMax Pro using projection mode. With that set up the ground would be projected on a plane set at 90 degrees relative to the theme park background in the distance. That set up worked but it was overkill for what I needed to accomplish with the shot which was less than a second long. With the projection ground place set up I could have zoomed in and the ground plane would work in perspective. There really wasn’t time for a long zoom effect. I just needed to pan down to the workers in the foreground caring the body bag.

I set the shot up traditionally in After Effects instead and it worked fine. At this point since most characters are in long shots there hadn’t been much of a need to apply depth maps to the people. It really isn’t noticeable that the character have depth unless the camera tracks left to right. Due to this the shots are getting more depth as I progress since I am learning how to accomplish depth maps that work best as I go. This stylistic progression is coming about from my learning curve.

Pandemic Film: Store Monkeys 2

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I experimented with this shot using Volumax Pro Projection maps. This program is used when making a hall appear 3D. Unfortunately the fact that the store shelves don’t rise up as far as the ceiling ended up causing distortions. I also discovered that if I have the scene cropped in Photoshop, I can not view the areas of the image that are hidden.

I wanted to zoom in slightly and pan up to see the baby monkey on top of the shelves. I did figure out how to get a 3 dimensional zoom but I could not angle the camera upwards. This image is of my second attempt at the scene. The master shot is causing things to turn black when all the layers are lines up. The fact that some of the monkeys are light blue means I haven’t added them to the scene yet.

This scene is less than a second long sop there really isn’t much time for a deep zoom effect anyway. When I got the camera animation working, I then decided to add hand drawn animation of the toilet paper fluttering. So with the re-starts and added animation the scene took a full day to produce. In the end it was worth it, but it goes by in a flash.

Pandemic Film: Monkey Depth Maps Created

Posted on by Thor

This screaming lab monkey was my first attempt at using VoluMax Pro 7 to help make the painting seem more dimensional as it moves. The yellow zone is the closes to the camera and therefor the lightest. The orange zone is a bit further back, and the violet zone farther back still.

The next step was to darken the area inside the mouth and animate. When this scene moves the snout now seems dimensional and the teeth inside the mouth turn a bit. I liked the effect though it could have been pushed further. I accepted the scene and added it to the final edit and hopefully the next scenes will be even more dimensional.

The one issue I have is that the camera movement is very limited in Volumax PRo . I am hoping I can find a way to export a level with transparency so that it is one piece of a much larger puzzle. I abandoned several Volumax Pro experiments because of the camera limitations. As I learn more I hopeful will get the program to accomplish what I need.

Pandemic Film: Lab Monkey Layers

Posted on by Thor

The lab monkey shot has the most layers to date. I decided to have each hand waving independently without upstaging the main center of interest. Most people viewing the scene will not even notice the hands since they will be focused on the screaming monkey.

The shot works but is not really dimensional yet. I now suspect that every shot in the film will be reworked in a program called After Effects. In that program I can move the camera and arrange the layers in a sort of dimensional stage set. When I move the camera all the elements will move related to one another in deep space.

I also discovered a program called VoluMax Pro which uses depth maps to add further dimension to the paintings. Between these two tools along with Photoshop and Procreate, I should be able to achieve exactly what I want. I may actually animate several shots as well using a program called Callipeg. I will keep hand drawn animation to a minimum since it is very labor intensive. Most shots in the film are so fast that animation would be overpowered by the quick camera moves.

I am excited by the possibilities.