Christmas Countdown calendar adventimations

You can still enjoy this calendar every Christmas.

In 2014 I was given the chance to animate a collection of cartoons created by Handsworth comics legend Hunt Emerson. He had been enjoying the annual calendar and was interested in the idea of working on one.

Hunt Emerson is an internationally acclaimed illustrator and has drawn cartoons and comic strips since the early 1970s. He has published around 30 comic books and albums, mainly with Knockabout Comics (London). His work has been seen in countless magazines, ranging from Radio Times to Fortean Times; from the Wall Street Journal to The Beano AND he has wide experience in hosting cartoon and comics workshops. His website is at www.largecow.com

Follow this link to Hunt's Countdown calendar and find out what's happened to the bell

The whole process of building Hunt's ideas into the windows, using his high quality cartoon illustrations and making all the 'adventimations' (as he called them) work as animated gifs for his approval, was a treat. I concentrated on the one version of the calendar that would work on all platforms, and had to have it ready well ahead of December - no more moving files around manually at midnight.

All the work was for fun and fund-raising, and that year the calendar raised nearly £300 for cancer research. You can still access Hunt's Christmas Countdown at the link above.

On the technical side, I used the Drupal scheduler module to time the appearance of the different pages from day to day throughout December that year. After Christmas I redirected the pages into a permanent table to preserve the work so you can now enjoy this everlasting advent calendar every year.