9/15/09

Movement: Talked more today about the qualities of movement. Started mixing them with the diagonal scale, we started talking about movement in nature. We did the fire exercise where you imagine yourself as a flame and you burn up a bunch of stuff. At first I was kinda okay with it, but when the fire is supposed to get bigger I sort of ran out of stuff to do. I was sitting there flailing my arms and swaying and trying to remember how fire looks and how it moves and I was pretty happy with what I was doing and I kinda thought, alright, this is it, this is what fire does. No matter the size this is how it looks can I stop now? and I was looking around at everyone and I kinda had a sense that maybe they were like me, they were kind of grasping for stuff to do, and just moving around in what might have been a fiery way, and I thought, should I be doing that? But I didn't just want to make any old slashy flicky movements I wanted to find stuff to do within my pattern, things that were characteristic of fire, not of it's connotations or just words associated with it. But mostly I was kinda self-conscious and I kinda thought, geez we're just a bunch of dorks flailing. So I guess what I'm saying is I still have a hard time suspending my embarassment enough to benefit from some excersizes. But even if I'm alone, imitating fire feels pretty goofy to me though I can see how drawing from nature would be helpful in establishing a set of manerisms for a character.