Why It Works: Red vs Blue's Animation by Monty Oum

red vs. blue my first introduction to this roosterteeth created web series was in the 8th grade I had said next this dude in my chemistry class and he pretty much told me all about it how it was a fun show to watch but it got incredibly awesome around season six and that people made music videos on it and I decided to give it a go and let me tell you I got hooked I watched all the seasons watch them again made my mom watch it with me and I kid you not it's been deleted now but my first video on my youtube channel was a red vs. blue tribute video and I'm not making that up the music choice was love runs out I believe yeah so trust me when I tell you I love red versus blue and trust me when I tell you I have a love/hate relationship with red versus blue should the show have ended on season 10 yes could it also have ended at season 13 heck yes it was maybe an even better finale than season 10 but the show kept going and the writing kept getting weaker at least to me and last but not least the animation got sloppier and here's something really important to note once you start getting better and better at something randomly getting weaker at it or getting sloppier is worse than staying at a consistent level red vs. blue evolved from its earlier seasons from being a random mostly ad-libbed show made by a few dudes to a full-scale production with excellent animation to back down from that when well-thought-out stories and animations were now the norm is a big mistake and the reason why this started getting weaker was because of the passing of monty oum see monty oum played a massive role in seasons 8 through 10 most notably animation wise but also story wise to those of you who are looking forward to see the new season of red vs. blue season 8 coming out or if you saw it last week at Comic Con PAX East there's some of my stuffing family plus vs. blue considering how anime asked everything felt and how home eventually went on to create Ruby home was honestly an incredibly focused and passionate person you can see this especially in the way he paid attention to the characters of the show and the direction of the action sequences animation can make or break a film or series if a show looks pretty that's great but if the animation isn't there then the life isn't there see even old and that is roughly drawn has life because it moves it breathes and an animation you have to exaggerate movements and emotions to further convey what every good animator must try to emulate a real person even an anime as exaggerated as it is you feel a certain weight to what's happening thanks to the principles of animation you feel as if even though the characters are bouncing around everywhere everything is a weight and a realness to it that's something Monty Oum understood again the lead animator of red vs. blue four seasons eight nine and ten on this episode of why it works I want to talk about why the cinematography and choreography isn't what it used to be in the series red vs. blue sidenote I don't watch Ruby so I can't really comment about the animation side of that show here monty oum had a deep understanding of fight sequences and he had a deep understanding of the principles of animation but let's not start with animation let's talk about something home also oversaw I want to showcase the difference in filmmaking most importantly shot composition and let's compare something like season 10 to season 15 so here we have a bunch of characters fighting and here we also have a bunch of characters fighting what do you notice that's different shot composition one is shot kind of like an actual film and the other shot in ways that are essentially near impossible to do now you'd imagine that shooting realistically would be better right wouldn't you prefer something that feels real not exactly so this program is called autodesk maya and it's the program that you know roosterteeth uses for their animations I know that a Monty Oum used poser a lot but this is essentially the place where you can model rig your characters and also you can create the world and lastly you can create cameras this shot is impossible in real life unless you have an incredibly complex rig but it's made possible thanks to a maya camera as i like to call it also filming realistically isn't the main problem one of the main problems red vs. blues fight Direction has is that it isn't filmed in a dynamic way see in a fully CG or 2d world using a maya camera isn't necessarily a terrible thing here the camera is allowed to sit past characters and do crazy maneuvers because subconsciously you've accepted that this isn't reality it's exaggerated reality red vs. blue animated by Monty Oum is exaggerated reality so going back to season 15 it has better models better lighting maybe but all of that can't make up for a lack of no offense vision and that's not to say I know everything because I don't but I do know that not only is animating difficult but planning and animation is just as difficult and this lacks not only personality but any type of tension due to the lack of speed and lack of choreography something later seasons try to do to make a fight look cool is to add slow-mo and that's not how you make a fight cool it makes something look flashy maybe but not necessarily cool the slow motion in later seasons is used more so for the moment before impact while previous seasons used slow motion on impact to further enforce the power the impact had a subtle difference and yet it makes a world of difference season eights finale has one of the coolest final battle action set-pieces for a webseries ever because it uses its location to its advantage to craft an action sequence later seasons of red vs. blue after season 10 do not really do this instead its fight is in this place so we just punched our way into another environment but that's it I mean I guess if you count this it's not much of a use of environment so when filming an action sequence you can always film a fight without cutting too much so that it's easy to understand but sometimes cutting helps as the barrage of cuts will make a fight look like it's going a lot faster now I'm not saying to make something look like taking three which is abysmal I mean something like this see a lot of Monty ohms fight scenes have the animation principle of anticipation so here when the black character text is going up against the white character meta we have anticipation the meta is running at text and text is readying up or punch at the moment of impact we get the principle of animation called timing and motion essentially a fight can't simply be this it's this how does this work it's because there's less frames in between the beginning of the punch and the end of the punch while in the first one there's more frames more frames means slower movement similar to over cranking and under cranking in old films so when Tex punches the meta here the punch is so quick it barely registers in doing so you feel the speed of the punch the camera also pulls back to showcase how intensely the meta fell down onto the ground compared to that - season 15 episode 13 models look prettier sure but the fight absolutely lacks any type of intensity and the camera isn't helping either it actually pulls away for no reason which actually kills the intimacy of a fight also the person and the black armor is text here the same text that so yeah it's a weird and look again I'm sure that animators spent a lot of nights to finish the scene but if the scene has no direction then it fails yet does this remind you of anything so the anticipation isn't really there as well as the timing there's also a lack of follow-through it seems as if text is giving Carolina the woman in blue armor really light taps Carolina should be getting pushed around heavily and flying around and this does not happen let's see if we can fix this just by removing a few frames compare that to this a contained fight in season 9 pay close attention to the camera you see how it zips around to all these crazy places in obviously impossible fashion that shouldn't work and it does the reason being it matches the speed and ferocity of the action put on display it isn't trying to be realistic it wants to be an exaggerated reality and an animation that's fine also since it flows from punch to punch there isn't a need to cut which means that you don't get random jump cuts that confuse the viewer now I want to talk about season 17s final fights I would compare it to the final fight in season 10 but that's so insane and excellent that I feel bad comparing here we have Carolina versus Carolina her present self armor against her past armor and don't ask me why this is happening because I stopped watching the show when they decided to go all time traveling on me so I'm calling this one present Carolina and this one past Carolina to make things easier the fight is a major improvement overall in compared to season 15 I guess 16 but the fight still has similar problems the fight is a bit floating animation wise but that's not a big deal the biggest problem is the camera does nothing for the fight here you see how it just stays in place it doesn't follow the action it just so happens to stumble upon it now look at this segment of season 10 episode 9 it follows the action it's incredibly important in animation to make things flow and connect and feel very frenetic when you have a fast-paced fight follow the action the only moment in the fight when we get a sense of true impact is this scene Carolina punches Carolina through a wall but did you expect that to happen I personally didn't and why is because there was no exaggeration in previous seasons the principle of animation called exaggeration was there the punches all felt normal and fast but when something was very powerful we would be shown very clearly that this was a powerful punch or a powerful kick meanwhile this looks like any other punch and it actually surprised me when I watched this for the first time I thought she was just gonna hit her really hard I had no idea this was gonna go all injustice to on me at this point when past Carolina's uppercutted they should have had present Carolina's stand back and thrust herself towards the enemy but it was just another punch and then we get back to another slow fight and for some reason there are zuman's on things that aren't necessary to zoom into meanwhile we have a fight like season tens final fights here we see clear indicators of timing and motion anticipation follow-through an overlap and most importantly exaggeration I am still astounded and inspired by the work of monty oum the brilliance and the simplicity and at the same time it's so intricate and complex the fights are genuinely breathtaking at times using life and intensity and there's a magic that's gone from red versus blue and roosterteeth as a whole because of Monty but everything he was capable of he most definitely learned through years of practice and devotion and you can get to that level as well the animators at roosterteeth most definitely can it's not about whether they can put in the work as they can it's about paying attention to the principles of animation and it's about how the work is presented that makes all the difference I think red vs. blue seasons eight to ten or some of the best the Internet has to offer definitely check out the entire series if you're interested but the animation doesn't really start until season eight and hey maybe this is just me saying please roosterteeth please hire me as an animator in this weird way but who knows what the future holds thank you all for watching thank you so much chats for watching this video if you are new to the channel hi you can subscribe and you can become part of the Chad nation I think that's what I'm gonna call it I'm not entirely sure but we are a very nice nation and we do our best to not be horrible people I want to say thank you to my 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Channel: Browntable

Views: 390,598

Keywords: Browntable, Entertainment, Analysis, Analyzed, Review, Critic, Critique, red vs blue, red vs blue season, red vs blue video essay, red vs blue analysis, red vs blue animation, red vs blue fight, principles of animation, learn the principles of animation, animation, red vs blue season 10, monty oum red vs blue, red vs blue monty oum, monty oum animation, 3d animation, rooster teeth, burnie burns, web series, the animation of monty oum, Why it works, critical, halo, machinima, 2d, rwby, monty

Id: cKchH5pjcM8

Length: 12min 11sec (731 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 01 2019