Ongoing Challenge of Observation | Jill Halliday
One of the challenges of being a creative, more specifically, animator, is that we are forever observing everything around us, both consciously and subconsciously, just in case we’re going to need that information for future use in our work.
As far as I can tell, I, nor any of my colleagues, can go for a nice walk about, or enjoy a relaxing meal in a restaurant without our minds whirring at top speed, collecting the colours, the shadows, the mechanics of movement, and nuances of expressions. And in our world, it’s not only the humans who have facial expressions. We are also collecting all of the other characters that have faces. The flora and fauna, furniture, the HATS, the cars, the moon, etc…..everything around us, everything, all have potential faces and expressions. Right? So, it’s only normal that I am constantly observing, collecting and absorbing absolutely every titbit of information around me every second, all the livelong day. Right?
No. That’s not normal! It’s exhausting!
Because I worked in animation before Google, if I had to know how a crab looked scritching across the floor, I would have to impose upon one of my colleagues to get down on their belly and act like a crab. Over and over until I felt that I had grasped the information that I needed. On any given day, there would be people marching on the spot, dancing, or holding their hand in front of their own face, drawing it, or perhaps just standing up waving their arms in the air like a lunatic.
To any stranger walking in, the studio looked like Crazy Town.
To this day, some of that crazy continues to reveal itself.
This happened. When my Veterinarian asked me which shoulder my dog’s ache was on, I replied, ‘The driver’s side.’ My vet, who is absolutely lovely, and, after a small pause, sweetly replied, ‘wut ?’
You see, when I look at a dog and reply it’s ‘the driver side’ and she’s like ‘wut’ and then, this time in my head, slightly panicked, I say the ‘driver‘s side’ and she’s still looking at me so sweetly while I stop and switch to anatomy to see ‘right to left.’
I finally got there. “It’s on her left side.”