Gildedguy is a character within a universe full of people with circular heads and bizarre
powers.
There’s a small series of videos featuring this golden-armored guy, but they focus on
battles instead of storyline, so you can watch them in any order.
I’m going to talk about the most recent one, Gildedguy vs Bog.
Now’s your chance to watch it.
The Gildedguy videos are part of an animation community where two animators agree to duel,
and then both participants animate their characters fighting.
The audience watches both animations and then votes on who should be the winner.
Matches can be part of official tournaments, or, like in this case, only one of the animators
drawing the fight for fun.
The particular group Gildedguy fights in is called RHG, and every animator has to represent
themselves with a stick person character.
If this is your first time hearing of an animator vs animator battle, they’re tons of fun
to watch, and there are battles in different communities for non-animators, too.
Those competitions rely on comics or still art for the fights.
Okay, so let’s look at the animation itself.
Michael Moy, aka Gildedguy, aka the animator himself, writes that he didn’t employ any
new techniques to make this.
If you watch his past two Gildedguy fights, yeah, that seems to be the case.
The improvement in Gildedguy vs Bog is due to more creative scene planning - like tricky
camera angles and perspectives - and general improvement in drawing this character.
Everything is animated in Flash.
The Bog fight uses pencil and pen lines for the line art, something Michael did not do
in the past fights, which are brush tool drawn.
While I usually favor the brush because it changes thickness depending on how hard you
press down while drawing, the consistency of the lines make this animation look a lot
more polished compared to the others.
I like it.
The new line style in Gildedguy vs Bog still has the gritty, alive feeling of the other
animations because it is loose and sketchy instead of formulated and perfect.
So.
How do you animate a good looking fight scene?
One of the most important things is an animation principle called spacing.
Spacing is how the character changes position across every individual drawing.
If you have big spacing, the character moves a lot from drawing one to two.
If you have tight, short spacing, the character doesn’t move very far.
Big spacing is for fast movements, short spacing is for slow movements.
Now, the trick for a great fight sequence is not to use big spacing everywhere.
That’s crazy, and the viewer can’t follow what’s happening.
Instead you use big spacing and punctuate it with critical clash moments between characters
using small spacing.
In this scene, Bog is flinging Gildedguy all over the place and he’s moving like crazy,
but whenever there is contact, the animation stops.
Big spacing.
Small spacing - or - really - no spacing at all, it’s a still frame.
Fast slow fast slow does great things for your viewers.
The fast action is a whirlwind, but then there are spaces where we get to see the smash,
a slow spot where our brain can interpret what is happening.
Here Bog swipes Gildedguy across the stage and then crushes the empty armor between his
jaws.
Big spacing, huge changes in movement between two drawings here.
It slows down for a few drawings and then bang, a big jump in movement again, and another
slowdown.
The pieces hurtle into space and then slowly, slowly reconstruct themselves in an ultra
smooth, skin prickling scene of triumph.
If you watch this reconstitution section slowed down, by the way, you can see it’s not all
the same spacing because there are moments where pieces suddenly fly together faster
for more impact.
Bam, chest, bam arms, bam head.
Again, that slow fast slow fast pattern really gives action scenes punch.
Compare that with a normal non-action scene, and you’ll see the animation has a more
constant, even movement speed.
Just going to casually remove that sword.
But here every hit is slowed down so you can see.
The bigger the impact, the more slow motion.
That’s my tip on fight scenes for today.
Gosh this animation is so neat.
The art style breaks into something different a couple of times to show the psychotic nature
of Gildedguy fighting Bog inside his own mind.
For the main animation style the lighting is what really makes it stand out.
That Michael puts all the time in to draw all of the highlights really shows.
It’s great.