FUNKtv: How FighterZ Nails an Artstyle

oh, hello. I didn't see you there I was busy enjoying some generic brand eggnog we're talking art styles again today but first this episode of funk TV is sponsored by the letter T when I was young 3d Dragon Ball games look let's face it awful they looked awful the idea of turning any anime into a video game was always conceptualized with an understanding that it would be at best an interpretation of the medium like you see the characters and go yeah okay I get the idea close enough oh my god drunks so then how is it fast-forward to today could you show me this and tell me it's 3d no you're blatantly lying next they're gonna say it won best fighting game of the year too needless to say we've got a lot to talk about I know that I'm gearing up to talk about fighter Z for a bit but first we've got to go back in time to the far-off year of 2014 arc system dropped this new game guilty gear xrd and the first thing everyone immediately noticed was where the heck does it look like that needless to say people had questions up until this point no one had ever really pulled this off it was fucking witchcraft people were riding in the streets I think I don't know I was busy back there and being the absolute maniac he is Junius Eamon O'Meara came out to GDC and explained exactly what was up which by the way I'm not gonna go away in-depth here cuz I'm not a developer I'm barely even a functioning adult but I highly recommend this video if you're into deep dive talks about visual design anyways the sparknotes version is basically this the iconic 2d style was accomplished using cel shading complex character models lighting tricks imitating outlines and an anime framerate being the huge wok being the huge wapis I am I'm gonna splurge about how cool some of the stuff is that first one on the list may seem familiar to you if for no other reason than the fact that you're staring at cel shading right now dummy tf2 is from the start praised for its cartoony style which is all thanks to its usage of cel shading there's some pretty cool breakdowns on how it works on YouTube but the gist of the idea is that shadows get sharpened making 3d models appear more rigid and cartoony there's also another famous example of cel shading and gaming which speaking of what are you doing here no no no I have straining Ortiz are not a lot around here anymore leave the legend of zelda windwaker there is no shortage of articles praising this game's art direction which can easily explain why when it came time for breath of the wild we saw a return to the form because it's fucking awesome and given these true examples it's probably obvious to you now why I personally want to talk about what makes 2d imitations so cool refer back to that list complex character models is a broad bullet point but for the sake of clarity I'm referring to how character models need a lot of polygons and a lot of bones for animating the bones part makes enough sense but why so many polygons well aside from these two things work in tandem with each other by maximizing what you can animate on a model you make it possible to simulate imperfection in 2d animation in other words Steven universe I'm sorry I'm sorry it was a potshot I know but you get my point here in anime every frame is hand-drawn which means everything it's just a little different each friend clothes moving faces changing but with a 3d model everything moves too realistically there's no imperfection when you're on model a hundred percent of the time so by creating these complex character models you can literally recreate imperfections face details changing just a tiny bit every frame close weighing just a little to cartoonishly already you can start to take in why they get so uncannily close to 2d but this next part is just as cool being anime frame rates your average cartoon generally runs around 24 frames per second meanwhile your average video game runs at least 60 assuming you're not a console plebian ignore that that means to really knock home the 2d style you've got to artificially limit the framerate of your character animations this might seem counterproductive especially for a fighting game but it's important to not underestimate exactly how much information you could convey through 24 FPS the property closing and camera angles you can purposely present the fighting a move object I don't even animate the show at 24 fps it's like 12 even my mouth is auto-generated I'm a hack fraud and I'm glossing over these ones for time but lighting and outlines make just as much of a difference to conveying 2d give an anime characters are drawn without lines and given lighting tailored to the character rather than the realism of the scene it makes sense that even these minor things become immediately giant when they're stripped away none of this technology is particularly new it's been around a while so let it sink in that nobody ever really went all-out with it until 2014 that's mad it came as no surprise that when fighters he was announced it was from the exact same guys who made guilty gear dispel your personal opinions of Dragonball for a minute and let us all come together to acknowledge that this game has finally done the series justice and I don't just mean mechanically though it is very good to good in fact I can't play this game because everyone destroys me in no I mean visual justice these visuals are tit-for-tat with the anime so much of the posing in this game may as well been lifted directly out of panels from the manga some of this Oh Maj posing isn't even physically possible in a 3d space proportions just don't work that way and this is where the animation principles come in enter squash and stretch all right no this is not a realistic way to stretch your arm so stop it Gohan you're gonna hurt yourself it's already a pretty good video on YouTube touching on this by tibi sky and check it out if you don't have the time but by utilizing this you can further shorten the gap between 2d and 3d getting creative with body proportions when catered for a certain camera angle lets you pull off these especially impactful poses and I'm not even sure where to fit this part in but while watching these camera pullback videos I noticed another cool trick too with these close-up shots they spin the character with the camera locked onto them and it makes this cool anime moving background effect you'll notice that so far all of the games I've talked about are 2d fighters like yeah imitating 2d visually is cool but it's definitely made easier by only having two planes of movement to work off on but there's one more game I want to touch on a fighting game with not two planes of movement not four points of movement but three yes three planes of movement killa killed the game if yeah it's not the best title we agree on that but this game takes on all the fundamentals from guilty gear and fighters II and does it all in a game where you see the characters from constantly changing angles I cannot fathom how difficult this must be to pull off you need a lot of experience in the industry to do it and guess what it's another arc system game but I mean it makes sense they've knocked it up twice pretty effectively you can especially appreciate their work in these clothes ah geez well there was my ad revenue may as well appreciate this work a bit long game isn't even out yet so it's hard for me to go in-depth but it looks amazing and just so I can really hit home how cool it is visually contrast it with another recent anime game my hero ones justice looks tacky generic anime fighter tacky I don't even mean mechanically I've never touched the game but in my opinion it's not even a contest between these two visually and between you and me kill the kill is easily in my top 3 anime of all time so maybe I'm just looking for an excuse to gush but this game if nothing else we'll hopefully pave way for even more games which utilize the same visual design concepts later on I think that we're gonna see more and more of it soon especially from anime games that's it thank you for watching my video consider it a belated Christmas gift today's December 27th which actually marks the 10th anniversary of my YouTube channel a bit on YouTube a bit longer than that but for all purposes today is my birthday so go ahead get me a present I'm ready you you did give me a present right that's really disappointing guys you know what I'm gonna give you one more chance here go over there and drop me a $1 birthday present we'll call it even then and you know what if not that's fine too I'll fund my eggnog addiction out of pocket if I have to

Channel: FUNKe

Views: 645,809

Keywords: FUNKe, Steam, dbz, fighterz, smash, guilty gear, arc system, anime, game, visual design, animation, webshow, dragon ball

Id: YmhIUf-JYyY

Length: 8min 1sec (481 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 27 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/mariusrhpsd]

The GDC video he mentioned is an amazing watch, they basically set a new standard for cell shading that's yet to be topped.