Advent #24 Merry Christmas!

Well, this is the last drawing for this Advent challenge.  The last few ones have been more Christmas themed, and also more traditionally drawn, with no editing in any image software.  I think I have learned alot from doing this little challenge, both in terms of trying to come up with ideas, learning new techniques in terms of coloring and design, as well as trying to keep a steady pace up (I believe I have only missed two days in the whole challenge).

I hope people have enjoyed seeing this stream of consciousness from an animation student, and look forward to more updates in the future.

And a Merry Christmas to all!  And a Happy New Year!

Advent #23 Season's Greetings

Another late one.  Its a busy time of year.  Some time later tonight the 24th Advent illustration will be uploaded.

Its a lovely Christmas day, with snow falling down gingerly across the land and the smell of Christmas ham filling our home.  It will be a holiday to remember for sure!

Advent #22 Tidings of Joy

Another traditionally drawn piece.  The next two will also be of this variety, as I will not be in possession of any coloring software.

Just a few more days until Christmas!

Advent #21 Elf Help

And here is today's advent.  Two in one day, and it shows in this picture, though I think the face is kind of fun looking.

Just a few more days, then its CHRISTMAS!

Advent #20 Christmas Balls

Well, it was bound to happen, but the readers of this blog must have noticed the lack of an Advent illustration yesterday.  Well, in part forgetting, part lacking proper utilities, I simply did not complete one.  So here is what should have been yesterday.

In a little while there will be another post up with today's drawing.

Merry Christmas!

Advent #19 Leaving for Work

This piece here was made on my best friend's computer, who generously lent me his iMac in order to keep to my challenge.  You should check out his blog too, its pretty good in terms of Film Theory and analysis.

Merry Christmas!

Advent #18 Icecream

Not quite sure what this is supposed to be.  Was doodling on a separate sheet of paper and came across a design looking vaguely like this.  I am currently without Photoshop, so this is all drawn by hand, and I don't have any colours to use, in fact, even if I did, without Photoshop to colour correct them it wouldn't look all that great anyways.

So I leave you with this...thing enjoying its ice cream.

Merry Christmas!

Advent #17 Cat and Mouse

This one I actually enjoyed doing.  After some brain storm doodling I came up with this classic relationship, and then the composition came up by itself.  Didn't play around so much with the values this time, opting more for block colours.

Merry Christmas once again.  We will see tomorrow whether there will be another drawing.  There are solutions, but I'm not certain whether they will be properly implemented.  Of to Germany in the morning, have a good one you all!

Advent #16 Hug

Not too proud of this one.  Is it obvious that I don't know how to use the pen tool in Photoshop?  Guess its tutorial time.

Not sure how I am going to manage the drawings from the 18th onwards, since I will be without either my personal or school computer.  I suppose 17 out of 24 could be manageable.

Advent #15 Angel

Here's today's, a happy nose and ear less angel flying through the clouds.

We are continuing with story, doing exercises and trying to unlock our minds into discovering what exactly IS a story, and whats a GOOD story, and whats good storyTELLING.

Our teacher has given us interesting ways of perceiving stories, and I hope for it to stick with me.

Advent #14 Kraken

We are working on stories this week, and today we did some exercises in writing stories.  Heres one I wrote, with the rules that I had to include in some way:

1. A lock of hair
2. A cup of water
3. A little stone
4. Dry leaves

I stood by the city lake on a cold, dry autumn afternoon as the tears that swelled from my eyes finally halted, leaving me with a scarlet eye liner and sniveling nose.  In my gloved hands I hold pieces of blonde hair, golden strands of my scalp that defined me, long wavy locks of hair.  I clench my fist before letting the strands float down the sandbank,  buoyant in the water.

I take a deep breathand pull my hood back, revealing my bald head, my shame, my regret, and yet, my current self.  In an attempt to lose my frustration I select a stone of the small variety and send the primitive projectile flying out to the lake with a satisfying splash.

Panting heavily with a lighter heart I walk across the leaf covered ground towards the hospital, where I take a drink of water from a cup before returning to the chemotherapy section of the hospital, a relief to all the doctors who have been frantic about my now temporary disappearance.

An interesting day to be sure, and can't wait to learn more.

Advent #13 Lucia

Glad Lucia!

Well, today was Sankta Lucia, the day where said maiden walks around Sweden with candles in her hair and gives cookies and coffee to everyone.  Lovely holiday.

This week we also started with Story, and I'm paired up with a CG artist in order to together create a story that we can animate and work on together throughout the year.

Advent #12 No No DiNo

Not particularly fond of this one, but it was done late and I had a lack of ideas.  I will definitely do better for the rest of the month.

Advent #11 Clean Up

Here is today's advent picture, this time related to what I am working with, at least in its subject.  Its supposed to be a kiddified me literally cleaning up a drawing.  I thought it was amusing anyways.

And below is the fruit of my labors this week.  Clean Up animation is very tricky, since you have to 'fix' every drawing that the animator has made, fine tuning proportions or simply making sure that he has all the features that the character should have.

In the end I have some problems with keeping track of the volume of the character, since his limbs and body tends to shrink and grow per drawing.  But I would love to try this again, because I believe it will help me be a better animator.


Clean Up Assignment from Humphrey Erm on Vimeo.

Advent #10 Coop

A bit late today, but thanks to my time traveling skills this image will be posted in the past!

This one didn't turn out as well as I wanted, since I had to stay up late to make it and thus my judgment wasn't at its best.  In fact, there was supposed to be a rooster as well, but got too tired to add him in.  Easier to clone the chickens.

The chickens definitely needed some kind of outline of sorts over them to differentiate them from one another so we can see them as separate masses.  Oh well, live and learn.

Clean up was finished this week, and I had so so results.  I'll upload the animation tomorrow at some point so you can see.

Advent #9 Slumber Party

Here's today's image!  I know, its very girly, but I just thought it was really cute, and the color pink was constantly in my mind while coming up with something to draw.

The main design trick I tried here was to not have outlines on the pajamas, so you can't actually see where the sleeves and pantlegs bend.  However, I hope that the posing and color will make the pose clear otherwise.

Alright, over and out, and remember: THINK PINK!

Advent #8 Umbrella

Not too happy with this one, since it was rushed (have to go back to class and clean up some drawings).  Was doodling for quite some time frantically, trying to get an image in my mind, and I suppose that desperation is present in this piece.

Advent #7 Mermaid

Here is today's little gem.  Just a little mermaid making a deposit.  Went a little PowerPuff Girls on her anatomy, thinking it was cute.

In terms of school work right now I am finishing up the key drawings of the animation, having cleaned them up in non reproducible blue and then going over with a HB pencil.

For your consideration, I believe this man explains Clean-up animation best, so you get an idea of what I am doing right now:

Advent #6 Sunset Hills

After having just uploaded the image into the editor here, I noticed a fatal flaw.  If the sun is setting where I am showing it, the darkness should be closer to the viewer.  What I mean is, the hills and trees that are in the foreground, should be the darkest, not the brightest.

Oh well, I enjoy the Super Mario style hills.

Also, this week we are doing clean-up animation of a scene with the character Balto:



Not so used to drawing animals, but its working out pretty well.  The tricky part is drawing the frames as clean as possible.  Nothing rough at all.

Advent #5 Banana

Bananas are awesome and good for you, but this one I think is a little subpar.  The overall color scheme is fine I think for the banana, but the shapes just aren't doing it for me.  Wish I could do better with them, but oh well, got it up in time and its got me in the mood for fruit.

Advent #4 Bath

Today's Advent, and a double post!  I'm on a roll!

Not sure whether I should stick with Christmas themes or not, but I just saw this round shape in bubbles, and I had to make this.  Of all the ones I've made so far I think this one is the most aesthetically pleasing, so I hope I can make even better by the month's end.

Space Truckers

Director Assignment from Humphrey Erm on Vimeo.

This is the result of the last week's assignment.  Due to my director's school policies I am not allowed to show the full animatic/film, but I am allowed to show what I had worked on.  So in this video theres all five scenes that I animated.

The week as a whole was rather enjoyable, not learning anything new in terms of actual animation, but learning tons in terms of communicatoin, organization and hierarchy within a project.  It was an interesting scenario to constantly ask the director whether he approved of your scene, and to take someone elses opinion into consideration, since its the director's vision that you are trying to portray.

The animation itself is purposefully crude.  We had a motto in our group, which was "Consistently Inconsistent".  That means that as long as each and every one of us animates the characters differently in terms of the drawings, it will be consistent and people won't question the characters being off model, since the characters are never on model.  It was also a nice change of pace to draw something so wild compared to all the heavily constructed characters we have already done.

I'll upload today's advent later today.

Next Week: Clean Up!

Advent #3 Fireplace

Here's today's advent.  Not sure if I should have left the logs alone with the airbrush effect behind them, but otherwise I think I got the warm feeling from this, beyond just the colors.

In other news, today we finished the director animation project.  My group's director was very happy with the results, and I have to say, it was alot of fun to animate it, though it got a little stressful today to finish it up.

However, because of some school policies within the director's place of education, I can't upload the whole film here.  I can however, upload the scenes that I animated, which I will eventually.

Advent #2 Ornament

Phew, had to hurry up with this one to get it out in time, and noticing the clock down at the bottom now, I just missed it!  Oh well, the total number will still equal 24 at the end.

Advent #1 River through Snow

Heres something I want to try this year.  Instead of getting a proper chocolate filled advent calendar, I will make a colored illustration every day until Christmas.

A daunting task, definitely, but I decided to use this challenge in order to try out some stuff I learned from the design week, as well as learn some color theory and usage.

Straight from Kokamo Indiana

Acting Assignment from Humphrey Erm on Vimeo.

 This here is what we have been doing this week.  I am personally very happy with it and think the whole week was a lot of fun.  The assignment was to animate the character Danny conducting an orchestra to a piece of music that we got to choose.  I chose Wagner's Kaiser March simply because it was a little bit more varied as well as a mix between the Verdi and Beethoven choices in terms of intensity.

Some notable problems are volume changes in the animation, having the character and his parts grow and shrink at odd times.  However, the action I think is very well done.

Next week we will have some animation director students arrive, and we will collaborate on a short 25 second scene.

And for your enjoyment, a proper scene featuring Danny :D

Generations

Interaction Assignment from Humphrey Erm on Vimeo.

This was my take on the interaction assignment we had last week.  Alot of fun, and a good breather from the incredibly tough Madame Medusa from before.  We had a choice between two characters to interact with Hogarth (The Iron Giant): either the Sultan from Aladdin, or Kala, Tarzan's ape mother.  I chose the Sultan, since his entire body was just composed of circles, and needed someone easy to animate.

My approach to this was to have the two have the relationship of the fun grandfather and energetic grandson.  Hogarth loves his grandfather very much, and just slams into him.  While it is routine, the Sultan is always taken by surprise when the young boy rushes into him, though he never holds it against his grandson and gently hugs him back.

Here's a hint at what we will be doing this week:

Her mother wasn't nearly as picky

This week we are animating a hug, an assignment that is due Monday morning.  Its an exercise in acting and subtle animation, trying to portray deep emotion that can be read clearly from the drawings.

 We could choose between two characters for Hogarth to hug: the Sultan from Aladdin, or Kala from Tarzan (Tarzan's gorilla mother).  I chose the Sultan, because after the last animation with Madame Medusa, I was in the mood for something much easier to draw.

The Sultan is a very nice character, I love drawing him.  He's composed primarily out of circles and is a joy to draw due to that simplicity.  Hogarth is more difficult, but not much.  He has a real boy's proportions (except for those ears) and thus is hard to move convincingly, but his overall design works well.

Never Again!

Medusa Progression Reel from Humphrey Erm on Vimeo.

I sincerely regret picking Medusa as the character to animate and inbetween.  A character such as her is way to complicated for my inexperienced hands.  No wonder it was Milt Kahl's crowning achievement, no one but him could animate her properly.

Either way, the final result turned out ok, after I decided to stop worrying if she was on model or not and focus on actually animating her.

Now I'm just worried about the clean up week, since apparently we have to clean up this scene that we worked on...

Between the two of us

Well, the two weeks of inbetweening is over now, and it was qute an experience.  After having drawn everything into the Aisling clip now, I have gotten a further understanding on animation.  No wonder inbetweeners would often become animators.  I learned alot from inbetweening this scene.


Aisling Inbetweens from Humphrey Erm on Vimeo.

And below I have a collection of all the 23 drawings I drew to complete this assignment.  She was much easier to draw than Madame Medusa, though her stylistic design did cause some confusion for me.

This is my forest

This week we are learning how to do inbetweens.  The scene in question is one of Aisling, a character from the movie The Secret of Kells.  She's a very cute character but with very subtle curves and angles to her shapes that makes her at times tricky to draw.

First studies



Second Studies



First attempts at drawing without reference





Second attempts at drawing without reference



 The scene in question is here below, at 0:33 to 0:37, ending with her roaring.

Basic Animation Show Reel

Animation Basics Showreel from Humphrey Erm on Vimeo.

This is a compilation of all the works I have done during the three weeks of animation basics at school.  I was surprised to find out that the essence of animation didn't lie in the complexity of the character moving, but rather about spacing and timing.  Obvious now, but for a guy who mostly likes to draw, and not having done a proper animation (dabbled with Flash a lot previously)I was genuinely amazed at how simple objects like balls could be given so much life just with the consideration of how far apart each drawing is spaced, and how long each drawing is seen.