Animation Analysis: "Arknights - Lonetrail 3D PV"

hey what's up everybody welcome back to another video and this camera looks a little dated yet doesn't it uh let me fix that real quick welcome to the new camera setup that was probably a really bad transition I just wanted to do something fun to show that there's a new camera and this will be more or less the way things look from here on out so I hope you like it uh anyway let's get right into the video I just wanted to do something stupid uh to Showcase that anyway let's go we were born to pursue knowledge having fun with those particles already we were all born with knot before we were given a language okay our hands reach out without being taught that's kind of neat whoa this uh water Decay here on this character model that was a really quick Decay I think it's just because like purse like per frame everything is going rapidly it's kind of tricking my eye out a little bit I probably would have handled that a little bit less aggressively but that's just me looks fine I'm just pointed it out and being picky I'm a Critic all right anyway all are to see all are to know we think we uncover we theorize the pursuers I love that little thing I don't know what it is but the design is kind of fun it's almost cute big quests of the old dotting Our Land enlightened future I love the uh the filter of the water like the light passing through calamities or is that just like plastered and I'm gonna have to take a closer look at that one great reflections the effects team must have had a blast with this catastrophes oh that little a little like flourish on her shoulder [Music] here beautiful visual storytelling [Music] oh the effect in her eye oh the micro Expressions oh we're gonna have a field day with that one oh more of it no oh okay yeah I'm talking about that one let Only Fools remain stagnant idly descended history rags [Music] lifeless they're really like clothes really I'm sorry I'm noticing stuff I'm gonna mention later I'm nerding out we'll get there don't we shall gaze through that was gorgeous there's so much to talk about you can be a long video oh my God four runners were gone aftercomers will speak their vestiges [Music] the cinematography of this [ __ ] video was that a model I couldn't even tell if that was I think that was an illustration I have to take a look at that too um wow okay yeah plenty to talk about with that said we have a new setup for that so let's go over to the animation discussion setup shall we all right welcome back this is still a little new so it's probably gonna be a smidge clunky I apologize if there's a lot of cuts and such but uh yeah so welcome to my little drawing setup here I wanted to talk first about this little sequence here this isn't really necessarily A an animation thing specifically but it is called a dolly Zoom where the background and character are on separate planes sort of or what feels like the background is moving while the character stays still you would lean your camera forward while also using the zoom on the camera to adjust for that distance being changed it's basically uh an easy way to give um the effect of there being some sort of like a confusion or a moment of absurd reality like it's called the vertigo effect uh because it was used in the movie vertigo and it is utilized a lot in things to kind of showcase that there is something not quite right about the scenario happening so it's very very useful in a lot of ways stuff like this can be extremely versatile when you're directing and just in general framing your shots in order to get a certain emotion across like that it makes you immediately go whoa you know like you just kind of have that reaction naturally so that is a really cool thing again not really animation specific but I thought it was a uh a good example of its use and felt like mentioning it okay so another thing I wanted to talk about was this sequence here how you've got like the character sitting there but all that's going on in the background so like this separation here is what really interests me because over here on this chunk of the bookcases that sort of distortion isn't happening and I was wondering if this whole Shadow was sort of projected onto just the background as a flat plate so there wouldn't be uh any sort of sense to the shadow to know what's happening in the world and react accordingly to certain geometry around it but I'm not sure because of the separation if one or the other is correct or if it's like a mix of both maybe it's just where they placed the uh the shadow in the sequence here because it feels like as you kind of scroll through that there's really not much else of that going on so it leads me to believe that maybe the um the sequence here with the shadow is maybe having just some basic Distortion added on it's like a filter in a post-processing or it is just being slapped onto the layer to give it that sort of effect or that there's so many ways this could be what's likely is that in shots like this it is just a projection being placed in between the characters and the background and for that other one that I had just shown where it did have it reacting to a chunk of it that could have been uh just where they placed it in the Z space the distance from the camera where it was affecting one piece of geometry and not the other through that projection so there's there's a few ways but either way really interesting to me how that looks I mentioned this one while I was of course going through here how I like that there is this little like this collection of bubbles here that's just kind of flaking out from the edge and it almost seems like there's some sort of like an air around the character like a a pocket a super thin layer that is just not being affected here but I suppose it could just be a general effect showing that she's still kind of in the water and moving I'm not entirely positive but I just think that details like that are really cool and it was worth mentioning that much and here we've reached one of my favorite Parts about this specific video is the use of micro expressions in this spot right here with her eyes there is of course the effects animation happening in the eye is that swirling it's a very anime-esque thing to do it just kind of is supposed to show the welling up of tears and you could see it down at the bottom how the tears are kind of appearing there it's it's really cool when I see stuff like that because it means there's a legitimate effort being put into making sure that a character's animation is being properly sent you can see these sort of uh these little microscopic but still readable little shifts in her expression you can see how in this section the eyebrows coming down and the whole time the eyes are kind of like shaking a little bit and just kind of scooching around in what feels like rapid and maybe random uh responses to something and it's probably Focus whatever she's looking at here in this shot whatever is away from her person and you get to see uh yet again in this sequence here how her eyes are still doing those darts you still get to see the uh the tears here and how effective those are and it's just a really cool little look characteristic thing that they don't usually do you know like just having these small adjustments to the expression can mean a lot to the emotional weight of a scene real actors use those all the time in IRL films and they are so useful in animation as well they're not quite as popular because they do take a little bit more time because it's a fine tuning thing but that shows how much that they care about the product that they're working on here the fact that they're willing to add those here's actually a sequence where I think they should have used micro expressions and and decided to not for whatever reason this character as she shifts from this more uh placated neutral expression she should have while making this smile maybe have had the uh the pupils obviously in both of her eyes shrink down just just a little bit you know like not too much but maybe change the shape of the iris and just overall you could have scaled it down then back up you know just to kind of add a this looks like a monocle they could have added just that little bit more effort on this one as well and that would have added just a little bit more characterization to that realization in the moment that if there's something clicking you know there there's a uh a sense of connection between what they just saw and where they're going to be going now little things like that and that's why I like that they added it with the other character so I wanted to come back to this spot because I think there was something kind of interesting here I wanted to hold off on saying what it was until I actually got here but there is this neat little thing that this does right here you see this little spark of power in her hand at the very uh beginning of this staff being formed I think is a staff I didn't really get a terribly good look at it there's so much else to look at but you can see that like there's another piece here that appears there's another piece that shows up down here and each piece as it appears just kind of lightens up and then solidifies and connects to itself to um in a way just kind of reveal this model underneath it which I'm not entirely sure how they would have done that I just I'm not a CG person I'm mainly a 2d animator so these sorts of reveals are a little bit foreign to me but what I gotta assume is that there's some sort of a um a turbulent map that goes over this and is basically faded into so they probably were able to select different sections and make it kind of appear from a point and then just added a little bit of texture at the end of that using the water to hide those transition lines but either way really neat the water and the particle effects that are being handled in this sequence are just Immaculate they stylistically fit just perfectly like beautiful delicious right here I'm actually impressed because they seem to not be doing too much uh deforming of the model uh you can see like as she swings around here there is a little bit like right here in her leg it's just getting closer to the camera where her foot is and that kind of feels like there's a little bit of sponginess to her leaping but I'm not seeing a lot of limb deformity I'm seeing very like on model usage which is honestly pretty impressive for as uh as fluid as everything is looking usually there would be a little bit more of uh deforming of the character model in order to get it to work and have certain energy to it this slide like I mentioned looks great I love the way that that feels again not really any deforming I want to see if she jumps here if there's any a little bit a little bit of deforming kind of make her legs a little bit longer you can definitely tell that between like here to here I know my camera is kind of covering a smidge of it but from there to there there's definitely a little bit of banding so it there's some but not a lot and that's all you need you don't have to overdo it sometimes uh projects like OverWatch utilize a lot of model breaking in order to get their characters to do certain things and yeah it's just one of those things I'm actually really impressed at how dynamic they made it feel without having to rely on Breaking the model so much this sequence right here is really neat I just wanted to take a look at this in slow motion the way that the curves happen here for the record one of the rules the laws of Animation is curves arches you want everything to kind of have a curve or an arch you know you don't want to make just straight lines at you like if you're making a straight line even this has kind of a curve you don't want to just go back you know like that would be boring imagine if she just kind of jumped out the water like that like so having these arches really add a dynamic energy to everything happening in the sequence and it is super important to have those especially in moments like this where the character is leaping and Landing but I love the way that this water uh follows in here it reminds me a lot of the way that they handled water in the movie Sinbad uh DreamWorks movie from many many years ago uh beautiful beautiful uh rendering of how they handle water and the weight of hair and physics underwater is super neat and the way that they handled those curves in this shot is very reminiscent of that to me I wanted to revisit this real quick this will probably be my last point but I wanted to see if this was a model or a an illustration it looks like it may be a multi-layered illustration that has just been chopped up there you can see some uh deformity some heat lines here at this very slight wobble in between the frames right down here in this section um that is super minor but very useful in order to sell how hot it is uh little things like that but I believe that this is uh just some illustrations I can't imagine they would have done a model like this this intricate from this distance for this short of time it feels like it would be kind of a waste of resources but having it be an illustration and then just like chopping it up to multi multiple layers and then doing all that work in post would make the most sense to me at least and it really sells everything the the detail is super nice it feels like the production quality went up even though it's something that is arguably easier to do so I think that's about it uh I will see you guys in the next video thank you for dealing with my talking and my little technical uh spark notes about this video little bits and pieces here I hope to do this more now that I'm kind of used to the setup I've kind of adapted to it through this video and I hope you all like it because I'm planning on doing more so thank you all very much for watching I will see you later goodbye [Music] thank you

Channel: Catharsis

Views: 20,915

Keywords: music, drum, CatharsisDrums, drums, drummer, reaction, reacts, review, reactor

Id: 6HRHvbGXO8A

Length: 17min 31sec (1051 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 24 2023