Three Point Launch Demo

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This was a demo for one of my Elite Animation Academy online students.We had already covered one pint and two point perspective and this was a lesson in three point perspective.

I always try and convince my students to think a step beyond the basic lesson plan to create something unexpected. In this case the student had chosen to draw a tall skyscraper and I offered the possibility that it could be something other than a building.

Some students are bored by the mechanical nature of graphing out perspective, but I love teaching it and I use the premise in every sketch I do. Some students think it involves too much science and not enough fancy, so I throw some fancy into the mix as I teach it.

Right now I am waiting on about 20 different film festivals to accept or reject COVID Dystopia. I tend to post scenes from the film on this site when the film is about to be shown at a festival and when I suspect judges might check out the site for more information about the film. Since

I am in a holding pattern, I figured I would post more variety. I have started sketching rehearsals and shows again but I tech until 8pm many nights and have to schedule around my teaching schedule. I might get out to about 3 theater sketch opportunists a week. I have been sketching theaters where my film has been shown but that number is rather small.

This week I am pressing hard to refine next season’s Shakespeare posters but after that I am a tumbleweed looking for my next series of sketches to become obsessed about.

A trip to NYC several months ago got me excited about continuing my series of sketches of the 50 oldest churches in the city. I am looking at rents in Brooklyn and there are a few where the rent is less than I am paying here in Orlando. At this point, it doesn’t matter where I live and set up my studio. I really need to think about buying a place however since rent is just wasted money.

50 Oldest Churches of NYC: First Free Congregational Church

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The former First Free Congregational Church, 311 Bridge Street, Brooklyn, New York has a simple, rectangular shape and temple front, is one of the few remaining examples of the vernacular Greek Revival building popular in the mid-nineteenth-century. The Greek Revival temple was erected 1846 to 1847.

The “Free” in the name refers to the policy of not charging a rental fee for its pews. The building has changed hands many times, and by 1854 it housed the oldest African American congregation in Brooklyn. Then known as the Bridge Street Church and was the worship space of the African Weslyan Methodist Episcopal  Church which used the basement to hide escaping slaves. It was the first independent black church in Brooklyn.

It is now the student center for the Polytechnic Institute of New York University. The church building is now called the Wunsch Building and houses the school’s Undergraduate Admissions offices. It is used to host many social, cultural, and academic events for the school and community.

It has been designated a historic landmark since November 24, 1981.

 

 

Massive Mask-less Wedding

Posted on by Thor

An ordinance in New York allows gatherings of up to 50 people. In defiance of that ordinance, thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews packed into Yetev Lev D’Satmar synagogue in Brooklyn for a secret wedding. The building has a maximum capacity of 7,000 people and this event was packed shouder to shoulder with standing room only in the aisles.

Authorities learned about the secret wedding over the weekend and fined its organizers $15,000. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo condemned the event on Sunday as a “blatant disregard of the law” and called it “disrespectful to the people of New York.” Officials have issued strict limits on public gatherings in New York City’s boroughs and across the rest of the state. However, large parties have been cropping up on a near-daily basis, according to the New York City Sheriff’s Office.

A much smaller wedding in Maine had 55 guests. Guests reportedly did not wear masks, nor observe physical distancing rules. That wedding resulted in half the guests contracting COVID-19 with that then spreading to 177 people and killing 7. One guest who became sick visited a parent who worked at a retirement home. That resulted in an outbreak of 38 cases among staff and residents at the long-term care facility, over 100 miles away from the wedding. Six residents died at that facility.

In NYC the club scene went underground after the start of the pandemic. Those in the know can find crowded gatherings at warehouses, lofts, basements, boats, parks and rooftops. It is like the return of the prohibition ere only today people want to get drunk and deathly sick. Over Halloween weekend two parties were shit down by police, one with 400 people in Brooklyn and the other with 550 in the Bronx. Event organizers fail to understand or simply ignore the dangers of large indoor gatherings. Two bit event organizers see this as an opportunity to profit off the pandemic.

Joanna Solomon shares how her love life and career came Hurtling Towards Earth.

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In her solo show, Hurtling Towards Earth, Joanna Solomon from Brooklyn NY, recounted her years as an aerialist in the Argentine production of De La Guardia along with her equally harrowing love stories at this year’s Orlando International Fringe Festival. Auditioning for the role was extremely stressful. She felt like every other dancer and acrobat did the required moves with ease. When she confided that she might be out of her league, another actress told her, “Just fake it like the rest of us. She was amazed and delighted when she got the call back and ultimately the roll.

A small diary sat on a stool on stage. Periodically Joanna would refer to it to find letters that she had written her mom. Her close bond to her mom seems to have kept her sane during the long time she was away.  Joanna also had a boyfriend back home yet none of the letters she read were to him. Once she read a letter, she would clamp it on to a clothes line hanging in the corner of the stage.

She confided that she isn’t the type of person to have an affair but an Argentinian man worked closely with her in the show. While she was suspended from a rope, he would swing her into a canvas wall, softly at first and then harder while making guttural noises. They resisted the urge for the longest time but then had an intense passionate affair. The Argentinians girlfriend of her Argentinian lover came to a wrap party. Joanne had a little too much to drink and when she went into the women’s room, her lover followed her and pleaded his love for her. His girlfriend found them together and she began beating on Joanne who felt she deserved every blow.

Her boyfriend back home hacked into her Facebook account and he found plenty of evidence of her affair. She later found out that he had also had an affair while she was gone but it didn’t help in healing the lost trust. She never said if she tried to get back together with either boyfriend, but I suspect they all probably went their separate ways. At the end of the show Joanne showed a movie clip of one of her aerialist performances. With so many unanswered questions I didn’t fell like the show was over.