A few months ago, I figured I would do a Mac Parody Ad with Ninjas and Pirates. I have pirates, and I have one ninja, so I figured it would be perfect for stikfas. I went and found the music, recreated it in Garageband (surprising simple tune) and filmed the first 30 seconds. The quality isn't the greatest, I had a lot of camera flickers because I'm trying to have a white background, and it's much easier doing a black background.
Since I actually haven't done any weapon animation with stikfas, I figured this would be a good practice. So, I'm on to a small fight scene. Originally, I wanted the ninja to have two sai, but they were light grey and didn't show up very well. I was going to use the sword that the ninja had, but that too didn't show up against the white very well. Blast it all. So I ended up using a cutlass from another pirate set that Hasan from rastAsia gave me. Poor ninja, has to use a cutlass, but at least it's black.
Now, I don't know how ninja's fight with weapons. I haven't watched too many japanese ninja fighting movies, so I went to youtube to watch some old footage of ninja movies. Pirates fight like they're fencing: one handed, other arm in the air, and the thrust, slash and whatnot that we all know from Pirates of the Carribean.
Ninjas fight like they're kangaroos. Well, real ninjas probably don't fight like that, like pirates don't fight like what we see in the movies, but I may as well play to the stereotypes. Ninjas flip, jump up and down, and have strange weapons. They also attack in groups and surprisingly unaffective when going up against one assailant.
Well, I don't have groups, I have one black ninja, so I'm stuck with that. Hopefully, all my ten minutes of youtube research will help me, but in the end, animating these stikfas with weapons is hard. Sure, they have 14 points of articulation, but does that mean they can wield a weapon properly? No.
There is a lot of wrist movement when wielding a sword. There is a lot of lack of wrist movement in a stickfas.
And there is a lot of movement when swinging a sword around, which doesn't show up at all in my clip. I reshot the scene 3 times, trying to get the guys to look like they're swinging a sword.
The final shot isn't great, the ninja is barely moving, but it's only 2 seconds of footage so hopefully I'll eventually get the feel of the movement as I go.
Unfortunately, it's hard to animated the ninja because it's the G2 Alpha male.
The G2 Alpha male has those extra elbow and knee joints, which put the legs and arms in weird positions. That's why ninja barely moves, I can't get him to move without making him look like he has osteoporosis.
Anyway, in the end, I'm pleased, because I actually animated. This will hopefully get me practiced up if and when I start doing Fight 2. :)
