My goal with doing this animation was to see how I've progressed from this exercise in the first term, and I think I've improved on some things. From last term one of the my biggest goals was maintaining volume, so I drew a character with more rudimentary shapes that form it's design which I think worked quite well.
However one thing that suffered from this is I don't think there is a lot of character in the movement, it's a simple A to B movement without much flair or even body movement. In the future I want to be more creative with breakdowns to create a sense of character through body language because this is quite a bland head turn. Maybe if I started adding more context to these learning exercises it'd help me create more character, even if that's just in my head knowing why a character is turning their head so I could infuse some sort of emotional motivation into the movement rather than just an robotic action.
I am pleased with how the hair moves considering hair has been an issue for me in both my illustration and animation, and it looks fairly natural here, it doesn't look quite as jarring as my precious attempts anyway.
The fight scene is a staple of the action genre, in both tv and film the spectacle of a fight is often as important narratively and thematically as the dialogue, and also very enjoyable to the audience to watch. Recently I went to see John Wick 2, a movie in which the uber stylized violence is it's main selling point, it's engaging because it presents these violent scenes in a creative and engaging way, breaking the mold of budget bourne flicks. It also made me start thinking about good fight scenes in tv and film in general, and it was interesting that this particular scene from Samurai Jack, a children's show, stood out to me. This is a scene that I last saw as a kid watching cartoon network, maybe ten years ago, and this one scene still came to the forefront of my mind when I started thinking about good action scenes. So naturally I wanted to come back to this scene to see exactly what it is that burnt it into my memory.
I really love this scene because it uses the medium so creatively, utilizing only black and white for the majority of the fight, creating a stark contrast between the two characters fighting and the environment in which they're occupying. It's also a very strong narrative choice, making the entire scene in black and white, including characters. It makes the fight really clear to the audience, the characters have relatively similar silhouettes but you know who's who by the color coding, not only does it make the scene very easy to read but it creates a good vs evil dynamic which makes it that much more compelling, there are no distractions and it just looks great.
Visually it's a very flat scene, the environment made up of columns and beams which don't really seem to occupy a 3d space, but the characters do move through 3d space, which definitely builds the tension of the fight, it gives a sense of disorientation, not being able to read the environment, which brings you into the fight as the characters disappear into their corresponding color, leaving the other guessing where they are, the audience being equally as confused. This makes the fight very engaging, bringing the audience into how the protagonist feels and consistently raising the stakes by having the sun setting, leaving less and less of the light which Jack can hide in, but just as the entire screen is filled with black Jack defeats the enemy, creating payoff to the tension and creating a very satisfying victory.
This is a short animation I did because I started to feel like I hadn't done any animation for myself in a while, so I did this in a style which I've always wanted to develop. I used this geometric, lineless style when I made a short film in sixth form to try to save time, as line boils are less of an issues because you aren't dealing with things like variable line weight, but the more I used it the more I found I really like how it looks in motion and I think with some more practice I can make it seem more professional and considered. Next time I do an animation in this style I think I'm going to try two things, a really big, dynamic motion, and a subtle character acting shot with facial expressions. I want to do this to try to push myself out of my comfort zone and make it seem really appealing. One issue with this shot is that the head shape is very inconsistent and morphs by the end of it, but overall I quite like it, I may try to push the details more like giving the hands fingers as a next step.
