Fighting games are interesting. It's rare they ever stray too far from their core
concept; fighting until one of you gets knocked out. Sometimes an innovator will
come along and reinvent the idea slightly, such as throwing your opponent
off the stage and substituting health for damage percentage, or softening up
your opponent first and then tossing them over some stuff, or even sword
fighting based around Norse mythology, or controlling the game with two buttons.
If there's one thing that generally binds the fighting game genre together its how
focused the games are visually. Once you've got your idea you just focus on
doing it well. Another idea that's common in many fighting games is that they
generally take place in some supernatural, sci-fi or fantasy setting,
granting the player characters superhuman abilities. They don't have to
be over-the-top; a simple sword or a simple bolt of
energy, but they can be massively over-the-top like being a cactus or a
demon that transforms into crazy machines with giant finishing moves.
Having crazy abilities helps player characters have a visually interesting
and diverse moveset. Punching is fine but you're gonna be doing a lot of that, so it's going to
need to look nice. Many fighting games have real polished animation and some 2D
fighting games in particular can be really visually impressive as they
generally have a well-thought-out move set because the animation is so meticulous.
This dedication to art and 2D fighting games has been present throughout the
genre's history. Though not the first fighting game,
Street Fighter was definitely the game that got the genre rolling, with Street
Fighter 2 firmly cementing the genre as a favorite, with Capcom excelling from
then on with impressive visuals. Capcom continued this 2D style with many
of their fighting games but have abandoned it recently in favour for 3D
and seldom use of the techniques they did with 2D. Something we have to
remember is that fighting games are often frantic and draw on your desire to
smash out moves as quickly as you can to get in as much damage to your opponent.
This means if you've got some input lag, or the animations are slow, it's going to
feel sluggish and not very exciting.
Ideally what you want is for button input to result in an instant response
and then work up from there making heavier moves take longer to initiate
and see through. This means that if you want a quick action, you're going to have
to think up ways of conveying that movement stylishly without taking up too
many frames of animation or without moving too much visual information.
Lab Zero Games released skull girls in 2012, a hand-drawn 2D fighting game which
harks back to fighting classics such as Street Fighter 3 and Marvel vs. Capcom
and it employs heavy use of traditional animation techniques to get that visual
information across quickly and accurately. Let's take a look at some of
the ways that 2D fighting games deliver quick and stylish action whilst
remaining visually coherent and think about fighting games that perhaps don't
do this. The 2D fighting game landscape is vast but will dip into as many
examples as we can to showcase how often certain techniques are used and how they
work. There's some particular animation techniques I'd like to explore which
these fighting games use to convey action which are: key framing,
anticipation, follow-through, smears, overshooting and exaggeration or
breaking. Don't worry I'll explain these as we go along.
So as I said before speedy action needs to be presented quickly and accurately
so the first thing you're going to do when planning the look of your attack is
to use keyframes to establish your strongest and most important poses and
then build up around these frames with inbetween frames. With Persona 4 Arena
Ultimax, for example, Junpei's bat attacks can be broken down to his anticipations
and extremes. Once you have these and know they look dynamic, you can then add
in what you need around them to slowly built up a coherent move. Big Band from
Skullgirls is a large character and doesn't have as many extreme movements
but they can still be broken down to anticipation and exaggeration. Some of
the in-between frames around the keyframes will have to be very efficient
so we'll see just perhaps one frame of anticipation before a keyframe, something
which Skullgirls animator Mariel Cartwrite summed up as "you don't see it but
you feel it". I think this is an incredibly important factor when
planning your animation in how you enjoy the game, feeling the movement, not
necessarily seeing it and this will be relevant to a lot these techniques and
animation in general. With anticipation it might not be much but it's enough to
see that there's a move coming. Another in between might be an overshooting
frame before a key hit, meaning a hand might appear stretched right before it
settles on the keyframe, which helps deliver that feel of a hard hit. If we
compare these two, one has the overshoot and one doesn't, and you can see
that there's a bit more of an impact with the overshoot without making the
action seem any longer. This could also be considered an extreme
as limbs generally can't do this in real life, I don't think. Three other ways you
can condense a quick action down to a frame or two are by smearing, using
multiples, and what's called breaking the joint. Smearing and multiples are
incredibly common in animation as a whole, reaching right back to the golden
age, I mean there's even a Twitter account dedicated solely to discovering
smear frames in animation. The idea is that a quick arcing motion can be
portrayed as a single image and it's incredibly common in these 2D fighting
games. Captain America, when using his shield as
a weapon, will swing it resulting in this pocket of information where several
shields are shown, giving a 'high shutter speed' effect, which gives a different
effect than if he were to have a smear instead. It slows it down enough to give
it that weight and devastation. Richard Williams, animation director on Who
Framed Roger Rabbit, wrote the Animator's Survival Kit, an incredibly rich resource
for animators, and in it when talking about walk cycles he suggests you can
'break the leg' to show an extreme movement, and like we've seen with
multiples, it can give an extra heavy sense to an attack, making that impact
read a little clearer. For instance Necro here bends his arms
throughout this motion, which although gives him a very elasticy appearance
is a great example of how this helps the feel of quick arcing movement. Apply this
to a less bendy character and you can get an even greater sense of strength.
Now sometimes to give a real punchy effect what you can often do is remove
frames altogether. This won't necessarily seem convincing on its own which allows
us to make good use of follow-through frames, which helps retro actively fill
in the missing information. For instance the movement could be a headbutt or a
punch or something, with these two frames having a big gap in the middle. When it's
played back, it's a very quick movement and reads fine but you can emphasize the
move even more by having loose things catch up with the movement once it's
over, and this is called follow-through. That's not to say you couldn't have a
smear or multiple here but sometimes removing information and using it
elsewhere not only keeps things fresh but can give an entirely different feel to
the attack. It may even help you remember how strong or weak a move is, and when
you use all these techniques together you get an incredibly rich, visually
stimulating and satisfying result, showing all the information you need
quickly, accurately and, most importantly, entertainingly. So why does it matter if
it's animated nicely? If we look at some fighting games like Street Fighter 5,
Mortal Kombat X, or Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite or even Super Smash Brothers,
the games are still fast and frantic but there's an element of dissatisfaction or
safety. It feels like no creative risks are being taken when it comes to
traditional animation techniques. Characters still punch in a convincingly
devastating manner but it seems like the souls missing from the movement. Poses
are still extreme, but there's no breaking of limbs...not like that..
there's no smearing, no missing information to fill, in it's all very
safe. Some moves have had an element of traditional techniques preserved such as
this smearing effect in Street Fighter 5 making up the lack of missing frames to
try and increase the urgency but honestly it fills a little stale. I mean
the complete opposite end of Skullgirls is Sonic the Fighters. I mean it's just a
mess. And I believe it's one of the reasons I disliked the Soul Calibur
games, they feel very sluggish and heavy to me. Sure, REAL real fighting might be like
this but I don't want to fight realistically. I want to see my main
character, who's part police detective, part jazz band suddenly take off into
the sky when he's done. Look, there he goes... What would you prefer; this....or this?
Better answer this subjective question about art correctly! Answers on a
postcard to England. Okay, let's be serious. Obviously I get it.
I understand why they do it this way and I'm not naive, I know sometimes this
animation isn't always preferred in fighting games, when sometimes the crisp
delivery of 2D fighting games can strain the eyes because there's so much
information to read, and also you might want your fighting game to look
realistic and not be too cartoony. There's as much work and skill building
and programming a rig to move as it is to draw something flat to move like it's
3D. Sometimes you might want your fighting game to not use extreme poses
or movement because you want your players to think carefully about their
attacks and plan them ahead, and it becomes more of a game of chess than
fighting, always keeping in the front of your mind all the moves you know and how
to string them together. Also just because something is in 3D in doesn't
mean that clever techniques are absent. Super Smash Brothers for
example retains some squash and stretch with its characters, and Mario in
particular keeps a move which he first got in Super Mario 64, which is the front
punch. Both in that game and Smash Brothers his fists inflate when it's at its
strongest, emphasizing a bit more power and if we take a look at Dragon Ball
Fighter Z...or Dragon Ball Fighterz.. this isn't just clever use of cell shading to
portray 3D convincingly as 2D, it's mimicking an entire animation style. It's
designed to look like it's limited animation host material Dragon Ball Z
with the result being that you feel like you're playing an episode of the cartoon.
So what should we take away from all of this? Well, I'm one of these who believes
that you should see the love in your craft and while I'm not saying that any
of these fighting games aren't creative or full of skill or animated badly, I think
there's something to take away from the difference in approach. A popular GIF
I've seen circulating is this one comparing the intro to The Simpsons, with
Marge at the check out. The difference being that the movement in more recent
iterations of The Simpsons animation is stale, weak and uninteresting when
compared to its classic counterpart, with flair, magic and technique and not
'just because'. Style and substance need to work together, when one doesn't pull its
weight, you can feel it. And I think it's particularly important in fighting games,
where your move needs to read clearly, quickly and stylishly. Hey thanks for
your comments on the keyframe animation video was really nice and that's done
really well never built up quite a new sub base.
Vidia crimson curiata suggests that there's so much fluid in the frames Mega
Man 7 is a game it here it takes me visually I yeah that's something just
really I'd just hate about Megaman sevens animation and movement it's just
really don't like it the 2000 BMC quotes limitation breeze creativity another
quite so much I love it I mean it's you know atom nearly kind of brought me to
that quote and I just I haven't stopped think about it since and I just love the
idea you know when you limit yourself you think more gravely protecto gamer
well analyze have you seen to it council take L to place an apple frames I am NOT
i've tried looking for it you have to link me to it because that sounds
amazing Sammy just came in from Mark Brown video
and or if I love the content definitely subscribing thanks so much and Mark
Brown you old bean, you! Well done, thanks. Kevin Frederick's
thank you so much Gordon Lang or any choice video nice work thanks man Apollo
Justice opportunity Mark Brown thanks can do a lot of it in between simply
making an animation for a week less punchy than in HD
yes I'm about pacing so I think like if if there's something about your
animation that looks sort of floppy and weak then it might not be you've got two
million between frames it might be that your actual action is is too slow so
maybe you know speed things up a little bit dusty came here for watching extra
frames series Metacritic general crater up Joe yeah Dan Floyd definitely check
out his playlist called extra frames and his is about animation in video games as
well and that's that's thoroughly well done strongest chest to go and see that
I didn't get my deer from him by the way it just happen to fall that way the
challenge is really quality except your microphone I know I said you would not
believe how common that bit of criticism is I think I just don't have very good
headphones to hear some of this Smith feedback also I think I just over post
produce stuff as well my audio channel mixing met for soup instant subscribe
this was really inviting something to think about in my own work that's really
great I'm so glad that this is that video kind of helped people as well you
know bike talks with things and they can use it in their own life thanks of as
much for your comments.
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