So, we are finally here. After planning this finale animation back in September 2017 I can finally talk about this project and all the work that went into it .Rob asked me if I would do a finale animation for Urealms around the beginning of September 2017. At the time, I was already interested in doing more 2D animation projects because I had been helping Pat (PatManDx) with one of his Urealms fan animations about the Boecoe crew.
I thought, “Well, by myself this finale would be stressful and a disaster.”
But, I have a knack for directing and collaborating with others, and Pat is an extremely skilled animator. With Rob’s approval to pay both Pat and I, the deed was done. My extroverted personality naturally fit into a more supervisor position to help things glide along as Pat pushed his nose near the grindstone, entering “The Zone” to blast this animation to the finish line.
Conceptualization and Planning
At the beginning of the project I had one thing very clear in my mind: Animation takes much more time and energy than you plan to use. We had about three months to create the animation, but the entire time I was pushing myself as if we really only had one month. I was working part time retail, and Pat was working on his animation finals for University, I didn’t want to let myself get too comfy.
We had a summed up project statement, “Create an intense anime style action sequence, ~2 minutes in duration in ~2 months.” But how do you achieve that?
Sakuga style animation takes an entire studio several weeks, the term Sakuga itself refers to increasing the number of drawings required to create fluid movement. Usually, animators use 1 drawing per 24 frames in Sakuga sequences, as opposed to the mere 4 drawings required for the lip flaps in dialogue scenes where characters do not move their bodies.
The answer, well partly, was to watch a shite load of anime of course! Fortunately I saved time by already accomplishing that step. I went through some of the most highly rated sequences amongst anime fans and broke them down frame by frame. Even in extremely important story moments, animators still find clever ways to cut corners while keeping impact, which I’d like to outline next.
Examples and Understanding Dynamic Action
My Hero Academia Season 1 Footage
Here we see the character All Might from the anime My Hero Academia punching. The animation is still complex, but the main forces here are his hair flipping around, which you can see loops in these images, the first hair frame and the last hair frame are the same drawing.
The FX animation is doing a significant amount of the work however, and is arguably easier to animate (and more fun!) because you don’t need to worry about staying on model or keeping proportions, you simply rely on animating mass and expansion. The entire time this punch occurs, the music is rising, and the energy in the punch is building. All Might’s hair is flipping around to show wind and pressure, and it doesn’t need much attention besides a simple loop. Neat huh?
A large part of the solution towards these epic attacks is in the timing.
Action anime revolves around build up. How many times have you seen an anime and noticed this feeling:
“The battlefield is momentarily calm, our hero stands ragged and beaten in a cloud of debris. You hear a chuckle and the villain stands before the hero proud, touting about how he cannot be beaten. ‘Oh no!’ We think to ourselves, ‘There’s no way the hero can win!’ But in a moment of silence, only the sound of wind drifting along we see the hero clench their fist. They speak confidently in defiance of the villain. We feel a spark ignite in the bottom of our belly, a rising melody occurs, silently at first but quickly building! We see a closeup of the hero’s eye as he raises his head to meet the gaze of the villain, and in turn, us. He builds his ultimate attack, unrelenting he raises his voice again to defy the villain in the name of justice! Faster than the villain expects, the hero launches himself into range, armed with his master technique. He yells triumphantly as we feel a craterous impact, unknowingly our arm twitches as we sit on the edges of our seats. The punch thrown is immense, bludgeoning the villain with inertia that is as slow as a dissociating afternoon at the dentist’s office. The melody that rose from our belly is now a roaring fire, and finally, a pause. What? Did it- BOOOOOOM! The punch is released as the villain flies across the face of the planet, through several mountains, and into outer space. The power can not be defined, it’s just too good. Streams of energy waft from the fist of our hero as the villain screams ‘IT’S NOT POSSIBLE!’”
Hopefully I’m a good enough writer that I could emulate that feeling. To understand this scene, we break it down into several segments:
Whitebeard from One Piece
1) Calm Before the Storm
There needs to either be no music, or the music needs to come to a lull. This is where the audience needs to take in the surroundings, their attention needs to be drawn to moment at hand, the thoughts and feelings of the hero.
In anime, the audience is the hero too, so they need to empathize and collect themselves in the moment. I like to think of it as the moment before the drop on a rollercoaster, where you survey the landscape and take in the height.
Gohan in Dragon Ball Z: Bojack Unbound
2) The Spark
The moment where the match for our hype rocket is struck. This acts as a small moment of foreshadowing, that “Wait, wait, something’s up!”. This can be accomplished with a literal spark of energy from the hero, or maybe the villain’s grin turns to a frown. Something to change the flow emotionally. This is where the music starts to rise.
Midoriya Izuku from My Hero Academia
3) The Build-Up
This almost acts as a two part, but each part blends seamlessly here. Anime’s accomplish this build up in a multitude of ways: Using flashbacks that remind the hero of where they started, or show the conviction that led to this moment. You can also use literal action, showing the power collecting towards their behemoth of a punch/attack (i.e. Goku’s spirit bomb size). The entire time the music is building up while you use your method of choice.
As part of the intensity of the build, we bleed into the actual attack landing on the enemy. The attack should almost push into the enemy, more like a shove than a punch. The attack should lean into the enemy for several seconds, it’s much longer than you would think as the animator. But it’s key that the actual attack is part of the buildup. The punch itself isn’t what brings the audience that sense of satisfaction, it’s the aftermath.
One Punch Man
4) Aftermath
This is even more important than the actual attack. All of the pieces are necessary to bring the “oomph” moment we outlined previously, but the aftermath is the money-maker. You can get very creative here, exaggerate the crap out of the attack. You can show the attack splitting the clouds, changing the weather. You could show a mass of friction being created as flames burst forward, charring the enemy. Shockwaves, lightning, tornadoes, and any scientific phenomena you can theorize or imagine will do the trick.
The effect this brings in the audience is that we don’t know how strong the hero is from the punch. If the enemy is defeated, great. But we want to know just what unfathomable consequences arise from the hero’s attack. He threw a punch that was so casual, but it created tornadoes?! What? Exactly.
That’s how cool he is.
With these four points in mind, you don’t need to have every piece of animation as fluid as possible. In fact it usually isn’t! During the creation of the animation, we imagined Virgo’s sword slash as the entire buildup phase, but it had no impact when the shots were played all together.
The slash was way too fast. We had to pad it with extra scenes where we would cut to the dragon (Virendra for you nerds) with a zoom in, then cut to Bruce looking shocked for that emotional oomph (if Bruce is shocked, we should be too!).