Oxymoron of Sorts

It's odd, really. Anyone who's read much of my blog, or friends who understand in even more detail just what my life presently entails, knows I am faced with tremendous, often overwhelming daily challenges. Whoopdee-doo. But what has been bending my mind lately--in a good way--is that despite the difficulties, I've been experiencing brief, profound moments of peace, and seriously positive emotional highs. It seems out of place. The situation I'm in, the responsibility I have taking care of my mom and dad do not leave much time or energy for enjoying life, or laughing hysterically about something, or on some days even sitting down and having any peace of mind at all. Yet, in between tasks, stresses, etc., for the past 3 or 4 months I've been increasingly having inexplicable bursts of euphoria. The closest thing I can relate it to is like being a kid again, and knowing I'm getting a shiny new bike for my birthday, the anticipation is driving me nuts, expecting something so fun and good is on the way. But I am not currently expecting anything out of the ordinary. It's strange because I've never had feelings like this come up while I'm in the midst of the kind of turmoil I've been through lately. I don't want to question it, but it makes me extremely curious; where is it coming from? and could there be a way to make those moments last longer?

I know part of it is that I have made a ginormous effort in the past year+, as things with my parents have gotten harder, to really look for the good, funny, happy in every possible place. I've sort of had to because otherwise I'd be really, really depressed! Studies at Animation Mentor have furthered my pursiut of the good in things because we are taught to actively engage and observe life, and that in every moment we might find some kind of artistic inspiration. A side effect of this kind of attention to the detail of life seems to be increased appreciation of the stuff as well. Ask any of my AM classmates, or any animator for that matter, and they will tell you they find amazing, cool, funny, mind-blowing ideas and inspiration just about anywhere at any time. You begin paying attention to things in the way we are taught as animators and you end up taking great pleasure in stuff that before seemed unimportant or uninteresting. I find myself geeking out about some stuff now that would have never even caught my attention before. All this is good, but it doesn't by itself explain what's going on.

The past week has been very stressful for my family and me. I had to take my mom to ER Sunday and she stayed in the hospital until Wednesday. Luckily she seems to be improving as of today. Stressful, scary, depressing stuff has been going on. Yet, there I was a coupla nights ago, digitizing sound bytes for our next animation assignment and laughing my ass off at some of the dialog I found! On one hand I've got some depressing things going on and on the other I'm laughing myself silly! It's like I'm a real life oxymoron! Kind of an odd place to be, but I'm enjoying it and it sure beats just being depressed about stuff.

Last week my Animation Mentor mentor, Bill Diaz, asked me to get Bishop's feet moving more broadly during the small shuffly "walk" that have in my animation shot. In my mind, and in my reference I shot of myself acting it out, it's supposed to be just a kind of foot and body repositioning...not very big at all. I think Bill is seeing something different, which mostly just means I haven't properly conveyed my idea through the animation as it exists. The mentor is our "director" for these assignments, and just like if this were a real job I gotta just make it happen the way he says or else! Well, unless I can pitch an even better idea. I was having trouble understanding what he wanted at first, and an unfortunately timed sound glitch on my computer kept me from fully discussing it with Bill in last Tuesday's Q&A. But I think the tweaks I've made are on the right track and should be fine by the time I turn it in.

Since this is the final week of this assignment, I've also been experimenting with lighting and rendering my shot. I do know a thing or two about lighting, and though I'm certainly no genius it sure does look a lot nicer rendered than straight out of playblast!