Making a Fight Animation with 3dsmax CAT.

Hello Guys and welcome to another exciting edition of Animations on HypefroActive. Yeah, i'm still on my fight animation and it's taking quite longer than expected but i guess this can be excused because as you get better, you get to see things from an angle you don't usually see these things from and you try not doing the same old dumb thing whilst trying to improve on the quality of  your animations.

Ok, that excuse didn't quite sell or maybe not making that much of sense to you as intended but the truth is i didn't want to bore you guys with everyday WIPs or so from my daily output. I'm still on it and it's broad. It might probably end up as the longest anime that i've had to churn out because i'm trying to tell a story or at least show something with the passing frames or shots. Here is a WIP from the fight animation illustrated with the 3DSmax CAT rig http://youtu.be/_iRY7prvz5E .

Ok, so i have been on this project for about three weeks or so and so far i have two characters rigged and animated with 3dsmax CAT. There will be no speech or dialogue just simple gestures and i plan releasing the shots in stages. This stage is the Intro where the two characters stand off and size up one another but somehow, i've extended it so that there's a little bit of contact in this scene but not shown on the shot posted above.

Right now, i'm polishing whatever it is i can about the animation and imputing facial gestures (expressions to make the characters really come alive. Facial gestures will commence tomorrow as i'm not done with polishing the over two thousand frames i have so far.

I think the biggest challenge for me was getting to understand the fight moves and how to execute them as per animating. Ok, so i finally got over that but i was doing most of the animations using the straight ahead's which i've come to like because of it's ease of control and the flexibility you get in breaking down shots or poses.  It's brother, the Pose to Pose is good and that is what i grew up with and i used it towards the tail end of the shot. But using the "Pose to Pose" technique, all you have to do is create extreme poses in the beginning and at the end then put the break- down in the middle. Now everybody does this right, but there's something i used to do that i didn't. I create space for modifications or innovations as  i animate. That way i could come up with an idea later into an animation say i'm in like the two thousandth frame and would like to insert a new idea say at around say two hundredth frame. Well if i have created some space of about a hundred frames any where in between these frames, this new idea could easily slip in and become part of the animation and everything would happen naturally without choking the actions. Something like this happened in the earlier part of this animation shot as i had to completely take away the first two hundred frames and replace with the character just standing with body parts moving subtly. Again at the ending part, i wanted to insert a somersault so i squeezed that in after pushing some frames here and there but after landing it needed to ease out completely which i couldn't achieve because i had other frames lying closely ahead that must be fully translated as well. And i didn't want to risk that as a lot of interactions and things including links are in this part so that i don't create more trouble for me than necessary. So how do i get over this? Simple, i finish the animation, do a save as blablabla and work on the new save as.

Alright, that's all i have for today, i hope to complete this part of the animation this week as well as render it out. Until we meet again, keep the dream alive, keep animating.