Apocalypse Archives - Page 2 of 8

After 4 tedious days of rendering hundreds of high-resolution video files, only to discover they seemed to be missing one frame each and so weren’t looping properly, followed by a few days of unhappy procrastinating, followed by 3 additional tedious and crabby days of re-rendering, I finally have all the animation of ApocalypseAnimated.com in Ultra HD (3840 x 2160 pixel) uncompressed Apple ProRes video for your remixing pleasure. Roughly in order, each loop in this gigantic, 20GB file appears exactly once. They can be cut apart and looped again and again in your video editor.

It’s under a Share-Alike license, so you can do whatever you want as long as what you make with it is also Free. I understand some projects want proprietary licenses, and I can negotiate a waiver for those if you email me.

People have used my other Free Cultural works as backdrops for dances and runway shows, illustrations in books, giant puppets, and of course music videos, and I hope all that happens with these too.

In my heart of hearts, some creative sound designer(s) would make fresh audio for these. I made my own short musical video, but it’s barely 3 minutes, and with almost 12 minutes of animation total, most of the work wasn’t included. Plus, I almost always animate to music; what I never do is make animation first and add sound effects later, and these clips provide an opportunity for just that. By looping, the total length of the piece can be extended indefinitely. That means if someone wants to attempt an audio reading of the Book of Revelation, with this animation as the visuals, it can be done.

If you want to try your hand at editing and/or sound design, please have at it. Credit me for the animation and yourself for your work, and anything else you throw in there to whomever else is responsible. Do whatever you want. No permission needed. Have fun and send me a link.

Apocalypse Animated video

I made this little “trailer” video for ApocalypseAnimated.com . It’s only 3 minutes long, while there are almost 12 minutes of animation (without even looping!) in the project, so this is but a mere sample of the wonders to find at the website. But this has music so people are likelier to share and attend to it.

There are some technical looping flaws that bother me. Apparently when I export HD video from Moho, it omits the last frame of the loop, causing a jerk in the seams. This doesn’t happen when I export gifs. To make my hi-res video archive perfect, I will have to go back and add one frame and re-render every. single. file. This took 4 boring tedious days last time, and I’m not looking forward to doing it again. But such are the responsibilities of an Apocalypse animator.

Choosing the song was not straightforward. I was really smitten by Fuck Everything by Euringer (aka Jimmy Urine). It would have supplied nice ironic tension because it’s not intentionally about the Apocalypse, and it’s from the point-of-view of two bratty entitled lovers, which is an interesting lens through which to view John of Patmos and his God. But Fuck Everything already has a perfect video, and who knows what kind of headaches it would cause me; even if Jimmy isn’t a copyright maximalist, his songs are distributed in a system that doesn’t recognize Fair Use, and YouTube’s ContentID would surely block even its first upload. I did start making an edit with it, but got frustrated (as one does) and that anxiety contributed to my consideration of an alternative song.

Fortunately I’d already compiled a list of old gospel songs that might work, and the top entry proved a good fit. I found it on the wonderful archive.org, where I always go a-hunting in my research phases. I worried that straight-up gospel wouldn’t be ironic enough with the animation, but When The Fire Comes Down had its own irony, contrasting a cheerful jaunty melody with horrific subject matter. Everything fit right away and I banged out this edit in a single day. Thank you, Internet Archive!

It is Done

“It is done.” — Revelation 21:6

I’ve finished ApocalypseAnimated.com! All 22 chapters are now illustrated. I will undoubtedly continue to fuss with it, adding and revising things here and there, but this is basically it.

I’ve been working on it all day every day since October.

Next I work on an app for it, and generate high-res video of all the loops for other uses.

Hope you enjoy it! Please share it if you do.

Apocalypse Animated

I’ve revived my temporarily-abandoned Apocalypse project, which now lives at apocalypseanimated.com. Instead of a movie, I’m illustrating the Book of Revelation with animated gif loops, in the tradition of Medieval and post-Medieval Apocalypses. Except instead of being hand-lettered and painted on parchment, it’s all digital. Still, the gif is the 21st Century’s equivalent of the woodcut, as I discussed 6 years ago:

…the advent of the printing press led to the explosion of a unique kind of illustration: the wood-cut. Since…the internet is in many ways analogous to the printing press, I saw a parallel in its own new kind of illustration: the animated gif.

I am currently up to Chapter 8, out of 22 chapters total. Here are some of my favorites so far:

Revelation 1:11 “What thou seest, write in a book….”

Revelation 4:2 “…behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne. 3 And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.”

Revelation 6:13 “And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.”

Revelation 7:3 “Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.”

Revelation 8:4 “And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand.”

Revelation 8:7 “The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.”

Revelation 8:11 “And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.”

Ultimately I’d like the whole thing to be available for download as an eBook. Some of the gifs are heavy, weighing in at over 4MB, although many are under 2. With up to 17 gifs per page (each chapter is one page), that can make it unwieldy to download on-the-fly in a phone’s browser. That said, it looks freaking great on phones, thanks to the “dynamic” WordPress template I was willing to wrestle with. As an eBook it could be downloaded in a single package and viewed at will on any device. But get this – there aren’t any eBook publishing programs that support animated gifs in this way! A few e-Readers support animated gifs, so such an eBook is at least possible, but it will take some custom coding for it to happen. Meanwhile, if you have a proper Internet connection, view the work-in-progress at apocalypseanimated.com/.

“Little Beast” for Andrew

The two-word request for this Hundred Dollar Drawing was “Little Beast,” but this is really Lil’ Beast o’ the Apocalypse.

²And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.

Nina Bunjevac’s Tarot

This summer I was surprised by several out-of-the blue, generous gifts. One of them was from illustrator Nina Bunjevac, with whom I communicate occasionally on social media – we have a little Mutual Admiration Society going. She sent me a set of beautiful French tarot cards, which I received last week and promptly stared at for several hours.

Although we share a first name, I promise that doesn’t bias me. Bunjevac’s line art epitomizes what I’ve always thought line art should be. She’s a direct creative heir to one of my all-time favorite illustrators, Virgil Finlay, and maybe a more distant cousin of Gustave Doré. Her lines go all the right ways, in intricate, mesmerizing patterns, without getting “busy.” Meanwhile she has a brilliant sense of overall design, so her drawings satisfy my eyes on both macro and micro views.

On a long bike ride recently, I contemplated animating one of her cards. I chose the Wheel of Fortune, La Roue, because it looked like Nina had already animated the eyes opening and closing, and I wanted to see them blink.

The animation itself is pretty simple, a 16-frame cycle at 12 fps. On the other hand, cutting pieces of illustration out of their backgrounds in GIMP is a time-consuming PITA, but sometimes I just gotta see what it’ll look like.

Speaking of the Tarot, many of its images derive from the Apocalypse (the Book of Revelation). The Wheel card, for example, depicts the 4 Heavenly Beasts or Living Creatures, which are also essentially the Seraphim of Ezekiel. Here’s my version from my stalled Apocalypse project:

It’s stalled because I’m just not feeling apocalyptic right now. The weather’s still decent, and I’m healthy and biking in the beautiful outdoors and getting swell gifts like Nina’s tarot cards. Life is good! Of course, this can and will change; the wheel of fortune keeps on turning. When it does, I’ll be back to animating the End of the World.

Category: Apocalypse

Have At It

Apocalypse Animated video

It is Done

Apocalypse Animated

“Little Beast” for Andrew

Nina Bunjevac’s Tarot