*The audio in the beginning is meant to be a little quiet, the music becomes louder soon after
Embedded Files
2D Art 1 Animation.mp4Section 1: Finished Artwork
Title: Pointless Fight
Size: 1280 x 720
Date of Completion: June 2nd, 2023
Ideas: To create a short fighting animation sequence
Materials: Digital
Processes: Using Flipaclip to create digital animation.
Section 2: Planning & Practice
We were instructed to start by making a list of ideas and then attempting to narrow it down to only a handful of concepts that we would be excited about developing. My main, most passionate concepts were motion (action), animation, and nostalgia. Eternal Dystopia was a concept that I considered very seriously while selecting. But I planned to fulfill that topic later, once I figured out how to define it. I choose to focus on other issues instead of "Eternal Dystopia" as a result. Then, based on the themes I was interested in, I began to formulate ideas for the kinds of projects I might be able to do.
I created four separate thought boards that are related to the concepts I had previously planned. Animation: Idea 1 had a chase sequence. I believed practicing body anatomy while demonstrating original dynamic poses would be entertaining. Animation: Idea 2 was a battle scene that more accurately portrayed the fighting styles and had a lighthearted tone to it. As a result, character dynamics between the two characters are more important than body structure. Nostalgia: Idea 1 is on the idea that grownups are trapped in the idea that they can't play childlike since they are expected to act like adults. They are therefore engaging in playground activities, despite the fact that others may find them to be "weird". Nostalgia: Idea 2 is on the significance of flowers, where the person on the left will get flowers to have a "bright" future. However, the individual on the right will have mostly "death"-themed flowers, signifying that they may pass away soon or have already passed away.
Because there won't be many opportunities for me to do animation, I choose one of the animation concepts when deciding what to pick. I always have the option to draw (a still picture) at any moment in the future. So, of the two possibilities, I decided that doing a battle sequence would be more fun. Since then, as opposed to the pursuing scene, I've got more thoughts about how it would look.
Section 3: Experimentation
Regarding experimenting, I wanted to see how various character designs and fighting techniques would work with various types of weapons depending on the personalities of the characters.
The pink girl was revealed to be an individual with a great deal of vigor and resentment. utilizing more physical strength-based fighting than technical fighting. I wanted to give her a hammer, machine gun, or bazooka because of this. In the end, I made the choice to give her a bazooka because it can be used as a hammer (or a heavy object), can shoot stuff, and needs to have the strength to handle it. If she doesn't have a weapon, she solely uses her hands to fight in the animation. I thus wanted her to employ some boxing techniques. Her character makes her withstand repeated beatings and enable her to live a long period. She simply won't stop fighting and gives it her all.
It took some trial and error with the blue guy before I decided on the final design. I initially believed that the blue guy would be intelligent and skilled in fencing. Thus, I had intended for him to have sleeked-back hair. But I soon understood how limited and specialized fencing moves are, making it challenging to depict the two characters battling. Additionally, several of the planned activities did not fit his personality at the time. After that, I changed his appearance to give him a moodier, teenage vibe. But I had to abandon that idea because of how similar his personality seemed to that of the pink girl. He would be carrying a katana, and I was finally able to settle on a mysterious, casual idea. The blue guy is much more relaxed and occasionally underestimates a lot of things when compared to the pink girl. As a result, he occasionally misjudged the pink girl's battle, which caught him by surprise. He does, however, employ a variety of fighting styles because he holds a sword, and I had anticipated that he would frequently use his legs in combat. So I had to do a study on the fact that he would be kicking a lot.
Section 4: Process
Day 1 - 3:
Based on my research, I began to choreograph the combat sequence. To obtain a general idea of how it would look, I would frequently draw them in stick figure positions. Due of the requirement that it reflect the previous action and appear somewhat realistic, it was challenging to choreograph. Even though this animation is meant to be humorous, I can't just have someone punch with their right hand in one scene and then switch to their left in the next. Everything must make sense in some way. Several times, to fulfill the time limit, I had to spend time altering the action sequence.
Day 4 - 8:
These days were spent actually sketching the animation with box-like bodies. Even though it didn't have to be flawless, I spent several hours making it appear streamlined and fluid. It also gives me a better idea of which scenes I need to focus on because of the neatness of the lines compared to some other scenes. Color coding is used in some scenarios to make it easier to distinguish characters from surroundings or backgrounds.
Day 9 - 11:
I worked on the line art for the sketches for a few days. Since I wanted the figures' attire to be in a black and white tone, drawing the line art required some effort. Thus, it took time for all of the panels to depict a black suit with a white outline. Since each panel in the animation moves by so quickly anyway, I didn't care too much with the crisp contour for each one. As a result, I concentrated my lines on the key elements of movement and the overall flow.
Day 12 - 14:
These days were spent trying to perfect the animation's overall aesthetic. This involves color and perhaps some shading. The panels with still photos contain shading. Moments with animations don't have shading; rather, they are only colored. Even though logically it should be the easiest part, it took a lot of time.
Originally, I used to do this step too, bu t due to the time limit, I've decided that I should just stick to lineart.
Section 5: Artist Statement
This project has been one of the projects that I have been the most worried about. There were multiple aspects where I know that could go miserably wrong. But, I was really passionate about this idea, and it was a chance where I could actually focus on an animation for a project.
This animation was supposed to serve as a more comical and unrealistic fight. The whole origin of why this fight started, the characters not having that much damage, the poses within the animation, the conclusion of this story. It's all meant to serve as one big joke. I'm not saying that this project wasn't taken seriously, I worked really hard on this, but I meant that this animation isn't a touch-warming or tear-jerking story; just a comical situation taken to the extreme. This inspired the name of the animation, "Pointless Fight". The whole fight about pineapple on pizza was very pointless and a situation that happens a lot on media. People take simple debate discussion points to the extreme on social media at times. It's truly "pointless". I guess in a way, this animation is satire of the people who debate on social media regarding about trivial topics.
As expected, there were several difficulties that I faced within the project.
The first problem lied within the animation program that I used. The program is called, Flipaclip, where it is a free app that you can use for creating a simple animation. But it does restrict you on several options unless you pay for it. But since I didn't have money, I decided to face on this issue head-on. Firstly, there would be ads that pop up very regularly. Thus, I had to use the app with my wifi turned-off. Second, there is a 4-layer limit that we can only use. For animation, this is very limiting, so I had to plan beforehand which layer would be used for which in specific scenes. So, I had layer 1 as sketch, layer 2 as base coloring, layer 3 as any additional color/effects, and layer 4 as the line art. Third, the set of tools that they give you is not the best quality. You can only control the type of material, color, and opacity. There are no brush type selection or the more advance type of options in this program. So, I just had to settle with what I had in the program. But what I did do is for the backgrounds, some of them I just imported my drawing (that I did in a separate program) onto the animation program as an image.
Other than the program, I found the due date of this project quite worrying because my animation progress was quite slow. Thus, I had to sacrifice to not being able to color the whole animation and just to show the lineart. Having no color meant that there would be little to no detail for background. I was advised that it was okay to submit an incomplete animation, as long as the quality still remains pretty high.
Even if I found multiple aspects difficult, there were still some positive stuff behind this. I'm proud that I was able to finish this animation and it's not the worst quality that I created in. It was a very long aspiration of mine to complete an animation (specifically action), and I think it came out as decent. Obviously there are aspects where I know I could definitely improve, but looking at the circumstances, I think I did my best out of the options I had. I wish I could've fully finalized it, but overall, the animation looks pretty smooth.
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