Bricks in Motion
We are a friendly filmmaking community devoted to the art of stop-motion animation using LEGO® and similar construction toys. Here, you can share your work, join our community of other brickfilmers, and participate in periodic animation contests!
A place to discuss, share, and create stop motion films.
Ad
You are not logged in. Please login or register.
Hey everyone, I'm starting to try/practice fight sequences and was wondering if anyone had any tips or tricks they could provide (aside from easing in and easing out, I've already got that under control) At the moment I'm currently wanting information on hand to hand combat like fist fights but I'd be open to other suggestions as well. Are there any good tutorial videos? Thanks in advance! 
A thing you can do is watch a lot of fighting brickfilms. I'm pretty sure you can spot some good tecniques.
All the little movements do lots, and lots of 'damage' so to say. Little movements play a huge role when it comes to animating, but especially fights. Tons of easing in and out. Like when filming a sword swing it speeds up, then slows down. (Big ticks are positions of sword during a swing. '}' = end). Example 1: |--|--|--|} That one is fine but not terribly great. Example 2: |-|----||} That one should be beautiful. It's all trial and error though. Can't wait to see this one, happy brickfilming. 
Move the camera too, even if it's just panning around.
Cut. Alot. The quicker you cut the faster the action will seem.
Not too fast, though. I think I went a bit two fast in my last Batman film, it was hard to see what was going on. 
For action scenes, I'm a pretty good person to ask, as I've done a lot of them, some in more large-scale films.
One of the first things I like to do is get in the spirit with a few good brickfilm fights such as these:
The Profession
The Force Unleashed
Possessed
(Enter Vladimir Vango)
The last of those being one of my own. I like to remember my coolest fight scene, and bring myself back to that time when I animated that, trying to improve upon my methods, and remind myself that I've made something cool before.
I've also seen The Profession's fight frame-by-frame. I found that very enlightening.
Another thing is to plan the fight, though I usually do mostly improvisation, I like to have a few ideas, as my least well planned fight (I Am The Darkness) didn't turn out as good as it could have. Usually, I think up a few details, and then connect the dots so that all of those things can happen.
Like in Bank, most of the things in the fight I thought up before (like shooting the couch, Majesto flinging the brick, the floor smash, the laser fish, et cetera), then I kinda thought up as I went along to piece the stuff together. One of my favorite bits being the Wizard popping up between the viking and JohnnyBob. I'll usually think up a few shots in advance as I go along, maybe making slight changes during animation.
In addition to the easing, it's very important that the movements for punches to actually get really fast when they hit the guy so it'll actually look like it's going to hurt, and have the guy react in a way which is consistent with said punch, never exceeding the speed of it.
Another thing it to make sure the LEGO people don't look quite so rooted to their simple movements, but try to make it more lifelike, which is hard to do with the obvious limitations of LEGO people, however, it's done quite amazingly in the profession.
As for camera movements, I recommend getting a tripod which can be adjusted, they're fantastic for that sort of thing. And for dolly shots, build something like this: Picture Topic Simply, it's a crank thingy which can be used to turn a twist of the handle into extremely precise tiny increments. I've improved it some since then to be more precise and used it in I Am The Darkness for some ridiculously smooth dolly shots. And I can't stress how epic tilting the camera makes everything.
And another thing is the audio, whether it's the music or sound it needs to be really good, and I thing it does a great deal to make a fight scene that much better, even if the animation isn't absolutely perfect, the sound design, or epic music can go a long way to make it feel a whole lot better. Force unleashed is an example of amazing sound. Seriously, that's some wonderful editing there. And Vango's music just makes it that much more awesome.
Great information! Thanks so much for taking the time to share your knowledge! I've got a better idea now of what I need to be doing. I may try to go and watch The Profession frame by frame sometime, I'm sure it will be enlightening, as you said. I'm interested in the dolly picture that you posted, is that DSLR compatible? I'll have to build myself one of those if it is.
Haha, Vango without music is quite different. Just goes to show the power of song. I remember a lecture on sound in a videography class I took last semester and it gave some examples where famous scenes had either no music or the music was changed. It's amazing how it can set different moods.
Thanks once again for the insight!
Don't forget to look at Grace, which is, in my opinion, awesome.
In my opinion, the best animated fight sequences to this point are as follows:
Grace
The Profession
The Force Unleashed
The Game
I disagree with ANP's choices of Possessed and Vango. With the former, while it was nearly perfectly animated, it didn't really have much of a fight, so I don't think it was that great of an example. With the latter, it was animated choppily at parts and was pretty slow throughout most of the film. I don't think it was a bad film, but I do think it isn't a prime example of fighting animation at its best.
My advice to you is to make movements. A lot of movements. You must make sure that there is always constant movement and that the movements do not always repeat. You shouldn't make to many insane movements (Flips, back-heel kicks, etc.) if you want it to truly look realistic. If you're not going for perfect realism, then you might want to add some fancy fighting motions. Also, ease in and out; that might possibly be the most important part of fighting sequences, and perhaps animation in general.
Overall, just practice. You can see the contrast between our films The Missing Piece and Saltman. Clearly the better animated fight was Saltman, but it took about a year of practice to get to that point, and even then it still isn't a great fight.
The reason I chose Vango is because it's the coolest fight I've made and is useful to get into the spirit since I actually made it. It's the list of films I like to watch to get ready for fight scenes.
Not to be confused with the coolest LEGO fights ever list.
There's a pretty good tutorial written by Errol on animating a basic fight scene.
Last edited by StudioL30 (March 18, 2012 (01:07pm))
There's a pretty good tutorial written by Errol on animating a basic fight scene.
Wrong link. 
See if it works now. I tried it from my laptop and it didn't work on my first try, but then it came up.
Last edited by StudioL30 (March 18, 2012 (12:16pm))
I can't still watch it.
Still isn't working.
Apparently my website has some weird redirecting going on at the moment. I uploaded it to Google Docs, so hopefilly that'll work.
That works. Just read it all.
Posts [ 17 ]
