Bouncing Balls

While doing a clean sweep of the apartment, I dicovered some old folders filled with animation paper of my very first animation assignments I had done in college, then realised it was exactly 9 years ago I had done these. I remembered how me and 17 other students were the first to go through this Digital Animation course so by the time we started in Jan. 1997 we were still missing a lot of equipment that had yet to be shipped over to the college, so we went a few months without any pencil test system, no camera or scanner to film our assignments, just lots of flipping.

At one point, Peter (our classical animation teacher), booked the class a bus to travel an hour south to Halifax to film our bouncing ball assignments so that it could get processed in Toronto and eventually find its way back to the college where we could watch them on VHS.

It was fun experience, we went to the Atlantic Film Coop in a small dark room with hot lamps and an 8mm film camera to shoot our paper work. This is where we met Helen Hill. She was a delightful and sweet woman who helped 18 students all film their 2-3 buncing ball assignments, it was a long day, but worth the wait.

I was shocked to hear of her tragic death earlier this week. At only 36 years of age she was one of the nicest people you would ever meet.

Shown above, I took the liberty to scan in that same animation test, the first thing most animators in training learn to do, "the bouncing ball". Below is the CBC online news clip of the incident.

Filmmaker's slaying shocks Halifax community

Members of the filmmaking community in Halifax are mourning Helen Hill, an animator and social activist who was shot to death in New Orleans on Thursday.

On January 4th, Helen Hill, 36, was killed and her husband, Dr. Paul Gailiunas, was injured in the attack in their Louisiana home early Thursday morning. It was the city's sixth fatal shooting in 24 hours.

Police said officers found Gailiunas, 35, kneeling at the front door clutching the couple's two-year-old son in his arms. The boy wasn't hurt.

Walter Forsyth, executive director of the Atlantic Filmmakers Co-operative, said his friend Hill will be remembered for much more than the work she produced.

"She's really giving," he said. "She came here to make films and ended up starting Food Not Bombs and just helping people out on the street."

Halifax Food Not Bombs is a non-profit, volunteer run organization dedicated to providing free vegetarian meals to the local community.
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Hill, from South Carolina, moved to Halifax in 1995 and made a name for herself through her animation work, as well as for her social activism.

Gailiunas won a humanitarian award from Dalhousie University when he graduated from medical school and helped set up the first charity foot clinic in Halifax.

Hill and Gailiunas left Halifax five years ago to live in New Orleans, the city where they first met.

New Orleans police don't have any suspects, nor any possible motives for the shootings.

But one neighbour said it was just like Hill and Gailiunas to open their door to someone in the wee hours thinking the person on the other side needed help.