Japanese Animation exercise
polygon
UPDATE ! Here is the final shot :
I watched a lot of anime stuff recently and as always was blown away by japanese sense of timing, crazy posing and frame modulation mastery.
I decided to take this very representative gif of what i like about anime, animated on the 2's and 3's and remake it in 3D to learn more about what makes japanese animation what it is.
Blocking was relatively easy but helped me learn how to pose for anime and learn more about the genius sense of timing. The tricky part started when splining and try to keep the same feeling as the original while working with interpolation and trying to make it feel a bit less rigid.
It's still WIP so i wouldn't say no to any comments and critics !
Have any of you guys tried this style of exercise before ? I feel like it's not valued enough in the community, but i did learn A LOT ! Glad i went for it.
Replies
Create a quick metro station set just to give it some depth and added a shot.
But I feel like your purple haired character's body doesn't match her facial expression. You've matched your reference perfectly, but in that scene the female character has this jovial, taunting look on her face which matches her body language and the lack of effort she's putting into dodging.
Your character's arms are low and to the side, and while this communicates her confidence in dodging the attacks, her facial expression is one of focus, anger and determination. With that kind of expression, I feel like she'd be putting more effort and moving her arms. Have her left arm out a little more as she rotates to dodge the first attack, have them help her balance when she ducks for the second swing etc.
Of course this is just a small thing and could be changed by simply changing her expression to a taunting smirk. But I think it's important to have the facial expression match the body to communicate what the character is thinking, right now her body and her face are telling us two opposing things.
One other thing I noticed, and again this goes back to the reference, is at the very start, the red character swings the sword over his shoulder and the tip of the sword is the right of the screen in anticipation for a downward left slash. However, once the camera cuts, he's in a different pose and swings the sword to the right, and it's a little jarring.
Regardless of my little nit picks, absolutely fantastic work!
Thanks for the feedback @LloydHallam ! I did put a smirk on the girl character but i realize we don't read it so well... I will exaggerate her expression a bit.
For the break of direction continuity in the action, yeah since it was present in the reference and wasn't bothering me, i didn't dare to touch it but maybe if you guys find it weird i should try to invert the first shot and see if it works !
This was very fun and learned a lot
@LloydHallam couldn't simply switch invert the shot, because things like the R on the vest and the set which were than inverted compared to the second shot. Animation wise it worked but to much of a hurdle to make the change after the animation so left it as it is
Don't worry too much about that opening pose, it's just a little nit-pick, and it's pretty much entirely due to the reference you used. By itself it's still a great bit of animation, the subtle squash and stretch and the secondary animation on the hair really sells it, and the bulk of the work here is that middle shot with the three slashes.
Fantastic work!
I used After Effects to create the slash fx ! Just created a mask and used some glow on top.