Please help moving forward on project.

JhGreene

Hello! 
My name is Jhalyn and I'm an animator from Indianapolis. I'm working on this kick and I've noticed a lot of slow moving parts between main key poses in the reference footage. How should I go about creating those slow movements and moving forward with this project? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you very much.

https://syncsketch.com/sketch/163750#200378

AnthonyAnimation

Welcome! Interesting study. I may suggest uploading a separate file without the reference, it's good to see it for sure, but it's a bit distracting. Especially that white flash.  

As for the animation- With really fast moves it's a good idea to have more poses in blocking. The eye needs more information and having few keys in stepped mode makes it seem like a jumbled mess. Take a look at f16-21 for example. There is a key on every frame, but body parts are flying everywhere. There doesn't seem to be much continuity, the eye needs something to follow.

Keep in mind what you're referencing is 2d and has some smear frames which makes the fast moves slightly easier to follow. You could also be animating at a different frame rate.

Ichi

The reference looks quite bad to me, especially losing all twisting momentum after the kick - any particular reason why you're using that ref?

AGoodFella

Honestly, I would maybe avoid using that ref. I have no idea what is happening in the ref. 

LloydHallam

FLCL has some absolutely phenomenal animation. So I can see why you would want to use it as reference. Unfortunately Gainax's 2D animation is exceptionally difficult, if not pretty much impossible to replicate in 3D (believe me, I've tried).

A 1620 degree spinning kick doesn't really work in 3D.

JhGreene

@Ichi I was just doing timing studies and thought I might try my hand at converting 2D to 3D animation. But when I finished blocking it, I felt like it wouldn't work. I wanted some more eyes on it.
@LloydHallam yea...I abandoned it and moved to a different animation. Thanks for you reply! 

LloydHallam

Use clips of Taekwondo demonstrations, parkour, gymnastics and figure skating if you want to practice rotations and spins. Taekwondo is a great reference for flashy kicks like these, and since they're real martial artists, you'll be able to get a good sense of timing and weight. Afterwards, use FLCL as a reference for what you need to give it that anime style. Combining references is a great way to stylise your animations. Good luck!

Hito

even though this isn't good reference material, but it's not bad idea to analyze it and study it, and really figure out what you're seeing and how you're perceiving it

the holds suggest the direction of the spin and give you enough time to understand what you're seeing, absolutely necessary otherwise the action would be incomprehensible as the character spins 4.5 revolutions in less than 15 frames. If you pull about 5 frames: one from the start, each of the 3 holds, and one from the follow through, the action reads as single spinning kick. But if you drop the 3 holds, and play the kick as if in real time, it'd be jibberish. The action also relies heavily on the white flash, and probably wouldn't work without it. It totally dominates your visual memory for the entire second and drowns out everything else you saw in the prior 30 frames. You perceive it as some chaotic movement, then a BIG BAM, and you are riveted. Like someone shouts total gibberish then ends with "FUCK!" you don't understand what they said, but they got your attention.

Also worth noting FLCL is fairly old, and if it was today, I expect the frames would have much more smear/blur effect.

It might worth revisiting in the future.

JhGreene

@Hito I tried hard to make this animation work and what you said about it being gibberish made complete sense. Even with different spacing and inbetween poses, it doesn't work.  

Also, I saw your post about your studies with Nier Automata and it's great. How did you go about getting decent reference from that game?

JhGreene

@LloydHallam I definitely went that route!

Hito

@JhGreene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAU_8GEgSwI

check the ref/inspiration sticky, lotta good stuff there too.

JhGreene

@Hito THank ya thank ya!