One From The Past: Master Ham-Ham!

I was going through some old art and teaching supplies that have been sitting in my basement the other night. Along with my easels and giant clipboards, I found two pads of 18" x 24" newsprint (in varying stages of aging) that had been sitting in a giant portfolio carry bag. One was barely used at all and I decided to keep it as the paper still looked okay. The other pad, however, looked mighty weary from battle... and it still had some drawings in it!

Laying on top of the pad was the drawing of Master Ham-Ham! 

I barely remember doing it till I thought about it. It's been a long time since I taught a class. Master Ham-Ham has been sitting for quite a while, but he still looks happy!

If I liked any drawings I did during a class, I would gently tear them out of the pad and place them at the front of the art pad to save them (if I didn't give them to students who requested them, which is what happened most of the time). It had to be from 15 years ago when I taught a class at the Delaware College of Art & Design, which is sadly no longer open.

When I uncovered Master Ham-Ham after all this time, I immediately felt his presence! He's loaded with appeal! Strong lush ink lines that make him pop! I still like him!

I decided to post this as I got some great response from people I showed him to, and to explain where he came from.

____________________________________ 

I always thought it was much easier to learn how to do animation character or prop turnarounds based on looking at an actual three-dimensional object or toy. You subconsciously pick up things like construction theory, shape, and form much easier. You can see why decisions were made at a design level because the final design is right in front of you. If you created something out of your head, the front or 3/4 front view would be fine but there would be problems trying to get it to match up when you did the other views. Turnarounds are not easy, and you only get good at doing turnarounds by doing them. 

I would bring a box of small toys into class (or one big toy) and let student draw them. Complex toys, simple toys, etc were all fair game. Which brings us to Master Ham-Ham...

I had a Dancing Kung-Fu Fighting Hamster toy made by Gemmy Toys in 2001. You squeezed his hand and it triggered the toy to start spinning his nunchucks and moving while it played the 70s song "Kung-Fu Fighting". It was a cute novelty toy.

 

Master Ham-Ham came from pushing students to move away from the realistic approach we had taken in the first drawings and to then do a more simplified redesign, all while retaining his character and look. Appeal is always key. 

After the students did their versions, I would then do my own version so they could watch me. I used gray magic markers to simulate pencils and then a black magic marker to finalize and ink the drawing. This approach still works as I would talk through my thoughts as I did it. My simplified design used the basic character construction that most of the Pokemon characters all had.

The "Warrior of the Round Wheel" tag line came from the fact that I used a round spinning cake stand (or wheel) in class. You place the stand on a stool and let the students sit around the stool in a circle and draw what was on the stand. I'd spin the stand every 15-20 minutes to give them a different view. We worked faster as I wanted them to pick up the main points of doing turns without getting bogged down in details.

For more complex turns, I'd give each student a toy or object and they could hold it in their hand and draw from it close up. It's still a great way to learn!