Characters Interacting - Animation Practice

Andy, in answer to your question: Yes, planning helps to take the pressure off the brain to let you dissect the whole project into smaller bite size pieces.

This new exercise was very interesting to do, but alot more difficult than the others, in having to work with action in more than one area at the same time. Pacing one characters movements against the other is hard to do. The most difficult thing is whilst working on one characters action thinking of what to do with the other characters movement. Having to work out the timing for one character for the anticipation whilst having to time the other characters movement to interact with it, whose actions are to react to the first characters actions. Complicated! And this is just dealing with square and rectangle figures. I felt intimidated by having only done about 20 frames whilst someone else had done 90 frames, talk about feeling slow, I know it's not a race but still.
One thing I did do better this time was take more time to think through the plan, before starting. I felt my storyboard helped me to plan the scene and meant that I could concerntrate more on the opening section of the scene. Also I think it is very important to only think about the small section you are working on and to try not to think about the whole scene, as that is just to big, and it is too easy to lose concerntration.
It helps to look at small sections in Stop Motion Pro at a time rather than doing all the frames at once and finishing the scene. Then you can make alterations as you go rather than finding out that some section doesn't work, by which time characters may not be in the right place to redeem the scene for the following action.
Finally, at this point in time it seems impossible to think about complicated scenes, complex character drawings and what is happening in the background, at the same time. Hopefully this fear will be overcome, miracuously, in the future.