Did this short make Unbound Thresh good? Well, almost! || "A Night at the Inn" animation breakdown

hello flashbacks and philanderers my name is tbs guy and god damn it right do you have to release these things all at the same time can i have five minutes i'm trying to recover from the goddamn vaccine over here so anyway yes new unbound thresh animation and since i'm on record being distinctly displeased with unbound thresh as a concept before we get to the animation of the thing let's talk about the design because he does look better in this short to summarize unbound fresh is a skin that was created because wild rift is marketed towards a younger market and in some countries ghosts and skeletons can raise a game's rating in the same way that blood alcohol and female nipples can overhear so in order to get around the ratings board and put thresh in wild rift they had to make some changes trouble is they decided to change one of the most monstrous champions in the game into a porcelain-faced smooth looking sexy fuckboy with ghost abs which rather ignores the fact that thresh's story from day one has been the story of someone who loves being a monster and isn't interested in returning to a human form i did a whole long ass video about this so if you want the full context you can click the card up in the corner anyway axis studios and by the way could ask you all for a favor riot didn't initially credit the studio who did the animation in the video description so if you want to do me a favor anytime they publish a new animation and they don't put the name of the studio in the description or they don't tweet the name out could you all comment on it hey what studio did the animation or something like that like it's a small thing but credit is important anyway axis studios created this short for riot and they've made a few changes to unbound thresh's design to go along with it first of all he's no longer a porcelain smooth anime fuckboy he has been noticeably aged up his face has lines folds and wrinkles it has texture and as a result in his undead form especially he looks sallow pale and corpse-like rather than pretty additionally they've done away with the ghost abs changing the shape language of the glowing lines to look more like decorative padding they kept the visual idea of cleavage down his middle but at least it no longer looks like he's trying to be a thirst trap not that that's gonna prevent anyone from being horny for him anyway but that's the internet anyway these changes makes this in my opinion a better version of unbound thresh or at least one that feels a lot less directly contrary to who the character is as a person but i still don't like unbound thresh very much i feel like there were other ways to solve the censorship issue rather than turning the guy who loves being a monster back into a human but if this is what we're stuck with then i prefer this version over the vanilla one and with that out of the way let's go and gush over some really rather excellent character animation say hello to the main character of this piece of short animation it's not fresh it is bort and boris is actually rather an excellent new character because he's a very simple concept frankly he's a guy who lives in noxus just trying to get by he tried to pick pocket a mage and the mage put a curse on him that gave him this uncontrollable crab arm and because of that deformity because he has this problem he can't get work anywhere so he's stuck at this tavern being a server while being violently abused pretty much by everyone by the owner by the patrons like there are people who are kicking him as he's walking by the arm like they throw stuff at him they treat him just profoundly miserably and just really like that guy just [ __ ] kicks him right and he has to say sorry about it and that lady like gives him an elbow so just like from the first what are we like the first minute of the thing we are already on board's side like he's clearly just like a nice man who's trying to do the best he can under difficult circumstances and just everyone treats him like [ __ ] crap and garbage so when the turn comes where thresh offers bought a deal with the devil as it were bort doesn't have very many reasons whatsoever not to take it because like what's left for him at this time like who who is he betraying exactly people who have made it their life's work just to abuse him constantly and so by the end of this short what board does is he takes thresh is a deal and thus becomes the driver of this carriage like being pulled by the spirits of the people who were in the tavern abusing him and this is one of the things that i really really appreciate about the writing of this particular short because this is what thresh does this is what he's all about thresh adores misery he loves inflicting pain and suffering on people and the only thing he loves more than inflicting pain and suffering on people is making people inflict pain and suffering on themselves and others he has a fantastic story well not his story really but a story that he's involved with which involves ledros and kalista now ledros is kalista's lover from back when they were both still alive and ledros is trying desperately to make kalista remember who she was and thresh delights in manipulating ledros into failing to convince or failing to stir memories of the past and kalista and he delights in watching ledros suffer as the woman he loves simply will not return to him it's one of it's one of the stories that really reveals who the character is and it's the same thing here thresh sees import not so much like it's it's sort of easy to read the stories like thresh is doing a nice thing for bort but no he's not he's really not what he's doing is he's causing more suffering he sees in board and opportunity to create a torturer and a torturer who like has good reason like it's not board is pretty justified in [ __ ] hating these people these people made their own goddamn bed and board is just like serving them they're just desserts when he cracks the whip over them um like it's their own damn fault but thresh isn't really doing a nice thing for port as such what he's doing is using board to further his own agenda his own agenda of creating the absolutely maximum amount of suffering possible in the world and that's what i really like about the writing in this short is that it creates the situation where we have this character with whom we're very sympathetic who kind of gets to have a little bit of an arc and kind of kind of gets to give these guys what they deserve at the end which is sort of narratively satisfying but once you start thinking about what actually happened like thresh killed board bort is dead now and he's a ghost who's bound to thresh his service for well presumably for eternity and there's no guarantee that thresh is going to continue to be nice to him by the way like just just saying that thresh might at any point decide that it's more fun to torture bort rather than to let him inflict the torture on others um but narratively you get this satisfying little arc where you see the abuses that board goes through and then he gets the chance to get his own back but it also works with just how awful and sadistic and cruel thresh is as a character that's really good writing especially in a short that is only about like three minutes long uh three minutes or 30 seconds ish so i just want to praise that like the writing the character writing is really good here this is a really good use of thresh's character to interact with other characters and sort of showcase what what kind of like a manipulator that he is how exactly he goes about causing pain and misery out in the world um not just not just as like the the spooky ghost who's tearing people's souls apart and sucking them into his lantern and we'll talk about this bit later but also as someone who causes others to inflict more suffering into the world who manipulates people's fears their resentments their anger their own pain and suffering who preys on people who have pain and suffering in their hearts and like who can be manipulated into inflicting that suffering in turn on others because bored is like not a cruel man like we never see him contemplating violence really um until thresh gives him the opportunity to get his own back like this uh so there's also this element of corruption where like thresh is sort of inducing bort to indulge in his own like worst qualities of cruelty and again not that bort is a bad person not that he's evil he's been put in this situation by that [ __ ] right there at the greedy capitalist [ __ ] but like again it's just it's just really good character writing because you understand why bort does the thing he does you sympathize with it even though like the ultimate result is like maybe not the best thing that could have happened for him um because like imagine as a counterpoint if soraka had encountered bort she would be like oh why don't i just heal your curse and then he would be free from his curse and he could find himself like he could go and have himself a better life free from the abuse of these [ __ ] right so it's not like it's not like thresh saves him or anything but no it's just it's just good anyway let's talk character animation and bort is also the highlight for me of this one like thresh has a few good moments as well um but bort is the highlight and specifically because of the relationship between the man and the arm oh it's really good so this is actually deceptively well everything in animation is deceptively difficult like everything is harder than it looks in animation that's just the way it is but this relationship between the man and the arm that this arm which is out of his control this arm um which like actively hinders and sabotages him that's actually harder to do than you might think and one of the best examples of it probably happens here there that one that's one of the best examples of it because normally if a character is doing an action right like if bort was intentionally getting ready to slap the bowl of soup off the table what would happen would be that there would be this moment of anticipation where like he looks down at the bowl of soup because he needs to see what he what what he's what he's going for and you sort of see him like ready his muscles and get ready now that moment of anticipation is there you can see that the arm here like that little wind-up that it does like that one right there before it snaps the thing um apart that's the moment of anticipation now if bort had been doing it on purpose the anticipation would be much more wide like you would expect the animator to put the anticipation over his whole body like you'd see him sink down the shoulders maybe a little bit or like he'd change his posture or like he'd incline his head downwards to see what he's doing like something would happen but the anticipation here is only the arm does the anticipation and look how bort reacts to it when it when it does the thing there like this is the moment when he realizes what's happened after the thing has done has done what it's going to do like here he's blissfully unaware there you see his expression changing like oh [ __ ] like he realizes what the thing has done and now like he's he's he's like processing it his eyes chase the thing he's looking at it as though it is a different person like he's looking at it as though what have you done dude like why would you do this um and then like he reaches over and restrains it and kind of has to hold it down and goes um and that relationship between man and arm that's difficult to do like that's a difficult thing to animate because you have to animate the arm as though it is a separate character from the person um so like props to the animators for doing and this little thing here right like he's holding the arm down and then you get that like that little thing of like you can see he's sort of straining against it and it's straining against him you can see it's fighting him and that's like that's just really good that's just really good character animation but you also get the sense from him like that he's not like it's not like he doesn't know how to handle it like he like he can see that like when he's restraining it it's like he knows okay pull it down there keep keep a hand on it make sure that it can't like jerk free from my grasp so like he's also experienced with this you also get the sense like this is something that he's dealt with for a while he's used to it he can't control it but you know that's the way it goes and you also get that just from the character acting like especially this moment right here when we cut that like what's that gesture like out without knowing anything about anything that he's saying [Music] what's that gesture like what does that say to you that's just like like it's like an oh well what can you do like it's this kind of resigned acceptance of the situation that he's in you just sort of get like that weary sort of like yeah i mean this is my life this it's just how i have to live i mean what are you gonna do his whole like his whole facial animation everything about him is just all about like he's trying to explain this thing to the customer like it's a sort of amusing anecdote oh yeah i picked the pocket of a mage and he put a sap on me and now i got this thing and snips around and it just messes with things like oh what are you gonna do like you get that whole sense of like this defeated sort of acceptance of what's happened to him in his life and here's something else i love like we see it in all the work that axis um does for riot they are also responsible for the tales of runeterra animations by the way they are also responsible for uh the first trailer for the rune king game i believe was axis as well um and they've done a whole bunch of animation work for riot in the past they're really good at like especially this sort of um slightly chunky um fantasy painterly style where like if you freeze any one part you could kind of convince yourself that this was maybe like a 2d illustration and not a 3d model moving which is something i really appreciate especially look at the texture on the hair in his beard like little individual strands that's really nice um but something i really like about axis animations is the mouth animation that they do for characters talking because it's so expressive like look at this like the gesture he does here like like he's doing this gesture towards thresh and you can see he gestures with his mouth right like you see the mouth kind of pokes forward in this like sound whatever whatever it is he's saying um and then like that the head kind of follows into the motion but it's the mouth that kind of leads it like he pushes forward with his lips then tilts the head down and then sort of looks up and like you can see he's inclining himself towards the customer which again gives the sense of like this is a man who's like begging for understanding he's like yeah i mean this is this is just this is just how i have to live i'm sorry sir i hope you don't i hope you don't don't find too much fault with it you have to be careful who you mess with in noxus and thresh is like oh really you have to be careful do you um and this is the moment when thresh like identifies oh bort is a potential victim and by the way a little inspiration from loki here just like the with the suit um especially because that's like a very modern looking suit isn't it like that's very a very modern looking suit jacket that's kind of the same criticism that i had um of viego's character design is that this is like this is like a very mod like with the suit with the tie with the vest it's also like you can also argue it's sort of quasi fits in the victorian slash edwardian era that some parts of runeterra exist within but it is a very modern design uh for the character it works but it's also a little like it's not quite the same as mr proprietor over here uh shitty capitalist man who's constantly abusing bort for something that he really has no control over i also appreciate this first shot like especially along with the sound design you get the sense like he's walking through this fog right like so but but the fog that he's walking through is just like the like just just the fog coming or the um the steam it's the steam coming off the bowl of soup and yet like look at the way that he's walking like you can see he's almost walking like he's haunted right like he's like oh something's out there something bad is gonna happen and then oh my god it's a claw like then the claw comes in like jaws um as he's kind of like looking around you can see he's like oh something bad is gonna happen he just knows it and then when it finally does like it's like and that's also by the way the way we're introduced to the claw is not as a part of board but as a thing that's coming at him from the outside um and it's not until like we we cut to a different shot that we see that it's actually his own arm and they're doing a little bit of trickery here um because if you take a look at bort's arm here like there's no way his arm is long enough to reach all the way out there and then come back in this way like with by bending at the elbow literally no way in hell that's possible so you can see when we change the shot that his the position of his arm has completely changed in order to make it plausible that like this claw is sort of coming at him um it's a little bit of animation trickery but it gives you that sense of like this claw is a foreign thing it's like an alien thing that's an antagonist to him so like even here like after seven seconds we know that the claw is antagonistic to him that he doesn't control it and that he's like not like he's being hindered by it actively and this is another thing like i love the the use of weight here because the claw like lunges for the soup because it's trying to knock the soup over right and as it launches you can see the weight of it pulls board forward so he kind of has to catch himself with one leg here and then like it keeps trying to sort of chase the the the bowl of soup and then it's like gives up and decides to go in another direction and you can see how that pull like it pulls him off a balance so again he kind of has to run to catch himself and then it like swoops upwards and that's when you can see he sort of follows with his body finally plants himself and restrains it a little bit like there you can see like he's sort of planting himself to sort of find his center just like goddamn wrestling with the thing i said get under control there and this [ __ ] with the golden eye like you just take one look at this guy and you know you know what kind of greasy [ __ ] this dude is like with the gold tooth and the gold eye and like those thick eyebrows and that angry expression like bot get yourself over there you crustacean fool and here also we get the introduction to board's relationship with everyone else everyone else thinks that the shitty thing that's happening to him his misery is funny ahahaha look at bort with his like magic curse claw that is making his life miserable that is a funny thing to us so bort has to do this little gesture like clamp it under his elbow and look at the way he's walking here like look at how like the the hunched over posture and like this sort of defeated look in his eyes like this is a man who's kind of broken right like this is a man who's like really like who has to apologize for himself all the time because of things that are like that are just objectively not at all his fault and yet like here he is struggling to do his job struggling to do anything in case anyone's wondering yeah i think uh the soup in the bowl actually you can probably assume i don't even see i think the soup in the bowl is hand animated it certainly looks that way it could be like a uh physics engine generated 3d liquid that they just kind of painted um soup bits on but it looks like it could be hand animated there's more hand animated things later in um in the short though and by the way a little production note most of the environments that you see here like most of the things that the character interacting with are probably 2d illustrations so like the pillar behind him most of the tavr in the backdrop the backgrounds all 2d illustrations but the characters in them are typically um 3d models that are programmed to do like that that are animated with like just a minimum of little little things that they do it's probably easiest to see on the dude sitting over here right you see he has this little sort of sort of fiddly gesture where he like he changes the position of his arm a little bit and he like he does a little sort of idle fidget thing um in the background and most of the characters i i see in the background of this thing are animated which is something that's a little bit unusual because like i've seen shorts before where they've just painted like static patrons in the background of a bar scene like this because like who needs them to move but as far as you can tell they're all animated they could be 2d animated but i doubt they'd go to the trouble of doing that but the backdrops are painted like they're all painted 2d illustrations that are then layered into a 3d scene um so the table here in front of board is probably a 2d illustration it could be a 3d object but it's probably a 2d illustration that's layered on top of what the character anime animation is doing um as the poor guy is trying to give the explanation for the thing and like that shrug also like that shrug you just know how he feels right you can just tell like what's his attitude towards all this well i mean yeah it's like i can't do anything about it i just kind of have to roll with it this is just what my life is like man i mean you sympathize so much with the poor guy like he's got such a rough lot in life he doesn't want any of this he's just trying to make the best of it as much as he can and his optimism too like well i mean ultimate optimism is putting it putting it maybe a little strongly but the fact that he hasn't fully given up that like there's a part of him that's still sort of trying to be cheerful and sort of trying to just to get by even though everything for him is so fundamentally crap and we can also talk about framing here like i said in the intro that i like this thresh better um than the base vanilla version that he has in the skin and yeah i do i still think he should have looked like the actual canon human thresh that they already made for the realms of runeterra book i think it's very silly that they made a thresh and said like this is canotically human thresh and then they don't use him for anything but yeah this is better and the framing of him in this animated short does a lot of the work there because again in the splash art that he has he's framed as a porcelain smooth handsome fuckboy right like who's trying to to be sexy and good looking here this is not like he's not framed as a sexy handsome fuckboy this is framed as a serial killer scoping out his next victim like that's the way he's sitting right where his arms are just like down along his sides he's just sitting there without doing anything like he doesn't have his arms up he's not fiddling with anything he's just like staring at board in like this really creepy very still way which is like um so the framing does a lot to make the design more creepy more scary and more like unsettling and monstrous rather than just making him look pretty which i really appreciate here's another little like this gesture look at that gesture it's so oh and another thing i like look at the edge lighting on this guy this is the other thing this is one of the things that makes these shorts from access studios look so painterly like looks so much like moving paintings it's the way that they use things like this completely like blood red edge lighting around the guy to really communicate the warmth of the interior but that's something like you're more likely to see on an illustration rather than a like a 3d animation that's using any kind of realistic lighting like this edge lighting is really really very illustration-like and i really appreciate it anyway um that gesture right there like again you get the attitude of this man right like like he lowers the center of gravity just so he can do that big that that big like strong oh i am i'm a man who's yelling at a person who i think is less than him kind of attitude like you get that from him right and bored poor board completely overloaded with plates and bowls and because the guy is yelling at him he doesn't have his attention on on the arm and he doesn't realize what the arm is doing until uh oh right there way too late and then it snatches a plate and smashes it over his head while he's busy trying to keep the stack upright and like this is the thing is like bort just has a [ __ ] disability right like if you had some other servers who could maybe like unload him so he doesn't carry a huge stack of plates and he can keep an eye on his arm maybe [ __ ] wouldn't get this bad like the poor guy like you just you just feel nothing but sympathy for him because like everything goes wrong for him and how do people react to seeing him be miserable once again derision laughter and by throwing food at his head like [ __ ] hell it's a realistic portrait of the treatment of workers in the service industry let's put it like that and again like the relationship between board and the arm right like he's walking forward you can see the arm is like jiggling around and being unruly and then it does this like you can see it's it's like he's being pulled by a rope or like someone grabbed him and like pulled him by his arm but it's actually just this goddamn thing that's picked up a knife and is trying to stab him it's a comedic scene like it's funny but it's also like jesus the poor dude and then he tries to like deliver some food which which is what he's been told to do and then this [ __ ] kicks him and is like [ __ ] and he says sorry for being kicked like ah [ __ ] i just i just they get what they deserve all of them they all get what they deserve like and it's not a great thing that board has been turned into a torture ghost but they get what they [ __ ] deserve and again we see the relationship between thresh and port is that thresh is staring at him like a serial killer scoping out a victim because he realizes oh i can use this right like [Laughter] uh creepy and that's what makes the design feel a lot better um than it does in the splash art or indeed in his freaking wild rift or in his freaking character model is that here he's framed not as a sexy man but he's framed like a monster he's framed like a predator he's framed like something evil scary and dangerous again i still don't like unbound thresh but if you gotta have it this is like the better way to do it and then there he like he dusts himself off and he's like can i get you a warm bowl sir like he's still trying to be serviceable like he's still trying to be a good waiter to this man like bort you're such a good kid you don't deserve any of this and then notice the contrast by the way with the way that thresh is animated relative to for example like the the inn owner right the inn owner who's like always sort of doing these these big gestures like get that thing out of there like big pointy gestures and like like pulling himself up and such take notice of how thresh moves small movements very subtle movements like he leans forward ever so slightly and like pushes this bowl of soup out of his way as he says i'm saving my appetite because he's a creepy serial killer so he can't resist telling people that he's gonna murder them right um um but thresh moves with like and there's also a contrast between him and board where board is often like uncontrolled and like always kind of catching himself like trying to trying to sort of gather his balance trying to keep himself steady thresh is completely steady and moves very slowly and deliberately relative to what board is doing and that contrast between the two characters is also quite nice i also like this coin which has like the face on one side and then the skull on the other uh that's just a clever little like reference to thresh's true nature like again he can't resist telling telling people who he is and letting them know that he's a monster that's gonna kill them um because of course he can't he's a sociopath and he enjoys people suffering and again some lovely facial animation on this character because again like the way that thresh talks like that slow deliberate hit movements like none of like bort has this sort of he like he does you remember how talk about he did this gesture where he pushes forward with his mouth and then he lowers his head like he's he's he's a little bit more unsteady where thresh has this much more like he moves in these smooth controlled motions and then there again notice the way that this man moves right like it's not just that he snatches the coin it's that he reaches in like so does a little wiggle with his fingers then he snatches the coin right out of his hand and then is like even there like this gesture when he's just turning in order to grab the side of his coat so he can pocket the coin it's still this like big gesture of like holding the coin up and depositing it in his purse and then like chewing out bort for things that he has no control over i'll put it towards your debt because he can't resist just abusing the man at every given possible opportunity because he's a piece of [ __ ] and he deserves to die um [Laughter] oh right little thing uh the smoke that bought brushes away there hand animated and one of the ways that you can tell let's zoom in on it is that it is not animated at the same rate as the 3d animation the 3d animation because it's 3d animation uh you can just move at 24 frames per second or probably 25 or 30 in this case um because like it's 3d animation that's one of the benefits but 2d animation is a little bit like if you do that at 24 frames per second or 30 frames per second that's a lot of frames you have to make so instead you can see how the scene moves then the smoke moves then the scene moves then the dust moves then the scene moves then the dust moves then the scene moves then the dust moves on this like two frame cycle um that gives it a slightly different movement aesthetic and then when we need a really smooth motion from it like here when we need this the the dust to like smoothly dissipate then we animate it on once because we need that extra smoothness for like the fade away um which is stuff that you can do with with well you can do it in 3d animation too like there's been a lot of good 3d animation made with limited frame rates where they they like experiment with limited frame rates in order to imitate the look of 2d animation a lot of 3d anime does this and you can see the claw is scared like it's shaking because it knows that what thresh is and the thresh is gonna kill it thresh is gonna kill the claw the claw knows this it knows that he's dangerous um which is lovely skipping ahead a little bit so the smoke that comes out from the side of the door um i'm advancing a frame back and forth right now it's really hard to see because not much else is happening but the smoke as well uh let me see if i can do with the sound actually one two one two one two one two one two one two one two one two smoke is also animated on twos and it's hand animated so here is a thing i quite like in terms of the storytelling as well and one of the things that makes me feel like a little bit less miserable um about the unbound fresh skin is that what we see here is that the human face is not his true form his true form looks like this the human face is a disguise he puts on and that's revealed to us most explicitly here because it's not until he needs to talk to bort it's not until he needs to practice his little corruption that's when he puts the human face on like a mask like fades it in over um over like his his terrible real visage and the most explicit confirmation of all happens right here have you spotted it it's not that hard to spot it's right there that is thresh's true form as revealed by his shadow where he still has the skull face where he still has like the bone tentacles with the with um with chains on them he still has his true form what we're seeing here unbound fresh this version of him as far as the storytelling goes in this short that is only a costume it's only a costume that he's putting on to cover up what he really is and again if we have to have this human version of thresh then this is how i prefer to think about it like it's it's not his truth that's the thing that annoyed me a lot about unbound thresh when he was first revealed this was the implication from the story that fresh has sucked up all this soul energy from the ruination and now this is his true form he's returning to his true form reclaiming his humanity which like no thresh is not human he doesn't want to be human he hates being human because being human means being limited in the sadism and cruelty that he can do he likes being a monster because it makes him more able to do the monstrous things that he always wanted to do back when he was alive he loves being a monster and what we see here is that as far as the storytelling of this short at least is concerned he still is unbound thresh is a costume it is not the true form of the man and that again is one of the reasons why like i still don't like unbound thresh but if we have to have him then this is the version i prefer where unbound thresh is merely a costume literally a skin um rather than being the canonical representation of what thresh is supposed to look like anyway uh some 3d animation here uh it's all 3d animation obviously but the door that explodes here so this is a 2d illustration like this is just an illustration of part of the background same as anything else then here you can see this two frame thing where like here we just take some chunks out of the door and then we just delete the door like we just make the door not exist anymore and we replace it instead with a bunch of this stuff which is just like tumbling debris that just kind of falls over and falls down which is all 3d animate you can see it's it's probably a procedurally generated physics simulation or something that's doing a lot of this um and if you sort of pay close attention zooming on you can kind of see that the lighting on these little pieces of of like stuff it doesn't really work it's not nearly as painterly and sort of precisely calibrated as the as the aesthetic of the rest of the scene because the rest of the scene is painted of course so they can do whatever the hell they want with the lighting um they're sort of primitively done but they don't really need to be very complicated because like you can't see them they're they're on screen for like a second it doesn't really matter anyway smoke uh again still hand animated um and you can see here this general smoke not moving while everything else moves and then everything moves and then only the 3d objects move this part is smoked then that part of the smoke moves animated on twos in case anyone's curious um so that's a thing there and then this lovely bit like here's thresh like in his element doing what he really loves to do which is to hurt and torment people for no other reason except he thinks it's fun um and this is really like this is just really good that like the way that they use like this this wisp of ghostly energy like that kind of trails behind the arm as it vanishes and then we get there this that man that soul spirit thing you can see here thresh moves then the spirit moves thresh moves then the spirit moves thresh moves animated on twos as it gets pulled into the lantern and completely distorted and torn apart and man that looks so cool that looks so good like that's just such a good bit of 2d animation like god that looks horrifying right like he's practically melting as he gets pulled into thresh's lantern like oh it's gorgeous it's beautiful meanwhile the smoke effects coming off a thresh like the flame effects coming out around him they are still very much like generated by um by the 3d animation software with this lovely effect as the mask fades away or well the mask fades on rather and thresh reveals himself and this is such a good shot as well because it's right like you notice the the cute little little thing of like as thresh vanishes behind the pillar that's when like his true face comes into view on the wall and that's a clever thing because like because the character himself is disappearing that gives us a moment to oh let's look at something else that's moving oh hey that shadow's moving oh it's the skull and then you like you get this moment to notice the thing by obscuring the like the physical character you get to see the true form sort of reflected which is like as clever clarity clever very clever thing to do and i quite like like again look at thresh's body language look at his movement look how controlled he is in what he does and i love this expression as well because like that's why you kind of see that's not like that's not anything that's seductive that's not anything that's even dignified this is like he sees a victim and it's like the crazy eyes come out like he fully goes joker on this one um as he sees something to kill uh bye bye poor you this is so good too like just look at the speed of that movement and look at the this is there's a gentle little distortion happening here um you can kind of see it here you can see how how everything kind of shifts perspective a little bit because a fish eye lens is introduced just a little bit to sort of heighten the sense of speed as the claw or the hook streaks out towards its poor victim and then this i really appreciate this the the chain is is like you can see it's it's not snapped taut yet it's still sort of wobbly and then you get like you get this wave propagating across it and then zook it snaps taut and then you see the pole like zoom hand and made it smoke once again of course like oh that's just well done that's really well animated it gives a sense of like how powerful fresh is and another thing that does that by the way is like look at how he catches the guy right so this is a human body flying at him at full speed right how does thresh catch it completely still like he doesn't react he doesn't recoil there's no sense of any kind of physical interaction that guy just kind of enters his hand and is stopped like he ran into a brick wall and that physically like visually that just communicates how powerful thresh is at this point being a champion first of all being one of the most powerful creatures in runeterra because of that but also because like he's absorbed so much ruination juice uh that he can just kind of do that that an ordinary person wouldn't have stand a physical chance against him which makes him scary like which makes him terrifying and i like the pose on thresh here as well because like look at that like look at the s-curve that goes up through there like look at that supreme sense of confidence and power that he projects especially relative to poor board who's like holding up the arm trying to protect himself to consola trying to shrink away thresh is just taking up as much space as possible because he owns the room right like you get that sense and here's a lovely bit of trickery so um the ghost energy uh coming off the body as it dissolves that of course is 2d animation and it's hand animated so what they do with the body is that they just kind of gradually you can see this kind of faded out um like there's no actual moment of like transformation it's just that the body fades out and then over top of that they draw this 2d animation as it fades away and which gives you the sense like which gives you the convincing sense of the body being drained and turning into well turning into juice for thresh's lantern and again look at look at the guy like as he comes out like even now he's like he's hearing screaming and death noises and [ __ ] um and now he sees board and his first instinct is to abuse him like even now his first instinct is to be a [ __ ] to board and even now look at his character animation look at how ostentatious he is like these big gestures of like robot get out of the way i'm the owner here bonk [Laughter] as the claw does the first nice thing it's ever done for him um and smacks him you deserve that and again the same thing like where bort doesn't realize what the claw has done until then he sees it and he's like oh no and he drops the candle like in shock because he he really doesn't like hurting people yet he doesn't like hurting people yet there's the coin and there's the offer the bargain and here's something i love here's a really just oh like he if you if you need a good reason to give thresh a human face like if we need to have one this is it that do you see that do you see that little eyebrow thing he does like he's looking at board and he does that little eyebrow like get a load of this guy look at that that's such a good little bit of facial animation again don't really want fresh to have a face but if he must then please animate it like this because that's gorgeous like that's just that's that's character that's just that's a good moment that's a lovely little charming thing that he does um and i also like like when you see thresh looking at at the guy right like at the owner there's no like there's contempt there there is only contempt there is only hatred but then he looks at boards and instead of contempt it's like hey get a load of this guy we're co-conspirators you and i we're kindred spirits you're a little bit like me you also were cheated out of like the justice that you deserve don't you think that you should be like don't you think that you should join me in this thing and that's the other part of thresh's story like part of the reason why thresh turns into a monster is that like he's this kind of narcissistic sort of self-obsessed uh kind of cruel person who's like who's not very nice to people at all who's basically just a huge [ __ ] no one wants to be around him and he keeps he has this feeling always like that he's he's meant for greater things that like he's too good for this place like he's that kind of little petty [ __ ] he's like you know i'm too good for these people here like one day i'm gonna show him like he's that kind of person right he always he's he's someone who's always felt in his life like other people were holding him down and that's why he he feels like enough of a kinship with bort to offer him a deal rather than just to destroy him is because he feels import like yeah i'm i was every bit as put upon like i was abused the same way that this guy was like that's how thresh sees himself he feels that little bit of kinship that makes him offer a deal rather than just destroy him and which again because it's fresh like there's no guarantee that thresh isn't just gonna turn around and like torment abort sometime in the future especially if bort ever changes his mind and doesn't want to hurt people anymore like if he gets his fill of vengeance and it's like maybe this is wrong actually maybe we should stop torturing them thresh is going to turn on him immediately because that's the kind of guy threshes but again that's that's the writing of this thing that's quite good is that there is this sense of like thresh has sympathy for bort um not because he has any human empathy with anyone but because he sees and board someone who could be corrupted into being a kindred spirit someone who could be convinced to become a torturer the same way that thresh decided to become a torturer and i quite like that that's quite good and you can also just see the delight on thresh's faces he's like slowly bringing the lantern closer like you can see it's not that he wants just to kill the guy he wants to see the guy be scared he wants to see him suffer and beg and like live in fear for the last few moments of his existence he wants it to be slow you can see like he's slowly pulling the guy towards it he's enjoying it he's savoring the moment he's having fun with this because thresh is a monster he's not a man he's a monster he's not a person he's a monster that's the point of him which is where thresh now offers the deal and you can see here that the way he looks at board also becomes a little different here there's an intensity there now where he says like like where he lays out basically his thesis like that there's two sides to every transaction and that bort's suffering is this man's profit so shouldn't you board shouldn't you get your fair share of this shouldn't you get your own back like this is the moment of corruption where he's like inviting bort to become a little bit more like him and bort has no reason not to like that's the other thing that's beautiful about this it's not that bort is an evil person it's that like his circumstances are so [ __ ] horrid that like this is an improvement for him dying and becoming an undead wraith that fairies thresh around for all eternity is an improvement to his situation why because that [ __ ] that thresh is about to kill made his life miserable because people didn't care for him people didn't like reach out to him and offer him any empathy and when you don't do that well then he becomes vulnerable to being corrupted by [ __ ] like thresh then he becomes vulnerable to being turned into a tool for a much greater evil so you know when i end my videos by telling you to have empathy with those who are worse off than yourself this is why this is dramatization obviously there aren't that many lantern wielding lunatics and maniacs walking around out there stealing people's souls but you know it happens in other ways more realistic ways i like that expression on his face too like again if you must give fresh a face then at least give him interesting expressions at least give him a face with like a distinctive nose and a cool jawline and something that's like actually looks like a person rather than looking like a porcelain doll with a superiority complex um like yeah look at that there's some there's some character that face like there's some this there's some energy there uh that i quite appreciate and again the eyes the crazy eyes like you get the sense like this this is contempt right you see that little curl of the lip like he goes from this this sort of half friendly smile to that you see how the lip curls you see that look of contempt on his face like you see the evil in him right it's good it's really really good i really like it and then we transition out more hand animated ghost effects obviously as thresh flips the coin around walks into the carriage and this idiot gets what he deserves like again i have no sympathy for these people they got what they deserved even if they do look a little bit too much like fortnite characters here maybe um they they got what was coming to them and like i wish i wish bort could have had a nicer ending but you know this is probably the best you're ever gonna get from thresh and so it ends and this is a very good animated short by the way like again still don't like unbound thresh but i do like this short i do like what this short does with this character i do like the storytelling that's on display here because it's really good like it's really really solid storytelling it's really solid filmmaking just overall it's a story that i empathize with that guy if someone wants to write some fan fiction about board like his life maybe before it got this shitty and miserable i'll definitely read it because that's a good character that's a really good character i really wish i really wish we could have some characters in in league of legends the video game also who like maybe are a little bit like bort who just are like these slightly not beautiful people who have like troubles that are not all about dead parents just like this is a good character i wish to see more characters like him more characters that are like have that level of human relatability rather than being these impossibly beautiful sculpted superhumans that would be nice like to have in addition to your pantheons and your like ashes and kisses to have this also would be nice that that would be a nice thing right i would like that anyway if you've enjoyed another 45 minutes of me baffling on about animation then you can hit the like comment and or subscribe buttons down below they'll let you know when i do another video like this or videos that aren't like this i do a lot of videos that aren't anything like this at all so if you want to see that also like comment and subscribe and if you don't want to see that i mean i guess i can't recommend that you like comment and subscribe under those circumstances uh i mean i still like you to do it but but i can't recommend it if you don't like videos that aren't like this because there's some of those on my channel as well anyway uh right i have a second channel also uh where i do let's plays play video games and i have a short channel where i do very short videos about things so if this is a little bit too much for you well the shorts channel could give you like stuff that's more digestible in a minute or two um i have a patreon a merchandise store and a tip jar you can use them if you want to uh every dollar is about the same as a thousand views on a video so it helps me out a lot with my rent and stuff when people support me on there but if you're not in a position to be able to or you just don't want to you absolutely do not have to thank you very much for watching remember to wear a mask and wash your hands even still take the vaccine i have had my second dose and i fortunately avoided most of the bad side effects and try to act with solidarity please towards those who are worse off than yourself [Music] you

Channel: T B Skyen

Views: 169,673

Keywords: tbskyen, league of legends, animation, animated, animated short, cinematic, teaser, trailer, cartoon, wild rift, LoL, WR, LoR, riot games, thresh, unbound thresh, shadow isles, bort, breakdown, critique, analysis, story, writing, lore, backstory, explained, discussion, criticism, character design

Id: Ndb7DbDARLU

Length: 49min 24sec (2964 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 12 2021