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.

2D Animation

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There is a certain nostalgia seeing a new group of students each month in the 2DA Full Sail classroom. By the end of the first day it is possible to sense which students have the drive to excel. Most of my time is spend helping students navigate how to use the computer software to shoot the drawings they produce at their animation desks. For some students there is a legitimate glee that comes from seeing their drawings move for the first time.

Larry Lauria does a good job of sharing his enthusiasm for the medium. Each lunch break he shows academy award winning animated shorts, to give the students an idea of what can be achieved with a pencil, plenty of paper and imagination. On the first day, students realize the amount of work needed to create just one second of animation. They create a one second animated morph, having one object transform into another.

The students are issued plastic portfolio cases that come packed with the basic supplies needed to create hand drawn animation. They get red, blue and black Prismacolor pencils, an eraser, sharpener, a peg strip and a flip book.  The 150 page flip book is the most creative assignment the students get. They can create any type of animated scene that they like. Some students plan a whole story while others simply play with shapes and forms.

There are several animation projects in each of the ten classes each month. Some students finish with ease while others struggle to keep up. I’m always trying to encourage students to make passable animation
better or more entertaining. This is the hardest thing to pass on, the
fire in the belly, an undeniable need to create. Some sleep walk through
life trying to just get by. Some discover this drive early while others
will find it later in life. Jobs might come and go, but a life fueled with creative ambition will always be full filling.

Sexual Harassment

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All the Full Sail staff were required to take a seminar which outlined Full Sail’s policies on Sexual Harassment. Kathy Blackmore invited her crack team of instructors from 2D Animation to meet for lunch at Mellow Mushroom on Aloma before the seminar. It’s always nice to get together as a crew to laugh, gossip and discuss ways the course might be improved over time. My Hawaiian pizza was delicious. As a crew we then arrived at Full Sail live before anyone else showed up. The back rows were the first to fill up. There was plenty of uncomfortable joking about harassment and slowly the room filled. I left the 2DA crew, thinking I might sketch from the front row. Kathy informed me that much of the presentation would be a video, so I changed my focus and decided to sketch the growing crowd.

Sexual Harassment is bad. It was defined as unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors or verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature. A lawyer went through his 29 power point slides being sure to read each of the bullet points. About 70% of women and 20% of men have experienced sexual harassment. About 15,000 charges are filed each year. The bottom line was that Full Sail employees must report all harassment if they are aware of it to the Human Resources department or a quick call to the Full Sail president.

The video showed a fictitious court case in which a female employee was filing a sexual harassment charge. She met a guy at a company picnic and they talked. She let slip that she used to work for a 900 number. The audience murmured. The guy kept asking her out and she declined. He parked outside her home one night for several hours. She contacted HR and they suggested the guy stop. He didn’t. Eventually the guy was fired, but the woman got cat calls from the rest of the shipping department. She decided she had to leave.

The Full Sail staff were asked to break up into groups of six to act as juries. The interesting thing about the video is that the case left room for interpretation about weather HR had done enough to stop the harassment. The juries all agreed that she was the victim of sexual harassment. They varied widely in the matter of how much to offer in damages. One jury offered $300 in compensatory damages, $300 in punitive damages and $300 in back pay. The video jury offered $75,000 in damages. Larry Lauria on the 2DA jury offered 10 million dollars in damages, but it was a hung jury because no one could agree on the final amount.

Mulan Screening 2DA

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Each month at Full Sail, we have 10 classes instructing the 12 Principles of Animation in the 2D Animation Lab. On the last day of class, students get to enjoy a traditionally animated film as they put any finishing touches on their animation projects and flip books. Often students are illuminated by the warm glow of the animation disks as they sketch. There is usually a rush of activity at the animation cameras as scenes are shot and re-shot.

This month, the class decided to watch Mulan, a film which I put plenty of blood sweat and tears into. This was the first full feature film Disney produced entirely in Florida and the small crew had to put in an astonishing amount of overtime to get the film finished. It was trial by fire, and I loved the pressure. I stayed late without being asked to re-work all the keys in a scene that showed fish swimming underwater. By morning I finished the scene, locking down the stripes and patterns on the fish bodies. All that work garnered quick promotions. Ironically after all the water ripples were added, all that work was distorted, but I still feel pride any time I see it. I haven’t experienced that kind of intense community creative effort since production on that film. I suppose my daily deadlines are my way to keep that pressure cooker active as I strive to grow as an artist.