Seth Hamm Productions

**Seth Hamm Productions** is an independent animation studio and film production company solely operated by its namesake, Seth Hamm.

## History

Seth Hamm Productions began in 2013, when Hamm began creating his very first cartoon. He did not complete the cartoon, *The Race*, and went on to create another one (*Harley Carley Becomes Famous*) which was also left incomplete. The company's earliest publicly released video, Betty Boop Credits, was released on the Seth A. Hamm YouTube Channel on September 21, 2013. However, there had been privately released films, both completed and incomplete, released since July 26, 2013. There were also several other YouTube channels created by the company that were not listed under the company name. The company was first credited as a production company in the ending credits of one of its productions in *Growing Old*, a 4-minute animated short that was released on October 23, 2014.

The company was founded by Seth Hamm. The production company only privately released live action videos (such as *Caleb & Seth,* *Hamm Bros. Weather,* and *Stop Motion*) and publicly released several YouTube videos until February 24, 2017, when the first episode of *Vernal & Juanita* was released to the public. The cartoon was originally a school project and eventually was uploaded to YouTube at school by the permission of a teacher. As of March 12, 2021, 119 total films have been created by Seth Hamm Productions. Several films have been lost over the years. There were even some episodes of TV series that were planned or even in production at one time that were never completed. The production company has not produced a new, original cartoon since August 2019. There was an episode in production in 2020, however the computer used to create animation broke down and the episode was again put on hiatus for a second time.

## Production Style

As of 2019, when cartoons are in the pre-planning stage, there are never any storyboards created. However, on occasion, model sheets are created for characters. However, the only model sheets ever made were for Harley Carley, Vernal Smith, Mrs. Finkleheimer, Dr. Kehr, Commissioner, The Widow, Fitem, Bitem, and Smitem. Before his cartoons are in production, Seth first develops the plotline and the name of the episode. Then, he creates the script and records all voiceovers for the episode. After that, the title cards, animation, and end credits are created. The main theme of the episode is usually recycled instead of being recreated and the music used in production were either provided to him by the software he uses to create the animation, Wondershare Filmora, are music he recorded himself, music performed by members of his family or acquaintances, or even music provided to him by another person. He actually uses a mouse and creates "paintings" on a default Microsoft software called *Paint* for every frame of the cartoon. As a result, his cartoons contains limited animation. He uses circles a lot in character designs and sometimes uses half circles or even multiple circles on most characters. He does, however, design some of his characters by hand. Harley, Billy, Jessie, Dolly, Buster, Bubbles, Aloysius, Lena, Andy, Addison, Vernal, Tubbina McWonks, and Emmy were all originally drawn by hand. Some of these characters greatly changed design during their early stages of development. For example, Lena originally had a large bald spot on the top of her head. Some of these characters even had a different name. These names have not been disclosed but their are some accidental names used instead of the proper names of characters in cartoons. Especially in earlier ones. Every other character not mentioned as being originally drawn by hand were created on the computer.

Backgrounds are created only after the characters are drawn on Microsoft Paint, and usually are also simple or even contain a single solid color. Seth uses Wondershare Filmora to create these animation effects. In *Growing Old* and some unreleased cartoons, however, he used Movie Maker and recorded audio with Windows Movie Maker 2.6. Up until early 2018, most audio was recorded with an Apple iPad 9. In mid-2018, audio began being recorded using Audacity and a headset with a microphone. On one occasion, audio was recorded using an Alcatel One-Touch Pixi Avion cellphone.

The first cartoon to enter production by the company had bad animation quality and all the characters were drawn by a touch pad that was not on a computer instead of a mouse. This resulted in squiggly and stray lines. Also, some things were not colored by accident. This was the same case for *Harley Carley Becomes Famous*, *The Blue Meanies*, *Growing Old*, *Math Land*, *Pet Rock*, *As Old as the Hills*, and *Breakfast*. The only cartoon released publicly that contained this issue was Growing Old in 2014. It wasn't until the remake of the 2013 unreleased cartoon, Harley Carley Becomes Famous, that animation was not drawn by hand on a laptop.

Some errors still exist in present cartoons but became less common after November 2016. In the *Harley Carley & Her Friends* episode, Harley Carley Becomes Famous, the audio is quieter in the beginning and can hardly be heard depending on volume levels, then changed to a louder volume. In another episode of the same series, some characters voice recordings skipped and were cut off in the middle of sentences, one even trailed into another character's mouth.

The quality of the animation is still limited to just mouth movements, simple walk cycles, and occasional hand gestures. The colors are still pretty bright and the animations are still not as smooth.

## List of Seth Hamm Productions Staff

See: List of the Seth Hamm Productions Staff

## List of Productions

See: List of Films Produced by Seth Hamm Productions

As of March 30, 2021, 119 films have been produced by Seth Hamm Productions, most of which were either privately released, went missing or were left unfinished. There were several unfinished animated films produced by Seth Hamm Productions including *Harley Carley Becomes Famous*, *The Race*, *The Blue Meanies*,*Cookie Monster Doesn't Like Cookies*, *Harley Carley's Christmas*, *Math Land*, *I Hate Mondays*, *Marriage is a Peculiar Thing*, *As Old as the Hills*, *Witching Hour*, and *Back to School*. The lines from the script of Marriage is a Peculiar Thing were recorded in 2017 as well as a few seconds of animation. However, production was put on hiatus until further notice soon after. Scripts or plotlines have been written for Aloysius the Cop, an episode of *Aloysius*; Vernal's Nephew and Vernal Goes Back to School, episodes of *Vernal & Juanita*; The Secret, an episode of *The Adventures of the Hamm Bros.*; and *A Look Back on Seth Hamm Productions* in 2019. Most of these films were planned to be produced between 2019 and 2020, however, due to a computer crash in May 2020, the episodes have yet to be completed. As of March 30, 2021, lines from the script have been recorded and about a third of the animation had been completed for The Secret. Scripts were not yet written for Vernal's Nephew, Vernal Goes Back to School and A Look Back on Seth Hamm Productions.

## Advertising

In June 2017, Seth Hamm Productions created a FaceBook page. A Twitter account was also created earlier that year in order to boost views. There was another FaceBook created in 2013 when Seth had an intention to create a Harley Carley puppet series. Both FaceBook pages and the Twitter page were removed in January 2021 when Seth deleted his FaceBook account.

Seth A. Hamm YouTube Channel had an advertisement played before videos that recommended ones uploaded by the channel. None of the other channels had this done, and the channel with the cartoons aren't able to get that done until it reaches a total of over 1,000 views.

## Feedback

So far, the company's videos only have just over 20,000 views, a combined total of 29 subscribers, 13 likes and 15 followers on FaceBook and 5 followers on Twitter. None of the company's productions have been rated on iMDB. Despite this, the cartoons produced by this company is pretty well liked by family, friends, school staff and former classmates and even includes the vocal talent of teachers and former classmates.