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.