Yesterday This Was Home: He Was 12

Posted on by Thor

He was 12 and she was maybe 15 or 16. He watched as she s she boarded and he moved to the window seat. I will likely revise this pose when I start animating this scene. I have to decided how a 12 year old would excitedly switch seats.

I animated the protagonist entering the bus station today. I am pleased with his more relaxed walk and the timing I developed to make it clear the door had weight. The length of the scene turned out longer than expected so I will have to trim a following shot. I will likely spend less time at the ticket counter.

I also animated a dialogue scene this morning. It is from a distance, so I simplified the scene with just his head moving and the lips. I am learning what is noticed and what isn’t so I am using these short scenes to save time n the animation process.

I am cross eyed from animating all day so I will cu this short. The demands of animation are unrelenting.

This film will be on display October 3, 2020 – February 14, 2021 at the Orange County Regional History Center for the exhibit, Yesterday This Was Home, an  exhibition about the 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, which remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history.

Events unfolded on Election Day 1920, when Mose Norman, a black U.S. citizen, attempted to exercise his legal right to vote in Ocoee and was turned away from the polls. That evening, a mob of armed white men came to the home of his friend, July Perry, in an effort to locate Norman. Shooting ensued. Perry was captured and eventually lynched. An unknown number of African American citizens were murdered, and their homes and community were burned to the ground. Most of the black population of Ocoee fled, never to return.

 

Yesterday This Was Home: Getting Seated

Posted on by Thor

A slow zoom in as the boy makes his way up the aisle to his seat four rows from the back.

Today I have been animating the bus driver’s dialogue. I designed his face to look a bit like a stop sign. The octagonal pattern is pronounces in his jaw and eye lids mostly. Even his eyes are octagons though softened a bit. The animation is going well but I had to stop because my Apple pencil needs to recharge. Such lags in technology are an excuse for me to multi task, in this case, to write a brief article here. My pencil is now 97% charged so I might not write much more. I also have an animation student in a bout an hour, so I may need to work late into the night to finish the scene I started.

The scene I am animating has a large hand gesture and I decided to animate it on a separate level. My thought is to have it pop up hen the driver says, “Pleeeese.” I might slide it forward or backward in the timeline however when I see it play back with the audio dialogue. Callipeg doesn’t have the ability to import audio, so I am just using video reference to find when the mouth shaped hit on which frame numbers. Once I see it play with the audio in Adobe Premiere Pro then I often decided to change timing on mouth shapes to they read clearer. I try not to fuss too long since there are plenty of other shots to get done.

This short film will be on display at Yesterday This Was Home, an exhibition at the Orange County Regional History Center (65 E. Central Blvd. Orlando, Florida 32801) from October 3, 2020 to February 14, 2021.

The exhibit is about the 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history.

Events unfolded on Election Day 1920, when Mose Norman, a black U.S. citizen, attempted to exercise his legal right to vote in Ocoee and was turned away from the polls. That evening, a mob of armed white men came to the home of his friend, July Perry, in an effort to locate Norman. Shooting ensued. Perry was captured and eventually lynched. An unknown number of African American citizens were murdered, and their homes and community were burned to the ground. Most of the black population of Ocoee fled, never to return.

This landmark exhibition by the Orange County Regional History Center will mark the 100-year remembrance of the Ocoee Massacre. The exhibition will explore not only this horrific time in our community’s history but also historical and recent incidents of racism, hatred, and terror, some right here at home.

The content will encourage reflection on a century of social transformation, the power of perspective, and the importance of exercising the right to vote, and will ask what lessons history can inspire for moving forward

Yesterday This Was Home: Boarding

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A drivers seat eye view of our character entering the bus.Before bounding up the steps he glances towards the back of the bus then fills the frame as he passes our point of view. Glancing at this and writing about it, I realize that I need to change the angel of the molding on the inside of the bus. I will make that alteration today. That is the thing about animation once you make one change several others have to be made. I finished animating a pivotal scene yesterday and it affected the two scenes that followed.

Toady I will be animating a dialogue scene with the driver. He does a big flourish with his hands and I suspect it will get a laugh. The narrator over acted as he delivered this line so it is a chance to overact and exaggerate a bit the drivers performance.  It is fun each day to wake up to a new challenge. I am hoping to have seven seconds of animation finished by the end of today.

This short will be on display at a special exhibition fromOctober 3, 2020 to February 14, 2021. The show is titled Yesterday This Was Home. It is about he 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history.

Events unfolded on Election Day 1920, when Mose Norman, a black U.S. citizen, attempted to exercise his legal right to vote in Ocoee and was turned away from the polls. That evening, a mob of armed white men came to the home of his friend, July Perry, in an effort to locate Norman. Shooting ensued. Perry was captured and eventually lynched. An unknown number of African American citizens were murdered, and their homes and community were burned to the ground. Most of the black population of Ocoee fled, never to return.

Yesterday This Was Home: Getting the Ticket

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After teaching an Urban Sketching Class at Crealde School of Artthis morning I spent the rest of the day animating dialogue for this piece. The most important line of dialogue was “No.” I animated that line for much of the day today. I kept the timing on 4s which means most frames hold for 4 frames. This results in crisp rather clipped motion which I rather liked for this particular scene. A Disney Feature Animated film would always make sure the timing was on 2s or even 1s in some cases, meaning thee could be 24 drawings for every second. On 4s I would only have  to d 6 drawings which is a time saver as I get up to speed again.

I started a second dialogue scene which is framed much like the first scene. That scene is over 10 seconds long which should take all day to do. Besides animating, I also try and get the frames painted and then edited into the final story reel by nightfall. Animation is all consuming and there is always a pile of work waiting to be done. I finished the storyboards yesterday, so I know the story is solidly tied down and now I can just focus on production. This is going to be a crazy ride.

They boy in this scene seems a bit older than 12 years old , So I will likely change his look a bit when I start animating this scene. I like the Art Deco look of the station ticket counter. I used to work i the Empire State Building in NYC and the lobby and whole building had this look.

Again, this film will be on display at the Orange County Regional History Center  for an exhibition titled, Yesterday This Was Home, on display October 3, 2020 – February 14, 2021

The 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history.

Yesterday This Was Home: Waiting Room

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Part of what I am figuring out as I board out this animated short is how tall the character should be. He is 12 years old and my drawing of him vary a bit as I try and recall how tall I might have been at that age. The look of the character slowly becomes clearer as I get further into the project. By the time I got to the pivotal scene I  felt like I had him established. When I go back to ass animation the characters can be refined an put on model which was established on the fly. There ws no time for a prolonged visual development I just had to start and hope it all  falls together.

These first shots in the film are fairly contained, but by the end of the film I was playing with some more complex camera moves and effects. I am learning so much ringing this character  to life. Timing is figured out based on the cadence of the oral history and in this case I decided it should take about four seconds to step towards the door, grab the handle, pull and take one step inside. I’ll let you know how that works out when I actually animate. Scenes I am animating to start are the close up dialogue scenes since they take time and care. By the end of production with the deadline looming, the time for care might be sacrificed.

Days are from about 8AM to 10PM or later but I haven’t started burning the midnight oil yet. Last night I spent an hour or so researching the case of Emmett Till who was lynched a year before this bus trip. Like George Floyd’s death, his senseless murder galvanized a civil rights uprising. In this film when the character refers to historical moments, Black becomes white and white becomes black.

This film will be shown at Yesterday This Was Home, a Special exhibition on display October 3, 2020 – February 14, 2021 at the Orange County Regional History Center.

The 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history. Events unfolded on Election Day 1920, when Mose Norman, a black U.S. citizen, attempted to exercise his legal right to vote in Ocoee and was turned away from the polls. That evening, a mob of armed white men came to the home of his friend, July Perry, in an effort to locate Norman. Shooting ensued. Perry was captured and eventually lynched. An unknown number of African American citizens were murdered, and their homes and community were burned to the ground. Most of the black population of Ocoee fled, never to return.

Yesterday This Was Animation

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Cross dissolve to the character now walking to the Orlando Bus Station. This re-used the animation form the first shot but the animation had to be repositioning. I was hoping I could move the animation as a whole in Callipeg but that solution evaded me. Instead I re positioned each drawing one at a time making sure the foot positions lined up on the pavement.

Today was a good day of production, I got a bunch of boards done and several of those seem animated since I used the Procreate video playback feature to recreate the process. I get my best ideas as I am waking up in the morning lying in bed and this morning I came up with the idea of having negatives playback when the character reflects on our countries history of racism. I had one of these Ah-Ha moments each day when I was doing my COVID-19 series of illustrations. It was hard to stop the COVID-19 series since the ideas keep coming, But now that I am animating again, I am loving the process and getting lost in the work all day and into the night.

At first the project seemed impossible on the tight deadline, but I keep chipping away and things keep falling into place. There is a definite sense of serendipity that comes with making a film. Working from the oral history makes boarding a breeze since the length of each shot is determined by the narration.

Again all this work is being done of the exhibition titled, Yesterday this Was Hone: The Ocoeee Massacre of 1920. The Exhibition is on display from October 3, 2020 to February 14, 2021 at the Orange County Regional History Center. The 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history. This exhibit is sadly still relevant today with the election coming up in November,  since America has never been able to fully address racism.

Yesterday This Was Home: Learning to Walk

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The first scene opens with a close up on the Christmas star in Downtown Orlando. I created the sketch and painting in Procreate. The great this about that program is that you can play back a movie which shows every stroke creating a time lapse replay of the painting as it was created. I tool that movie and panned town to the street level. The sketch is created as the camera move happens and when I got to the street I lap dissolved to the final painting to save some time. A young boy walks across the street with a suit case in hand.

I fully animated this scene to test out thee program I plan to use to do all the animation for the project. The program is called Callipeg and it was designed to be used on the iPad. The program is surprisingly intuitive if you have animated with paper and pencil before. That reminds me, I am writing this entry because my Apple Pencil has run out of battery life and I am waiting for it to recharge. A good old wood and graphite pencil never needs to be recharged and sharpening it takes just a second if yo have an electric sharpener.

I animated my character taking four strides across the street and the scene required 97 drawings. I am learning by trial and error discovering ways to save time each time I animate a scene. Since I decided to keep the head and torso still, I could cut and past those elements from drawing to drawing and just animate the legs and arms. Having him carry a suit case had the added advantage of fewer arm swings to animate. I  used the standard timing I teach most students at Elite Animation Academy. Each stride takes about one second or 24 drawings to animate. I am experimenting quite a bit with timing to see when I can get away with animating on twos and fours when possible. That means each drawing is held for two or four frames of film. It can save on the amount of drawings that need to be done.

In traditional animation you flip the drawings as they are created to watch the motion as you work. In Callipeg, three fingers scrolling up and down the screen accomplish the same effect. For some reason my pencil turns into an eraser unexpectedly while I animate so I have to be very careful with how I touch the screen. Just selecting multiple frames in the timeline was a challenge. You have to touch and tap twice very fast and drag to make the selection. I had to practice most of an evening because the selection would just move the frame I tapped on.  So much of my time is being spent training myself on developing just the right touch so the computer knows what I want.

This scene is part of a short being show at the Orange County Regional History Center for their exhibit on the 1920 Ocoee Massacre. The exhibit is titled, Yesterday This Was Home. This special exhibition is on display October 3, 2020 – February 14, 2021.  The 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history