Chapter 310 How To Make An Anime Fight

Pedrarruna Manor's Animation Studio, Elffire City.

5:03 PM, Monday, December 21st.

Just like every Monday, Theo had his day off from the restaurant that day.

His restaurant didn't open on Mondays, so all the employees had this day to enjoy without working.

While the restaurant's employees were enjoying their night off work, Theo was the opposite.

He would work even hard that night!

This meant that Theo had the whole night to work on his animated music video.

He was in the middle of a delicate and essential procedure in the anime production, and he couldn't afford distractions.

That's why he had been working on his animation studio since he hung the phone with Matron Isabella in the morning.

He hadn't even stopped for eating lunch, so he had been working for hours without stopping.

This was understandable because Theo was arranging the whole animation.

Composition or 'filming' was the name of what Theo was doing.

Theo was using a technique called Flat Compositing.

When the feel of depth between layers is suppressed, this can be referred to as flat compositing. This is an intentional style in which both background, foreground, and all layers in between are given equal prominence on the screen. Instead of aiming to draw the viewer's eye into some point of depth, our eyes are encouraged to wonder and take everything in holistically. Background animation usually implies flat compositing because the background feels like a cel in the same way as the characters acting over it might (in fact in many cases they are the one layer). In other cases, it's about harmonizing background and foreground.

Flattening in composition minimizes the sense that the background is further away than the foreground, one of the fundamental notions underpinning the more traditionally cinematic approach. A key facet of this is depth is color. Many other anime in recent years attest to when the background art is colored with an equal vibrancy to the foreground it removes the most intrinsic sense of depth and brings both into a single layer of perception, flattened. Much other anime carry this look very well.

But what made Theo's work more complicated was the fight scene that he created.

If he just created a normal slice-of-life animation without any action, his work would be much easier.

But a fight scene involved too many elements, and Theo had to pay attention to all of them if he wanted the audience to be drawn by the animation.

For example, the audience had to understand the fighters' mindset.

This includes the participants' feelings towards each other and their reason for fighting. While the earlier aspect is about an objective value, this one has more to do with the characters' personal motivation, and what they hope to achieve. And establishing the opinions of the fighters about each other, such as mutual respect, hatred, apathy, etc. makes what happens in the fight more understandable.

Consequently, the audience will be able to immerse themselves in the story if they know why the characters are fighting, that's because they will be able to identify themselves with the characters.

The viewers also had to know how capable the fighters were.

If we viewers don't really know what our characters are capable of, there's not a lot to care about how the fight leads to the conclusion. If we have a clear idea or a foreshadowing of their feats and weapons, we can look forward to how they use those abilities to try to grab victory. Otherwise, the writer can induce any convenient feat to them to lead to the conclusion.

That's why the first scene of the anime is the two characters covered in blood and injuries. Just with this scene, the audience can understand how capable the two of them were.

After all, how could they become so miserable if they were not powerful?

The other aspect was the psychological state and emotional impact between the characters.

There's more to psychology than just mind games and tactics. The depiction of the characters' psychological conditions can add more depth to a fight. It also includes the depiction of the raw emotions the characters feel during the fight.

Aside from the previous point, emotional impact through having a strong connection to the characters involved makes a fight scene actually worth caring for. The flow of emotions crafts the humane side of the fight. We all have seen Naruto, so we have enjoyed some of the fight scenes because of how well the emotion is delivered, especially by paralleling the movements with the characters' past experiences or showcasing emotional moments they shared. It also depends on many outside feats, such as characterization, story writing, etc.

That was exactly what Theo did as he chose to show how the two characters grew up and why they were fighting.

By showing their childhood and growth throughout the years, Theo gave the chance to the audience to build a connection with the characters.

The audience would also understand before the fight happens what victory and defeat meant.

A fight scene gets better if we, the audience have a clear idea of what the victory or defeat means, and what changes it will lead to. This way, we understand the significance behind what happens.

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These aspects are the transition to the fight scene.

Basically, the narrative buildup. How the story transpired and led to the fight we're about to witness. This strengthens the base of the scene because we get to know that we're not getting the fight scene just for the sake of a fight scene.

These aspects are also how Theo had to build the fight, but as the fight happened, he had to pay attention to other aspects.

A fight that involved superpowers and martial arts, like the one Theo planned, involved a sense of place and time flow.

Through shot exposition and characters' subtle movements, an anime can provide a solid depiction of the location the fight takes place. This provides a solid idea about what restrictions and advantages the setting provide our fighters with and instantly makes the fight more interesting to watch.

A good sense of time flow means properly depicting the time gap between each movement, the duration of the fight, etc. while keeping the characters' speed and agility in mind, and the flow of time. Having an idea of the time flow makes the fight more engrossing. And a fight becomes very thrilling when the concise time limit is there.

An essential aspect of anime fight scenes is the choreography of the fight.

A proper depiction of the characters' movements depending on their physical abilities helps the viewers to understand exactly what they're doing. Their methods of physical movements become clear and give the audience a reason to take them seriously. This also includes the depiction of size and shape. The fights in Naruto are so engrossing because of the slowed-down movements of the ninjas and it truly feels like we're seeing actual ninjas portraying their chakra moves and skillful movements.

A good anime fight had to be always choreographed.

The last aspect that Theo had to pay attention to was the most important one.

The audio-visual aid.

Using different camera angles and specific shot compositions in different scenes of a fight can help emphasize certain points and feelings, and provide background and foreground visual information in a fight. Proper sound effects and soundtracks make the fight more genuine and engrossing. The color theme audio-visual mixture is crucial for creating a fitting atmosphere. Through good cinematography and directing choices, it's possible to make a fight scene much more interesting than it'd plainly be.

As this was a music video, Theo had to be highly skilled as he made use of the song and the animation.

Would be able to produce the legendary fight he was thinking of?