From the stomach

Waking time of half-eight in the morning!? The alarm was for 7am but I figured that there isn't much at all for me to do in the morning. Well, there is - but I'm so drowsy around that time I tend not to bother.

Over to B124 for voice training! Andy Joule was there, and waiting for the two instructors to arrive in from Guildford. Some people didn't turn up for it, and some got a group mix up. (One girl, I swear, is a part of our group 2a but just wondered off to 2b. I guess she wanted to be with a friend, maybe Su.)

I talked with Andy in the mean time about my Wiki Space. The animation course wants students to develop their Wiki with content, annotation, and such. Not a bad idea, since it means the staff can freely check stuff from me, but it does mean having to scan stuff endlessly on a computer. Thankfully, Andy mentioned scanners are in G01, or G02. Other courses across UCA need to follow a similar format (lest it's from personal preference) and make a blog; it's mainly Photography students and the UCA email tends to get the odd plugging for a students blog (here on Blogger, too).

The two instructors arrived! One a man with a nice and scruffy beard, and the other a woman in her mid-20s. The man (John) kick started our group with some group games - the first essentially to learn other peep's names! How handy since, if you've read anything of my blog, you'd likely know by now that my tolerance for name-memorising borderlines on Alzheimer's. This game consisted of us standing in a circle, with a chosen person to stand in the middle. That person would have to call out the name of someone else in the circle three times to bring them in, and switch places. Should the person who's name be called answer back ONCE with the name of the sod in the middle, the latter fails. It's all about speed and surprise of the name chanting. I brought in a number of times, and my main victim to try and catch out Manjit, who I did eventually.

Next game was John the instructor speaking words/names to use at random. If he says "bibidi-babidi-boo", whoever he is saying it to must say "Bob" before he finishes, or else they're out. Additional elements came in, such as "Elephant." If he says this to someone, they have to wrap their right arm around their left, pinching with their nose, and hold out the left arm straight with a limp hand. (Replicating, apparently, an elephant's snout.) Not only this, but the two students by the side of the one tasked to do the Elephant must wave their arms jazz-hands style in a manner similar to broads on a game-show unveiling the 'grand prize'. Then there is the cream-de-creme, "James Bond". Picked person must strike a pose with two hands together forming a gun whilst, ugh, two students either side play the role of Bond Gal. "Hello, James!"
I was roughly the 8th one out. Four were left. :( The role of these games was to help us let go of any vanity and anxiety - important seeing as we'd shortly be made to break the casual average-joe stride.

Last 'game', but more of an activity, was racing around the room to touch four chairs in six seconds. We weren't making it even remotely near the allotted time, but flowing the group of us in a circle (which I think most were doing to begin with, just stubbornly not me.) as we ran for the chairs made it manageable.


Then came the actual breathing exercises! First off, we all had to lie on the ground, legs up (so the backs firmly laid on the surface) and arms by the side. We let go of anything and everything within our mind and listened to just the noises of things around us. (Also a common way to calm down, I believe) We listened to our breathing, and tried various humming in different decimals and pitches, from MMMMMs to aaaaaaahs. Embarrassingly, I think my booming was drowning out everyone else's.

After some practice, our group then stood up and tried mastering the dreaded tongue-twisters. I suggested Red-Lorry Yellow-Lorry. (Thank God that Su wasn't there) We then got onto some actual characterisation of scripts. Oh boy. We had a sheet explaining various methods of presenting a voice from pauses, anticipation to speed. The first task was speaking a hella' long sentence in one breath. It made me understand that actors back in the Shakespearean theatres had lungs the size of whales.
Second was giving various lines some characters. I was ever so lucky and got the fucking Jack and the Beanstalk Giant's famous quoting. I had to make it 'scary' but honestly, my voice is loud enough that it's probably enough to fear for one's own hearing.

Other challenges were varying whisper with a excerpt of dialogue, which I botched and missed entirely since I wasn't paying attention to the actual line above explaining the task on whispering. LOLZORDS FIAL!!! Then it was two varying tasks - depending on the order of who got what line. I got quite an interesting one involving pause, with dialogue sounding nice and dramatic. I kind of liked my performance on that. :( We also had to hold our breathes and count to a higher number as possible with our capacity. Our group got to 42. We didn't best yesterday's who achieved a record of 48.

The final task was another sheet with characters A and B. Yup, time for some traditional duo partnering.
The girl I partnered with who's name I forgot was fun, and we got a good discussion going on how best to represent the characters. To us, 'A' looked like a nieve, blissful ninny type of characters always poking curiousity where it's unneeded. (Like that stupid bitch in the Golden Watch part of Pulp Fiction). 'B', my character, seemed like at least at the time of his dialogue, a punchy, secretive and indignant dude. Sawyer from LOST sprang to mind and his character wouldn't get out of my head when reading this script.

Regardless, it was time for everyone's performance. I wasn't paying attention to everyone else's acting, being so versed in my script and self-rehearsing it. I think everyone was, since when it came to John asking us what we thought was 'going on' with the scene of the dialogue enactment, nobody was responding. One person, James, had issues with his English being his second language and all. Poor guy.

Got to me and my partner's 'act'. It was something like this:

A) Who was that?
B) No one important.
A) Oh, I just wondered.
B) Can you hurry please?
A) I'm being quick as I can.
B) It's just I'm late as it is.
A) I didn't realise there was a deadline.
B) There is.
A) Oh.
B) Yes. So can we get on?
A) Who was that?

Didn't turn out bad. Again, I was recalling how Saywer's character was portrayed and borrowed elements from that. (Particularly when he is mad and impatient >:| ) John thought it was ok. Before lunch, he asked us if we had an questions - I was the only one, and asked how to avoid loosing one's voice and causing the throat pain. From what John said, that instance is down from self-cause - it's entirely avoidable from proper use of bringing the voice out from the stomach, not the throat.

Lunch break. Was going to head back to the house, but eh. Bought a drink and waited outside of G01 for 1pm. Chinese student was just outside, and because I kept glancing at her as I strolled by (waiting for her to finish on the phone, so I could just sit down :<) I eventually chatted with her. She's doing Master Arts in Animation, that's pretty impressive. Apparently she likes to do animation with normal pencil, but she likes to also paint with water-colour pencils (and has done so for 10 whole years). Talking to felt kind of awkward because like Su, she felt introverted and shy. Boring types who just spend their entire time doing work, I always find awkward to make a comfortable conversation with, to be honest. This girl was nice though, and she seems to know another one in my class who is from the Philippines.

The student back in the morning class, who's English is his second language, sat with me and openly chatted away to me. His name is James, and he's from China also, Hong Kong. He must of lived in England for a while though, having done his GCSE's here. From what we talked about, he had to contend with typical bullying from chavs during his GCSEs. Jame's English pronunciation and dialect is top-notch, though. He wants to explore voice acting further, and supposedly practices various accents from American to Scottish - if he can pull those off with believability, good on him. He talked about anime and Japan, and how it influenced him. (In particular the 'cute' side of anime)

1:00 and in we went, people...already in there. I forgot that I am a stupid idiot and didn't bring paper for the studio. Er, that is, I would say that - I thought the second session was meant to involve sound-recording?  Apparently not, but I'm sure I did not mis-read the time table. Whatever, had to run back and grab the paper as now it was just back to general animation like last week. Cracked on with my, uh, gay prance. Had some colour pencils to help differentiate the frames a little better, but ultimately needed separate pieces of paper over the light box to smoothen things up.

Whilst working on it, James chatted to me further. He loves trains, as his sketchbook made notice of (from his project to advertised E4 last year in Foundation) and other vehicles. Looked at his diary strips, and he's actually drawn SCENES into them - something I simply couldn't push myself to do. The 'cute' anime character he draws himself as showed through, whilst drawing other people in his life Western style. Intriguing. He told me how he avoids showing various influences on his art work to his parents - anime in particular, as they will scold him for it. I've heard before, both word of mouth and media, about Chinese parents having a rather domineering factor to the offspring's choices but I wasn't sure on it until now. Some nice stuff he has going on, though. James didn't finish his walk cycle yet, instead opting to start on the get-off-chair-walk-to-door animation. He has to do a stroppy teenage character, and bases it off of chavs who trolled him in High School.

Most of my time today was spent on planning out the frames first, so not a whole lot could resultantly be squeezed in for the actual key-frames. At about 3:00, some of the others from group 2b popped in. Su was one of them, seeing Rob to enquire about something. I wanted to say 'Hi' but two other girls were already squealing in joy over Su's appearance, didn't really want to overbear her. When she sat down, though, I wanted to get in a quick hi. She saw my messages on Facebook, just didn't respond to them. :(
(I asked her a question in Japanese kanji but she didn't understand. Daw.) Told her that I'd be enjoy cooking something Japanese for her sometime. Left her alone, but suddenly I was being yanked down by grief right out of no where. Kind of fed up with this weird mood swinging going on.

AH! Another familiar face popped up in G01, someone I hoped to see again. It was Jane, who gave me a tour around UCA last year during my college course. It was great to see her again, despite her not remembering my name or face. (I attempted to prompt her memory by reminding her I was the "sassy one".) She asked what the hell was up with my walk, and gave me a tip on reducing time and cutting corners with it. She talked with me some more, I tried to pay attention to her, but I was really kind of anxious to try and chat with Su (mentioned above) before she'd disappear earlier.

Just before leaving, Matt appeared. I could remember him instantly from last week Wednesday! Cool to see him again. Apparently, his group not only were the ones that reached 48 - but HE was the one that did it. Envy struck me like, I dunno. An Envy-truck? G01-Sophie was there, too, working away on her designs. Mentioned to her that I met a girl on her course - Melissa, I think, in the clothing shop on Saturday. G01-Sophie didn't quite know what to do yet for her next animation. Hang in there! I still believe you to have some cracking ideas floating around.

As I was packing up to go home - whoops! Forgot, cleared away the light-box equipment to, as Rob reminded us to do. G01 Sophie guided me here and there on what to pack away. Anyhow, packing up, I heard Housemate Sophie called me outside as she passed by. Two Sophies within close vicinity, lmao whaaaaooo there.


Got home and found a slip in the post box. Ah-hah! My Cooks stuff has arrived. It was closed, though, and wouldn't open again 'till 5pm. Annoying, I was about deciding to have a stir fry from Waitrose tonight, and I didn't eat anything since toast at 8am. Went up stairs and rested on my bed for an hour, both coat and shoes still on. I felt knackered.

Arose, and raced down to the Porters Lodge for my box o' goodies. Carried the huge-ass package back up the kitchen, and at one point believed I'd dropped my passport somewhere. (Note to Family: No, I didn't.) Opening it up, lots of nice ready meals! Placed some other stuff within my freezer compartment that belonged to other housemates elsewhere, so just enough room was made. I could see the housemates arriving outside, so I hurried up the process in a weird paranoid manner.

Sophie was the first, and evidentially, and only one to see my big Cook food box. Avidly, she asked me what was inside. Her response was surprised (durr) upon hearing it being a huge amount of ready meals.
Carried the box down to the recycling banks, unfortunately not that less heavier even when empty of the meals due to the ice packaging. My crap attempts at trampling the box, hmm.

Cooking the Chicken Jalfrezzi tonight, all of us decided to use the kitchen at the same (eg. wrong) time. I must of pissed Rory off a couple of times, in particular because I was using the only other oven to cook a meal with 22 minutes left on the clock. Yannis was whimsically playing away on Pokemon Red and Zelda. Nostalgic music to my ears! Sophie researched lady birds because she was 'curious' She has apparently 10 or so in her room, and from what her research gathers, they are finding cool areas to hibernate in. She wants to make a DIY hotel for the buggers. :o

Whilst I was writing this blog (it's taken about an hour and a HALF) people were outside playing drunken karaoke. If it wasn't actually drunk and just a result of bad singing, errr.  I couldn't really concentrate when YMCA was banging away, and for god sake people, STOP doing I'm Walking on Sunshine. Please.