 Okay Hi guys, I'm just gonna assume that the clock has started. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah fantastic Okay, so hi welcome to the fight of animation The the naming scheme of my talks are ridiculous So who am I my name is healthy almost one weird name I know I've my background is animation but I since then like started branching out into other things that I'm really interested in and I've been very fortunate for the last few years that I've been partaking in a lot of really cool projects But out of all the different things that I do in animation. I'm the thing that I'm most excited about usually is doing some kind of a fight scene and As soon as I was you know given the opportunity to do a talk here I wanted to really dive into that and like start thinking I started thinking about all the different concepts that touch upon You know, what does it mean to make a fight scene like the fight at the choreography of the camera moves and all this up And it escalated really badly to the point where Francesco told me, you know, you have 20 minutes, right? And that's it like I will not give you anything more So a compromise was had where we just finished. Well, we're currently working on a film And I'm gonna do a little case study on that like it'll hopefully be out in Like a month and a half or two months or something kind of depends But you all may recognize that it was kind of labeled as project heist that was a kind of working title for the project so we do have a name for it now, this is the film charge and There will be just a it's just semi-spoiler warning I'm not spoiling the end of the film, but I'm just acknowledging that There is a fight that happens inside of this film and the hero will not die. Okay, it'll win. He'll win Okay, so anyway, so but just to set up like what is that film and you know if you put yourself into my shoes In making the vi choreography, you have to you know, just kind of take in some of the premise Which is we have like kind of a dystopian future an old man with a rusty robot arm And he breaks into an energy factory to steal a battery and then you know He sets off the alarm and the there are security robots and they're kind of trying to stop him He has a spectacular fight that lasts like a minute or something. It's like it needs to be a short Presumably possible So let's just take a look at it. This is the whole thing I just want to focus on this part and before you start planning anything out You're looking you need to look at what I would call your canvas was basically the constraints of the project So what was the goal of the project? Okay, the goal. Okay, the goal is this kind of heightened realism with amazing action, of course This is the first time we actually do this kind of art style that is super super is it like heightened realism It's kind of like a cinematic from a really cool video game or something. So It really needs to be about a minute because there's other stuff that happens Like beginning and end and whatnot. So if I start bleeding over it There will be a producer with a whip behind me and he'll not be happy and he'll have an Italian accent. So but But some of the constraints are also just like we're gonna work with what we have in the house You're not gonna get a concept artist. You're not gonna get a storyboard artist. Nothing like that, which is okay Fine. I mean I've been in this position before But it's basically just figure it out and do it quickly because you have a whole team behind you And so you're on the train you're laying down the tracks of the train but the train is moving and the kind of unofficial model of the The studio is we do what we do with we do what we can with what we have with the time So what is the story needs when you start making this stuff there? So there is this premise that there's a low-tech hero and he is gonna fight like high-tech robots, right? So he's gonna get badly wounded and he wins that did like that. That's what the story kind of needs All right, so what are the elements that I have to work with here? So we got the hero and you know, he has this robotic arm. Maybe you can use that as a weapon He infiltrated this place and he used some low-tech weapons. Okay, I can use them maybe for the fight He's gonna go into this factory factory Maybe has some machinery and he's gonna try to take this battery and there's gonna be some security robots Maybe they have like these Like not gun like gun arms basically Okay, let's yeah, let's ignore some of those You know the tools that he's using because as you use them to infiltrate the place You're kind of kind of you're gonna be leaving them behind so We're down to like three objects and we're I want to try to incorporate them as much as possible into the actual fight scene So this is the moment where you sit down and you start like looking at all the elements And wouldn't it be cool if and then you just start rambling down a list of like really cool things Okay, what if like he's like metal hand gets ripped off and then like what is it? You know, you think it's all over he doesn't he hasn't he has nothing left And then he uses the shard that's left and you stabs the robot in the chest And that's how he wins the fight and what if a robot gets like blinded by the spray can and and he's the shooting up the place So it's like all chaos and so anyway I just start going over this entire list and it's like way longer than this by the way and a lot of stupid ideas What is it if it's an army of your robots? Well, okay? Let's not go crazy, but this does remind you of like a kind of a child playing with toys and trying to you know And but in reality like that's what you kind of need to do sometimes I mean like actual directors real directors do that But the most important thing is whatever you do you put it down on a medium You don't allow it to get stuck in your head because that whatever that medium is it doesn't matter what it is It's something that everybody can look at everybody can point at it could be like this in a script format It could be you know like a kind of a floor plan sketch And it could be like really bad the storyboard drawings because like your draftsman skills are really bad But whatever it is you need to kind of get on board and point at the same thing and critique it So next up I started making just like these beat lists and you know And it's just like going over step by step What would happen in the fight of this happened? This is this is it and I just started making all these different variations So these are like four of them, but they went on and on and on so but there's a lot of Similar things happening like how he enters and he grabs the battery and the alarm goes off And like how for example in order to get into the close combat He needs to close the distance so So, you know, he makes a decision to fight and he blinds from the robots and something explodes and that like Maybe like a puff of beautiful colorful clouds very expensive and it kind of goes through that in the slow motion It's gonna be amazing. Okay, and and then this like it had this idea what if like the Robot like the the hero, you know being kind of frugal He manages to push the robot inside of one of the machinery because it's a factory or whatnot and then the hand gets stuck Okay, that would be kind of cool because you always want to do like these reversals in the fight scene where oh, he's winning Oh, he's losing. Oh, he's winning. Oh, he's losing, you know kind of a thing So you do that and then oh no he actually this thing was detachable all along and he just continues So you kind of flip it around but the end I always went with that kind of ending where Okay, you know, you think it's all over you that lost his arm and he just uses it as a stabby stick. Okay, cool So you go over these and then you start just being really harsh on yourself. Okay time estimate I think it's too long This raises a couple of questions and it's kind of long ish this one. Ah It only features one robot. That's kind of it's not ambitious enough. Okay. Let's have it be two robots But I have to I'm getting a little bit worried now about the timing of it But how do you estimate the timing and how do you start like figuring out where your camera should be and whatnot? So I start just doodling. So I'm just doodling. Okay. This is maybe the layout of the place I don't know yet But all I know is that my guy kind of comes in and he finds the battery and he crosses probably the robots because when they wake up They need to be in the way of the exit. Okay, so they start shooting he hides behind the thing He throws the spray can I was I had this whole idea of trying to get that spanner in there Also, and he throws that before and then it was a very convoluted thing I was trying to be clever. I wasn't clever Then you know one of the guys blinded they spray bullets all over the place. It's pure chaos a Battery explodes and then he uses that to kind of jump over and he needs to disable the gun That's the number one thing if you don't disable the gun you're dead So there's a bit of back and forth back and forth dodging doing things putting you know, oh, no the the arm is stuck He's unstuck. She had no idea and then the hand gets ripped off Stabby stab and now he walks off. So we like when you put it all together It's like, okay, it's like there's kind of a fight choreography This is kind of the heat map of where they take place and you can start thinking about like the camera position Okay, the staging. I want it roughly on that side of the action line that way it's This is like the spatial awareness of the place where you have the exit You have the hero and in between visually it would always be nice to have kind of the robot Kind of in between so he can't reach it and then also for the stabbing This has to do more with the screen space. Uh, the hero has the left robotic arm So when he stabs I want the staging to be towards his left shoulder That this is just for clarity basically but okay What do I do now? Do I storyboard this? I could start storyboarding it putting it in the edit. That would be great But my draftsman skills are shit. So I don't know what to do it like I can kind of draw But I'm I can't do it fast enough to actually You know, uh, because I have a time limit. So what did I do in the past? Oh h and c 2 7 I did do all of this planning But then I started doing like this experimental mixed media thing and uh, it I mean it kind of worked But uh for people in the moment they got really confused Because mixed media is a little bit confusing So for sprite fight I did something interesting just before I I did the layout because I had to kind of plan out everything Um, I just started making my own little rig off kind of a floor plan And then I animated the whole thing and I started just animating the camera set up and whatnot And it got everybody on the same page and also you could troubleshoot things right away So I just did that. Why not? But I knew that if I did it, uh, the end result is going to have to be under 60 seconds There's and preferably way under So I animated this thing and so this is like a weird 2d look down off the fight I also had this idea. What if there are these pack bots that maybe, you know, come and grab The the battery and he actually snatches it from one of them And I believe perhaps this includes no But yeah, I had this idea that what if uh, yeah, all of this is happening. I know crazy Yeah, that was an amazing slow-mo shot. I know I don't know you got to include all of all of this actually bits So the thing is there is something called cinema time. I'm this is my own, uh, uh, my own Like words for the concept. I don't know. There's probably a better word for it But basically, uh When you put it like this, yes, you can have all the beats happen You understand them and whatnot, but they're always going to be actually faster than when you put it in cinema language so It's 53 seconds It's not great. Actually, I I have it under my little budget, but uh, what do you do then? Do you just like redo the whole thing and start trimming things down? Well, I think I have to I would rather just move on into what I would call previous but Like the guy before me he does real previous and then this is like some kind of a sketch layout Like how cheaply can you do something that conveys the idea and that's it nothing fancy You just start making like kind of a mannequin guy and you go for the lowest common denominator or stuff But while all of this is happening, uh actual design work is happening So there's a kind of a symbiotic relationship happening where it goes a little bit back and forth, but Moving forward, uh, I set myself some limits because My background is animation and it's very easy for me to escalate things out of control where I just start actually animating stuff So I put a strict limit that every shot only gets maximum 10 frames and I'm only working with images So I'm just making little stills and with the fewest amount of storytelling poses And then I export that into an edit file and that's where I'm going to find out the timing of everything So it's kind of like this in it and I also just allowed this folder to have this long legacy of everything I export it that way I could always find things back, but also Um, I looked at it as disposable art basically So now we're going to start working with the previous very fancy word for what is kind of me Shot inspired by Indiana Jones very obvious There's like a lot of these like cinematography things where I'm totally ripping off other people's ideas. Here we go Two robots coming in. Oh no, and that. Oh no very much inspired by Jaws Um, I do like how I did manage to hook up all the shots. So when an action is happening It always flows into the next one, but wait stop We are right now 29 over the time budget and it's actually getting worse I'm noticing that in the beginning it's not too bad, but it's like escalating the more shots There are the more the cinema time starts eating into my overall budget time So let's cut down the fight these two parts technically if you took them out all All the other stuff the cool stuff would still happen It's just you just limit the scope of the entire fight But I have to do it. I have to do something. So let's not make the hero get shot I mean, it's just like a ricochet shot or whatever. It's just too complicated while I'm doing all of this I'm still doing a lot of experiments. I'm constantly like here We have the same action, but it's a different camera angle and I'm just trying more and more and more And then at some point it's like, okay, this one is probably better. So let's just go with that And now we're going to continue from there on out okay explosion Slow-mo shot so expensive Amazing you got a this. Yeah, you got a disabled. I've gone that became like slightly ambiguous the way I did it there So, yeah, I had to figure out a better way of doing that. Okay We got the gun arm stuck. That's great And now the hero needs to be badly wounded and That that actually doesn't look that great So I have a problem here because that angle he's kind of walking into The gun arm and the silhouette value gets it. It doesn't look very nice what if I Reversed the act are like I cross the axis so the camera goes on the other side And that way when all of this happens Boom so now I I managed to cheat it basically by crossing the axis during that hit And this feels way better now. There's a way clear silhouette By solving this I created a new problem a spatial problem that I'm kind of on the wrong side of things, but The thing is If it's robot hero door, why doesn't he just walk out the door? I need to make sure that in that moment the the new questions like this don't get you know awoken or whatever So he needs to be badly wounded and it needs to happen Like the next part needs to happen quickly enough that we don't start considering these ideas and also For the entire spatial thing There's this broader idea for the whole cinematography is that The house where he lives is on the left side of the screen And while he's infiltrating the factory, he's going screen right constantly So when he exits, I'm going to need him to go screen left. We're on the wrong side right now So the idea is okay. How do I flip the axis again? Well, maybe When he gets when the robot gets defeated and he's kind of slumping down Maybe I have like him slumping on his knees and then he kind of crosses the line and then Hopefully that works But I'm gonna have to remove one of the robots. There's no way around it So I'm kind of now making a hybrid between that shorter version and that longer version So uh more things there's like just to create more chaos have some more insert shots for when all of the crazy stuff is happening Okay. Now all the notes have been addressed So the guy comes in and you know, I'll just like put in while you're watching. I'll put in little tidbits. So This like pack robot it does serve an extra function which is racing the stakes So because it gets shot and you see this Creature get killed and it's like intuitively that raises the stakes even though it's just a robot But you got to work with what you have you can't have like a random employee who just got shot We can't model all of that so expensive. Oh my god. That's an amazing shot. Okay, so here It's it's it's all functional. It's all working. You see there that there was this There was this problem of is the gun arm still working or not And that's like when I took it to the next stage we had to start addressing that because You don't want those kind of questions coming up where Did the gun arm still work or did it not? Okay, here we got the hand ripped off He's got it's very stably. Of course the shape right now stabby stabby camera goes up near victory Here's he cross he's crossing the axis now. He's on screen right hero can now exit screen left And everybody's happy so Uh, just from that From that I don't have enough time, please So I I still have to address. No, so let's remove that first pack But also the the interior of the of the factory got designed So there's like these it's a little bit like these murder holes from star wars where it's He's not going to fit there and also it's a little bit jarring when it happens I kind of like the idea but it didn't quite work Um when the gun arm is getting destroyed instead of he's using the wrench as a hook And he's like ripping it up. Let's let's flip it So it's actually the mechanical arm that's grabbing it and then he's bashing it so that way it's just visually more clear So this is the completed layout. I'm really jumping ahead here, by the way This is the completed layout So this is me taking the previous idea and I'm putting it into more of a layout form at this point Uh, we have some things being designed and rigged and whatnot and you use what you have I think the face. Yeah, the face is not rigged. So he's like, oh, no, it's all dead in the face Yeah, we still got that spanner Ah that idea just I kept forcing it in there and just didn't didn't help out that much and Got very expensive shot You guys are not noticing it but with each iteration that you're seeing right now every shot You know lengthen just a little bit the overall time So that's the cinema time because every shot needs to like tell a little story and you need to comprehend it And when you start adding them up, they kind of start eating away a lot of your time budget And now we have the finale he looks not sad at all He's very stoic. It's totally fine. And now comes the stabby stab. Okay And that's it. So Yeah, and it's all happy. So, um, yeah, there's a couple of small things as you move into the future There's like these beats like, you know, this idea that he put the blow dart gun there to not allow the exit to actually close And it's like is it is it obvious enough? So you have to do some camera work. Is that enough? Okay, make me the door wiggles a little bit when it goes Let's move the tweak the the the frames a little bit and then with sound effects and lighting and everything That's going to be great. Um, I am pushing through that spanner. Take it away. Uh gun arm Let's add two more punches in there. Okay adds Like an insert shot where he's drilling because this is really the climax. So our hero is like You know doing the whole thing. Okay With sounds I I I totally forego or was foregoing any sound up to this point Because it's a whole topic in the middle Oh Being really mindful that everything that happens in the next step is just trying to improve upon everything and uh, kind of highlight what is already working and make sure that we don't start drifting into some other territory Uh, and this is basically the kind of workflow that I did and this like the entire workflow is just a big excuse for why I'm too I lack the confidence to actually do any storyboarding. So it's just me trying to avoid that pain Okay, anyway, thank you. Thank you so much