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Post first swordfight thoughts

So I only have one more shot to do to finish off this first swordfight in the film...

- Motion clips work great for blending together multiple separate actions like... running + jumping + slashing... The only problems I've had with them is when a character is spinning 180 degrees and that motion clips is mixed with others that are not rotated... I tried using a pivot object to rotate the other clips but it ended in chaos... I'm sure theres a correct way to do it but I couldn't spend too much production time trying to get it to work...

- Good sword fight scenes are all about good strong opposing poses... get the poses right and half the work is done... watch J Samurai films from Gosha or Okamoto to learn how to do it right... I also learned a lot about showdown poses from DBZ... DBZ used still poses with minimal animation to GREAT effect... the action in Samurai showdowns really comes from the music because its not like Chinese swordplay with lots of superfluous action to make things interesting... So its strong poses and dramatic complex music... at least thats what I like...

- Fight scenes like many other things in film are all about rhythm... The camerawork is part of the rhythm, type of lenses...static/moving camera? ....as is the posing and the intervals of action/non action....

I have many other thoughts and I will share them as production goes further ^ ^

Comments

  1. I always like watching Jackie Chan 'making of' vids, the editing style is central to conveying his style of cinematic fighting, with tight cuts between shots to convey hits that never actually take place on set.

    How did you deal with the timing and weighting of sword on sword interaction, that seems like it would be the hardest thing to convey accurately in 3D, without resorting to some complex physical model or rigging setup?...

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  2. Hmmm for the sword weight... no special setup... I just pay attention to the orientation of the sword...sword tip... its a child of the hand bone which I just animate the rotation of.

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  3. As much as I don't mind it, I noticed something interesting on your stance for posing (no pun intended). In an earlier blog you did called "Samurai/Ninja film galore", you stated "[Hollywood] will impress themselves because they have a cool looking guy on screen swinging a sword and posing...POSING." You seem to state poses are a strong feature to a good fight scene. Is they way you're doing it different?

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  4. @Daniel - Thats true ....I said that because those films do not have the heart or philosophy... they dont contain the SaMURAI SPIRIT... they just pose like it ^ ^ When I spoke of "posing" in this post it is more a principle of animation, the use of strong silo's... when speaking of Hollywood films I was using the other definition of "posing" like... poser.... and not the 3d app ^ ^

    Watch any American made "Samurai" film than watch any made by Yoji Yamada...

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  5. http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/zz14/Reyori_Strange/ICE_CREAM.jpg

    Ice cream for everybody! :D

    ReplyDelete

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