Hello! Welcome to another yapping session. Today we're going to be talking about ✨️animation✨️! More specifically, Zenless Zone Zero's animation in Von Lycaon's character demo. Yes, it is a gacha game and yes, it is almost two years old. BUT it is still an amazing piece of media to learn about how ZZZ animation works and really get a grip on some techniques Lycaon excels at.
- Dynamic Posing
Lycaon's poses are AMAZING. Let me show you one I freaked out over.
Even with Lycaon being this far away from the camera you can CLEARLY see his pose. All of his limbs are not intersecting with anything and you can tell pretty clearly what he's going to do next, especially in play. The reason why this FUCKING FRAME is SO GREAT is because yeah, your character can be doing something cool, but if I can't SEE it then I don't know what I'm watching. This is how some animation can look 'muddy' or you may need to rewatch or pause to process it. That's not you, that's a lack of dynamic posing.
This is also a good pose! The tail is placed way better in this one, but both are still great. This is why landing poses are so amazing. You don't need to worry about how the pose will transition into anything, the character is now at rest. (Look at me using fancy nerd language when I've never touched an animation software in my life)
- Arcs
Okay, fine, it's scene analysing time. ROLL THE CLIP!
We're gonna keep to the sketches and first analyse the arcs that the monster is doing.
It's definitely nothing revolutionary, they're just strong arcs that make it obvious where things are going. That's how you get that smooth feel, with arcs.
- Anticipation + Arcs Continued
And now we move onto Lycaon's arcs. He's a very twirly character, so his will be more in depth, which means MORE SKETCHES!! (Please bear with me I do not draw often, let alone digitally)
After he ducks he instantly starts to throw the boxes down with his arm WAYYY back. This is anticipation 101, it makes you super excited for what he's gonna do next.
Here we're just building on that anticipation. He's still doing his arc and he's following through really powerfully, not to mention how the diagonal makes it feel even more strong.
And then his tail follows through with a screen wipe. This makes the action feel super close to you and, again, builds anticipation.
More following through. This whole action is just reinforcing upon reinforcing and it's just *muah* CHEF'S KISS.
Here we start to settle. All the anticipation that has been built up goes into the hand for the ending of the action. This is how we get payoff. (That other red line is just the centre of the arc. I would talk about it but I forgot the term LMAO)
And then the boxes come down to complete the action and earn that aforementioned payoff!! Also note the squash and stretch here, that's supposed to be a cube.
Shit I just realised my phone won't let me add more screenshots. COME BACK FOR PART 2!
