JiJ : Opening Animation “gung-fu”

Ben — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 06:24:03 +0000

This one is a bit unusual, in that it’s not a sequence from the narrative. This is, instead, a small piece of animation that appears in the opening sequence. It will likely be used as a masking element, though in what capacity I’m not sure… I just draws ‘em, I don’t makes ‘em up (sometimes).

I enjoy animating silhouettes ’cause they’re a lot easier than full character work… you can hide murder in that negative space. Ultimately it becomes a matter of just following the lines, but in fact the initial rough animation for this contained a full (if incredibly scribbly) character. It wasn’t until the cleanup phase that it became a complete silhouette.

The sequence of moves is pulled directly from one of the many books we have on the shelf for reference of such things. It is, in fact, meant to evoke the style of many instructional books, hence the diagrammatic elements (which may or may not appear in the final sequence).

Personally, I don’t know much in the way of kung-fu… I can barely see my toes, much less kick ‘em over my head. If I can, though, I’ll come back and edit the comments with more detail on the specifics of the style seen (briefly) here.

46 frames, 25fps, drawn digitally. No trees are harmed in the making of this production.

-EDIT-

Found the book. It’s “Chinese Kung-Fu Series 14: Five Ganzhi Meihuazhuang Techniques”, distributed by Hai Feng Publishing.

These particular frames represent (poorly, I’m sure) figures 52-61.

And of course, none of this should be taken to reflect anything in particular about the character here, I just liked the movements.

The Fates Crew » Intro animation

JiJ : Opening Animation “gung-fu”