The Connector
The Connector

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by Darissa Townes

For the three years that I’ve been going to SCAD, the Digital Media Center always seemed to be a place solely to work. Whether that work was spent hunched over a light table hand-drawing animation, typing up a script for screenwriting or spending another three hours at a Cintiq monitor, relaxation was something that I felt couldn’t exist at the DMC.

But every other Friday afternoon the DMC offers a program to ease the nerves of the students called Professor Coffee Time. For just a few hours, the lobby of the DMC’s third floor has a table of snacks, coffee and other hot beverages for the students and professors to enjoy before heading back to work. When midterms and finals are in full-swing, the Coffee Times get even better when SCAD’s therapy dog, Milos, is brought in along with his owner, Taffey Cunnien, the head of SCAD Atlanta’s counseling department.

Animation professor Becky Searles has been running Coffee Time for quite a while and told me how she came about establishing the event. “Taffey and I have been on the same college council — the Collaborative Learning Council — for a number of years. Our goal is to look at all kinds of collaborative learning, both in and outside of the classroom. Finding ways to connect counseling services with faculty and students naturally came up as a topic.”

The decision to include Milos, among other therapy dogs, came up not long after the Coffee Times were started. Professor Searles continues, “When I found out that SCAD had a therapy dog — there was a different one before Milos — I thought that bringing a counselor and the dog to the DMC could be such a great way to introduce the counseling staff to students and have a live animal model, since life drawing is so central to the animation field!”

Animation majors of various years often come to the Coffee Times to make a few sketches of Milos. One of the most crucial types of life drawing is gesture drawing, which require artists to create a clearly-drawn subject with few, quick strokes. With a constantly-moving target like Milos, the students have a perfect model to draw from.

Arash Salehe, a graduate student in animation, has been taking in a lot during his first quarter at SCAD. He told me that whenever he would go to the zoo, the animals would be in cages, physically barring him from any interaction. Professor Becky told him about the Coffee Time and he’s made himself at home with his sketches of Milos.

But besides drawing Milos, the students also get a chance to network with one another and take a break from work.

“It’s basically what every artist needs,” says third-year animation major, Marc Flowers. “A breakaway. You can actually see that the people that come aren’t so different. You’re all trying to do the same great thing.”

Animation professor Gregg Azzopardi adds, “I like the informal setting. It’s not set around an assignment or class. Milos is great to have, too. Having an animal to pet is such a great stress reliever.”

Carmen Taylor, the assistant Dean for the School of Digital Media, appreciates the event reconnecting students at different stages in their academic careers. She also adds that the Coffee Times are helpful to the faculty as well, giving them a chance to reach out to one another for their own projects.

To me, I always look forward to the Professor Coffee Times. I love to eat the snacks and sip on some hot chocolate before pulling out my sketchpad to draw Milos. The events are typically two hours long and while plenty of students stop by for a few minutes, I tend to stay the whole session. But whether we stay for two minutes or two hours, as Digital Media students, we can’t expect to get all of our inspiration sitting in front of a computer. Sometimes coffee in a mug and sketches of a pug can give us the ideas that we need.