Final Exam

This is my final exam of the first year of Character Animation.  This will be the last piece of animation I do with TV Paint as an assignment until the Bachelor project, though that's not guaranteed either.

Either way, looking back at all the posts and such, I have to say I'm genuinely satisfied with my results, and can't wait for the summer to be over so I can take a crack at 3D animation!

Escape Animation

Well, here it is, after quite a few months working on this the project has finally come to a close.  If you wish to see some context to this scene, I suggest you take a look at this previous post, which includes the entire storyboard from where this is just five seconds from.

I animated in TV Paint once I got a hold of the layout for the background, while my partner composited the background in Maya and made sure to make the appearance 2D despite being made in 3D space.  I think she succeeded well.  Check out her achievements on her blog.

Once the animation was done I took each frame and placed it in Photshop, where I rendered each image.  It was tough work, but once I got more and more done, each successive frame was easier to make since I could reuse layers and assets.

Frankly I'm quite pleased with this assignment.

Dance Assignment

Well, here's two weeks of hard work.  I used the character from my Escape Project to animate, a decision I both regret and am glad I did.  I regret it because even though it is my own character that I designed, I still don't know fully how he works, thus having a lot of trouble making him move.

However, because of that I have now had two weeks practice with him, thus making me well prepared for next week's assignment, which involves animating the Escape Project.

Animation Jam

Here are the fruits of our labor for the last two weeks.  We have been toiling away at this piece of finished film til the very late hours of the night, and wouldn't you know that the result is amazing!

For this project I was in I was joined by

• Henrique Heraclio
• Helena Smith
• Mads Bjerregaard

 who were all amazing in their own right, so putting all our skills together we managed an amazing film.

In order to prevent us from doing any prior planning for this film, each group received some random words or phrases as well as a style combination.  Ours were

1. Adoration
2. The Beast Within
3. John Kricfalusi
4. Mike Judge

It was incredible fun designing, animating, editing this film, and we all shared tasks to the best of our abilities, each having a moment to shine.

Here it is below:



It was incredibly fun yet stressful to work on this, but the end result is nothing short of amazing.

For an extra tidbit, here is the original animatic that I made, drawings and all that was the basis for the short.

Dialog Acting

This dialog animation was alot of fun.  Before I thought that dialog limited you as an animator, since you had to animate to a preexisting rhythm.  However, just like with the conducting scene, it was actually more liberating than confining.  Now I just had to come up with ways to allow my animation to enhance what was being said.  We were also given the luxury of coming up with whatever story we wanted that made sense in our context.

In mine, I decided to have it that the cat caught the bird, and then the bird tries to get on the cat's sentimental side in order to save his own skin.

Special mention to our teacher for these two weeks, who was absolutely amazing!  Don't think I could have worked this well if it wasn't for him.

Next week, LAYOUT!

Non Dialog Acting

Non Dialog Acting Exercise from Humphrey Erm on Vimeo.

Here is the exercise we did last week, non dialog acting featuring one of three characters.  I have chosen Bernard from The Rescuers simply because I felt it was time for a more simplistic character for myself, so I didn't have to bother with all the complexities and focus on the animation.  Not to say he was perfect, considering his annoying muzzle, which was very hard to draw accordingly for each angle.

The scene is supposed to be the character waiting for their blind date, and we got to choose from 3 different attitudes.  Sad, Nervous or Excited.  I hope its clear which one I chose.

TV Paint Intro

TV Paint Bird from Humphrey Erm on Vimeo.

 This was my first experience with TV Paint.  I have previously worked alot in Flash, but this was quite a different situation.  It was like Photoshop with a timeline, giving me lots of varied tools to draw, and really focusing on having the software be for animators, rather than normal people.

So first things first was to animate a bird flying, specifically a crow.  Later on we will composit this animation into After Effects and make a little sequence with it.