Week 6 - Overlapping Action

Just got back my critique for the week 5 obstacle course assignment and I'm going to post that up when I do the revisions.

This week we're looking at overlapping action, drag, follow through and successive breaking of joints. We've put aside the bouncing ball for the moment to look at a pendulum's motion when driven by a platform above it. I think I understand the concepts pretty well, but it's going to take a bit of time and experimentation before I build up some confidence on how to use them.

I just finished looking at Bobby Beck's website and blog. It's awesome how much positivity everyone surrounding AM exudes. Bobby's sight just seems to scream total contentment, gratitude and generosity. But then I guess those are the characteristics you should have if you're going to open up a school that works as well as this one does. Surely frustration, capriciousness and greediness wouldn't make for the best learning environment. (although that seems to be a pretty good description of some other, best left unnamed institutions I've studied at.)

I'm trying to organise a meeting between the Milanese students of AM. There are a few others out there and I think it'd be a great thing if we were to catch up. As it's august, there's not many people around though and so far we've all been to busy working on our assignments and successively off on vacations that the opportunity hasn't presented itself. Maybe we can try for Thursday... that'd be cool.

This week my Q&A is on Tuesday rather than Wednesday so I have to get going on the experimentation otherwise I'll miss the opportunity to ask Chris anything I didn't understand. I'll keep you posted on how it's going!

Anecdote: On Sat I decided to sit in on an extra Q&A with Mark Pudleiner who's been working as an animator since the 1980's starting with a personal favorite The Care Bears Movie... and more recently The Robinsons... which I loved. Anyhow... I was just listening in and cooking dinner at the same time and didn't have headphones, just speakers and the mic wasn't plugged in and all of a sudden Mark says 'Okay now let's hear from Jessica Herman' and I'm all flabbergasted and in a fret cause I'm checking if I even have pants on (which I did) and plugging in headphones and the mic and turning on the lights in the room and wow... suddenly the 'LIVE' part of Live Q&A really had a whole new meaning. Mental note: work on telling of anecdotes.