Senior Capstone Project Progress: Research Pt. 2

Due to my limited skill as an animator, I need to be able to imply a lot of the action that's going on in the short. This isn't a new idea in animation, or movie making at all. In fact, some famous directors were notorious for using clever editing to get the effects they wanted. Alfred Hitchcock for example, often would show an event, then cut to a completely different taping of an actor reacting to the event. For him, though, it was more about controlling the different aspects of his movies. What I'm looking at is using minimal actual action to convey the message.

Japanese animation, particularly older works, is the best example of using implied action. Many of the staples of the industry were actually money saving methods to cut down on production costs. Action sequences were reduced to only a few frames of animation, but the way the shots were edited and combined together made it seem like something had actually happened.  Take a look at this video here, it's from the series Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, although sound effects from the game Super Smash Brothers was put in over the actual sounds:

At about the 00:26 mark, watch the punch that happens. First the blonde guy gets hit, but he only moves back about a foot, then there's a cut to a full body shot of both characters, he's still moving kinda slowly. About until he reaches the edge of the screen, then finally both characters recoil realistically, when it would take very little effort to do so. The punch itself wasn't animated, but the aftermath was, and furthermore, it was exaggerated. By putting in the beginning of the event and drawing out the end, we fill in the blanks of everything else that happened.

Another great example can be found in the series DURARARA! Take a look:

There's a good bit of build up, but pay attention at the 1:02 mark. The fist and the guy's face make contact and instantly the camera cuts to the back of the crowd as the guy flies (comically losing everything but his socks and underwear) into the street. We get extremely little followthrough on the blonde guy's part, since the action is focused on the target's flight. As the target lands, look back at the crowd, there's no movement at all, they're frozen in time. It's because the animators want you as a viewer to be only paying attention to the guy who just got punched out of his clothes. This isn't a bad thing, since it saves the animators time and therefore their employers money. I'm only pointing out how a lot of effort is put into not putting effort into animated works, since it's easy to imply action.

I intend to use these, as well as many other examples, when working on my project. By implying action, I can cut down on the work I have to do without compromising the quality of the final work itself.