COVID Dystopia: Rush Home

Posted on by Thor

This scene had depth using Volumax, but no animation. Since everyone is stuck waiting, I doubt animation is needed. The fast pan plays down ability to notice the depth. I might just see what the scene looks like if I use the ZOE depth effect. My assumption is that the result will be very similar.

I am NYC right now and maybe 1% if the people are masked. We are coming down from the second largest wave of the pandemic right now and yet most people want to believe the pandemic is over. Over 8000 Americans died from COVID in December 2024 and that is not counting those who died of vascular diseases, organ damage and other complications caused by the virus.

NYC suffered more that any other place in America at the start of the pandemic. The image above is of people rushing back into NYC from Europe when it was announced that flights into the country would be suspended. There was an opportunity to contain the virus and eradicate it but governments fumbled that ball. The biological weapon continues to spread and people are actually being encouraged to get infected and to infect others. The world population of 8 billion people is being culled. Heath care in this country is reverting back into the dark ages.

COVID Dystopia: Last Tail

Posted on by Thor

Today I just need to finish up animation on the last tail in this scene. I still need to add some darker values on the smallest monkey up the aisle as well. I then have to add shadows under all the monkeys and start exporting movies with green screens. The green masks might make that tricky. I don’t want the masks to become partially transparent.

I plan to composite the scene in After Effects as well today. I want to use ZOE depth so that a camera move up the aisle will feel dimensional. I will export 3 separate movies so they can be stacked in depth. If the ZOE method doesn’t work out I already have the scene composited with depth using Volumax. I would just need to replace still images wit the animated movie movies in deep space.

I had another rejection yesterday from a film festival, so I need to start thinking about which film festivals to submit to next. I am making a expenses spread sheet for my 2023 taxes and it turns out that Film Festival submission fees are the biggest expenses I have had in making this film. Facing rejection week after week becomes taxing over time. Once I have all the papers sent off to the accountant and the government has reached into my pocket and taken its cut, I might once again be able to breath a sigh of relief.

 

COVID Film: Flaming Baby Reworked

Posted on by Thor

I always felt uncomfortable when a smiling baby appeared in the midst of the COVID film. It was what I had painted at the time but it didn’t fit with the overall flow of the film. I decided to change the baby using the previous shot as reference. The depth map worked out really well turning the baby’s head as he cried.

Looking at this Volumax depth map now, I realize I could probably paint some better depth for the open mouth and ear canal. The painting is extremely blown up so the line work is thicker than any other shot in the film. I think I will go back and redraw the baby to help it tie in to the resolution of the shots on either side of it.

I could animate the mouth a bit but I am not sure that is needed. Since things happen so fast, I face this challenge often, wondering if animation will help or over complicate a shot. I keep adding animation since I am entering the film in the animation category in film festivals. Yet this film is something different. It defies being easily categorized.

I also know that I am presenting something that no one wants to see. The nation has embraced a new normal in which COVID isn’t ever discussed. There is a strange collective amnesia in the rush to pretend that all is as it was in 2019. This film defies that wishful thinking.

COVID: Fat Lady Sings Paint

Posted on by Thor

I animated the fat lady sings shot yesterday. I decided I could live with 13 drawings and a held cell while she held the note. At first I held the drawings for 4 frames each to span the length of the animation. When I saw the animation with the sound, it felt off, so I shortened the duration of each drawing on 2s. I am contemplating even putting the drawings on 1s to give it even more punch. I’ll try that today and see which version works beast.

I also considered having her face turn red, but 2 seconds go by very fast so I abandoned that idea. The body held cell is actually included with the painting of the background and that image was depth mapped. Her COVID breastplates are given extra prominence in the depth map.

When I animated the camera move in Volumax Pro. her arm holding the axe ended up moving a bit screen right. That is a happy accident I kept in the shot. Another camera move is used inn Premiere pro to zoom out from her face. That move tends to make the parallax effect less.

Painting these cells are a challenge. In a feature animated film the colors are very flat. I am however trying to blend the animation so it feels like the painting that I originally did. That is a challenge since the it is almost impossible to keep the values painted on each cell consistent. The paint tends to jitter and crawl a bit, and I just need to fiddle with the painting of each cell to tone down the earthquake.

It helps to paint on thing at a time, like the shadow down the side of the nose on each cell with the same brush and brush size. It is always a guessing game. Since the shots are so fast, I am thinking maybe I could paint one cell and copy that painting onto each other cell and morph them slightly. Then again I kind of like seeing the human touch. I am figuring this out as I go.

COVID: Shot 8

Posted on by Thor

Shot 8 shows Fun Spot which refused to close its doors when the pandemic hit hard. They put out some hand sanitizer stations and called it a day. For those who aren’t aware, COVID is airborne, it floats through the air like smoke waiting to be inhaled to infect a new host. Sanitizer is a nice gesture but it does not stop an airborne virus.

This shot was created with landscape mode of VoluMax Pro 7. I then re did the shot using a depth map for the background and separate layers of each group of hazmat workers. The challenge then became to keep the workers solidly placed on the ground. It took some work to get that right.

Things never got quite this bad in Orlando but with well over one million deaths in America, I wasn’t far off the mark in the paintings I produced in the first weeks. According to USA Facts,  Orlando Florida has had 88,288 COVID deaths so far and that number continues to grow. Where are they all buried? Someone dies about every three minutes from COVID.

Americans have been duped into accepting mass infection. They can accept the risk of infection as no worse than a possible auto accident. However with an auto, you at least can wear a seat belt and steer clear of oncoming traffic. There is no steering clear of COVID when literally no one masks.\

 

I am starting to enter this film in Film Festivals. I have come to realize that it is a film no one wants to see. I therefor have to pay festival entry fees to get an audience to see it.

 

COVID: Shot 6

Posted on by Thor

Shot 6 was the first time I tried using Volumax Pro 7 Smart to try and get some sense of a third dimension to the monkey. I drew depth maps with a pen tool and adjusted the 4 or so layers I creates to that the hand was light and things grew darker moving back. I then painted the mouth to be darker to get some depth. The effect is subtle but it is there. I can see the teeth turn obsessionally as the monkey screams.

I used Volumax Ai to create a depth map for the background monkeys and then moved each of the hands separately. I doubt people notice all the hand movements but they should get a general sens of chaos. By this time I was used to animating breath and COVID spatter using positioning and scale. As each shot progresses the breath expands and the spatter moves with it. Each painting has a different way of visualizing breath. I must have used every color of the rainbow in visualizing how airborne COVID floats through the air like smoke.

The public was lead to believe that the virus could only spread 6 feet but it can travel so much further. My general rule of thumb has been to mask up if I get within 22 feet of anyone else. That applies inside and outside.

For the first time I am paying attention to how many times this film has been seen. I am disappointed since the day before I posted this online a woman posed a video of her singing a song about masking. That video had 80,000 views on the first day. This film has only been seen several hundred times. I don’t understand how ti use social media. I don’t think I ever will. I knew people didn’t want to be reminded of what has happened and what is still happening. Oh well, I need to muster up the courage to keep creating.

You can see the full COVID film here.

 

COVID: Shot 1

Posted on by Thor

The COVID film editing did not begin from shot 1 and proceed in a linear manner. I scoured three years of illustrations and began picking out images that worked with the lyrics to Andy Matchett’s, song “Just Can’t Wait (For the Game to End)” from his apocalyptic rock musical Key of E. The idea for the film was sparked when @IamPoliticsGirl posted on March 24, 2023 a TicToc video on Twitter that was set to the music of Billy Joel‘s “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” Digital Resonator used AI to create each fast paced image which appeared three dimensional. I figure I could used the same effect to pace my images to Andy’s apocalyptic music. You never know where inspiration will come from.

I had used depth maps on a few of my illustrations I posed on Facebook and I liked the effect. There had to be a way to do something similar and edit the images together to create the film. I had Photoshop and After Effects. I needed a filter to create depth maps for each shot. I searched the internet for several night and settled on VoluMax Pro 7 to do the job.

This opening shot was done with Volumax Pro 7 using the auto depth map feature. The illustration was imported into Photoshop and a script added to the actions menu created a button which automatically creates a black and white depth map. I moved a camera from left to right to get the parallax effect and was done.

For the opening shot I originally I had a shot of ground zero from 9/11. A globe shape sculpture was half destroyed by the collapsing towers. That sculpture was repainted to look like the virus as workers gathered around it. Over that scene I had the tile zoom in quickly and expand then zoom over the camera.  I liked it but the image above is far simpler and straight forward. The 9/11 image was cut and  hit the editing floor.

See the full COVID film here.

Pandemic Film: Another COVID New Year

Posted on by Thor

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: Freedom of Religion

Posted on by Thor

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: Neanderthal

Posted on by Thor

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.