This week's focus is on my current iterations in relation to my studio three project. In particular, the punch animation - in which I wished to translate a great deal of force and weight propelled by the body - with that force being channeled by momentum into the shoulder and arm, therefore registering a great deal of force and impact which the audience may “feel” rather than simply see.

The designs guiding this practice were simply the 12 principles of animation - namely stretch and squash, anticipation, follow through, ease in / out etc. I also looked at the animations of street fighter 3: third strike. (these animations are a masterclass in stylistic dynamic animated method)

The difficulty in these particular iterations came from the aforementioned desire to translate weight and force through the body to the shoulder. The solution in this case was to break the body and pull the rib cage and torso forward, with the shoulder and arm following through a frame later, this combined with smear frames and some key holds gave me the desired visual I envisaged.

After consultation there is more iteration to be done on this work, further follow through after the impact of the punch can help further sell the complete movement, and a twist of the wrist on the last frame(s) could loosen up some of the still stiff movement of the arm.

Problem: Producing a high degree of difficulty action shot taking into account momentum, weight and fluidity.

Assumptions:

• Too many frames?

• Movement is too convoluted? May need to simplify.

• Not adjusting frames for speed of action (ease out / inI )

• May need to experiment more with holds.

• Should the character continue moving to the left constantly? How much should their opposite momentum caused by body movement disrupt that?

• How much artistic licence and stylization should contrast with real physics? Where is the happy medium for this?

Examples of iteration/ experimentation

Reflection:

Aim:

To create a sense of synergy between narrative sound, timing and visuals.

Rationale:

The idea behind this shot is that of an important narrative moment. Our main character reveals her formidably and both the body language, camera movement, animation and SOUND (both sfx and music) must reinforce this. It is also important for the sound effects to conform to the thematic of the film, with a heavy emphasis of layering "anime" esque sounds and an appropriate soundtrack.

Method:

In order to achieve this emotional moment of reverence and style, many smaller techniques most work together to create this effect. The music quickly fades in just before we transition our movement shot and I use the percussion to empathise the ascending emotional impact of the moment. Similarly - the air whoosh of the characters arm raise fades into a much louder cocktails of machine and wire noises to translate the "feel" of machinery forming around the arm. The fist clench (which was added to the animation to provide a sense of finality to the movement - in the same way follow thorugh would be used on a punch) the added sound effects at the end of the loop (both the fist clench and the final fight pose) are added to add a sense of completion, i.e the charcter is ready to fight.

Outcome:

I feel the scene is quite effective in providing an emotional response form the audience. Often the sense of anticipation and scale before a fight scene is just as important as the quality of the animated fight scene itself, as we need to feel that these characters are both capable and formidable.

Reflection

Aim : In these examples I was trying to use the animatic to translate the sense of motion through limted sequential art and editing through both timing and camera moves. (camera shake, fast pans etc) My inital spark and intuition for this came from my research of action scenes in animation - both eastern and western. This week in particualr was very inspired by the direction methods in the animatics for the adult swim animated series "Primal"

Method: Some camera use has been synthesised by traditional animation (drawing the images to scale and in time to produce transistions in the same shot (the arm animation being a prime example of this) other examples, such as many attack impact and high energy dialouge scenes have taken advantage of camera scaling and motion blur in after effects. this is a simple and efficient way of mimicking the effect of these scenes without having to result to a more laborious method of potentially animating it frame by frame.

Result: I believe the result is succesfull in translating the sense of speed, style and movement to the animatic, with the timing giving me a vital starting point for basing the key poses and timing of the animation when it comes to future pencil tests.

Discussion: As previously mentioned, the blocked out timing of these simple animatics provided a path for the animation to follow - the goals of the overall project (dynamic animation and camera movement) are prevelant here, and will influence the animation moving forward.