teaching notes

I could not be more proud of my students who offered up an entire weekend to a fellow student with a wish. RIT senior Zach Sheikh is battling cancer for the third time, and wanted to bring the RIT community together to create games and animation that would inspire young adults who are also facing adversity. We spent Saturday and Sunday collaborating and producing an animation that incorporated 2D and 3D assets, and the end result, while still a bit glitchy, shows what can happen when we focus our energies for good!

https://www.whec.com/top-news/rit-hosts-jam-for-hope-for-student-living-with-cancer/

Very proud of my freshmen classes’ ability to pivot in the middle of a semester, return home, and continue working in such innovative ways!  They were featured in this RIT article highlighting (only) some of their solutions to continuing their work without any of the hardware on campus!

Below are the instructions I made for them regarding DIY light tables and down-shooters, and they did the rest!

DIY Downshooter Using StopMo Studio App

RIT Lecturer Kevin Bauer and I received a PLIG (Provost Learning Innovations Grant) in 2019 for our project “SOFA SLow-Mo”, and when we envisioned bringing students together to explore movement and record it all in slow motion, I am not entirely sure either of us saw Kevin sitting in a turtle themed kiddie pool getting yogurt poured over his head (in my efforts to stay environmentally friendly but also have different liquids to pour and observe fluid dynamics, I opted for eggs, flour, yogurt, milk and water…a veritable raw pancake of material!)  The students who joined us for this session bounced, threw, jumped, ran and spun their way to more reference footage for their peers for years to come!

Group Stretch before the movment begins!

Setting the stage with Motion Picture Science student Sidharth Sadhujan

Trampoline actions

Preparing for liquid pours

Good sports, students and teachers alike

My students and I were so fortunate to get a visit from Melissa Brush of the Nocturnal Gallery who I met by chance in a bookstore and HAD to invite to my Drawing for Animation class! The slideshow says it all…animals are amazing, in every slippery shape and form. Some students carefully confronted their fear of certain ones (entirely white Ball Python around the neck, anyone?) and others jumped in with gusto, sketchpads in hand.  A wonderful drawing day, and we can’t be more grateful to Melissa for joining us!

Joy with Ball Python

Moe with Gerbil

Lee with Ball Python

Drawing a Tarantula

Group sketching Parrot

Group sketching Parrot

Gerbils

Ball Python and Parrot, safely separated

Geckos and Parrots

Visiting Rochester Preparatory High School today, and I pulled up this old example of Persistence of Vision from when I taught at Penn.  Good ol’ Ben still holds up!  And here’s another one for today’s class:

Sometimes I’ll try the assignments I give my students so I can see where they might get hung up.  Here’s a rough test of a farmer slipping around in mud, in perspective.  I got hung up on the timing and arm movements, so I made a point of discussing both again in class. My favorite part of teaching is how much I get to learn!