Flurry Not So Flurrious

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

I don't think so. The animation design of Flurry/Sands of Mu has the character moving his hands fast enough to leave afterimages. Yes, technically the character model is moving slowly and little purple images of hands are appearing in the air around the character's arms, but the design is afterimages-level speed, however that flavor is implemented by the animation team.

They could put afterimages of my character while using Walk. Doesn't mean I'm superspeeding anywhere. In fact, it would make Walk look silly, just like Flurry looks kind of silly with the animation trying to tell you that you are punching at super sonic speeds, while you are obviously not.

Instead of trying to convince me that my character is punching really fast by drawing floating hands beside his fists, why not just...have my character punch really fast? Of course, I happen to like the afterimages and certainly don't want them to go away, I just want the animation itself to be sped up.

Yes, I can move my hands as fast as Flurry. No, little afterimages don't appear next to my fists when I do it, but I am "punching" just as fast.

"After-images" don't look fast. They look goofy. I honestly don't understand how these ever became synonymous with speed, but they don't correspond to any part of optics that I'm aware of. This, as a point of fact, has been a serious problem with depictions of super speed in practically every game I've seen it depicted in - the game TELLS you you're moving super fast, but you really aren't. That's why anime tends to depict super speed as just disappearing, as that's what it would look like to a casual observer.

I've always been a fan of speeding Flurry up considerably. In fact, some time last year, I made this incredibly unprofessional mockup, which people said looked spastic. It still looks fine to me, as anyone doing anything with super speed will look spastic, and I'm doubly sure that an actual graphic artist could make one that looks less goofy.

Right now, Flurry looks like 8 Shadow Punches with the pauses cut, alternating between left and right hand. As such, it has the weight and back action of Shadow Punch, which is what makes it spastic. If we want it to not look spastic, we need to eliminate the upper body movement, or tone it down a bit. The reason E. Honda's lightning arm and Chun-Li's lightning leg work so well is that the characters are performing simple strikes without shifting their weight, which looks less goofy.

To me, fast things should look fast. This includes Super Speed, as well. The current slow-motion super-fast running has to go. I'm tired of taking 100 foot steps. Super fast running should look super fast, not like regular running but while sliding along the ground faster.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I think the op is looking for more of a

Hokoto Hyakuretsu Ken

I was also thinking of 100 Crack Fist

Really? That's basic figure drawing.

Blurred/incomplete figures, multiple depictions of an object at different points of action, dynamic poses showing direction/velocity...

That'd work opposite. It'd give the illusion time was slowing and your character with it. In effect, it *would* portray superspeed, but of the world around them.


To toss another suggestion in the hat: Make Flurry a 8ft PBAoE and increase its recharge. Add 'ghost figure' FX so it looks like the character is also swinging behind and around.

It would only portray superspeed if the rest of the world slowed down. As it is, it doesn't. So if I turn on Walk and get afterimages, while the rest of the world continues at normal speed, it portrays nothing other than pretty afterimages. Same with Flurry. If time slowed down for the enemies, then it would suggest super sonic punching. But that's not what happens. In fact, due to the length of the animation, the enemies can get a another attack on you sometimes. If anything, that would argue that Flurry gives the bad guys more speed.




I'd be all for this, too. I think the PBAoE attribute would really separate it from Air Superiority and Jump Kick.

Thanks! I tried not soundind like a d**che but probably failed.

But those basics are kind of engrained in my brain since I ended up taking Drawing 101 at least 3 times, in high school, in junior college and again in university. I changed my major too many times...

I think you misunderstand. It's not about the effect/animation in a vacuum. Speed is relative.

Looking at something that doesnt remain in focus portrays the object moving with some speed or the viewer moving at speed. If a jet zipped by your window, the plane would be a blur. But to the pilot, your house would be the blur. The same is said for other methods. Something with after images can appear to be moving faster or slower than those watching. In still work, it's the pose that helps determine that but this can be blurred intentionally.

All that said, I'm not disagreeing with the thread. Flurry doesn'f feel fast on my character either (Jump Kick feels more speedy to me). Sam's video looks pretty keen to me but that actually looks harder hitting than attacks in the Broadsword

In drawing, yes. Not in animation, that's my point. Sure, you could use blurring and after-images in animation just to make frames blend together better, but JUST that isn't enough. In actual animation, you can't fool the eye that it's seeing something faster than what it's seeing with just fancy effects over a slow animation. To my eyes, Flurry looks a lot like the combo of gut punches Agent Smith delivered to Neo near the end of the original Matrix, and it suffers from precisely the same problem that entire movie suffered from - none of their super speed looked like super speed. It looked like a psychedelic dream. Especially Smith's gut punch combo, which honestly looked like what it probably was - a normal series of punches with after-images added.

Actual, real speed comes across best when it's actual, real speed. A lot of the time you don't even have to depict the action in question if you make the beginning and end obvious enough. That's why anime movies can get away with a character "disappearing" across the screen within the span of a few frames to signify speed - because it actually IS fast. For an American example, Ben 10 had a really hit-and-miss history with Ben's super speed alien, Accelerate. In some episodes he'd zoom through a shot in zig-zag in quite literally a single frame, leaving a "Tron bike wall" trail which would fade away slowly, and it would look amazing. In other episodes, this supposed super-fast alien would "speed" around in just slightly above regular speed, but with that same Tron trail, and it would look REALLY bad.

When you need to animate something to look fast... Make it fast. That's really the best way to go about it. Instead of animating the full punch which, if I timed it, would probably take a quarter of a second, just animate the start and stop of many more punches and have your character swap between them, say, every 10 milliseconds. Just slow enough to where the motion isn't outright lost at lower framerates, but more than too fast to actually see the transition from state to state. Then throw in after-images in there after the fact and let the character play through, say, half a second of pure punching (totalling 50 hits of animation) and then pad the thing out with phase in and phase out animations until it's at least 830 milliseconds (same as Energy Punch) and use that. Finally, drop a high-frequency repeated hit sound like Wolverine's Berserker Barrage from my bad mock-up and you're golden.

And also, when we're talking about super-fast animations, these look best when you don't involve large, complex upper body movements. All the bobbing and weaving that Flurry does right now only serves to make it feel even slower. I'm sure fictional speedsters can dance a waltz in super speed and still make it look graceful in painted still shots, but in actual, real-time animation, large, complex, weight-shifting movements simply played in fast forward look goofy more than they look fast. Remember - Benny Hill made a career out of sped-up film and a lot of silent cinema comedies managed to make really unfunny activities very funny when they played them at double speed or so.

In much simpler terms - when it comes to animation, you can't "fake" speed with slow animations. At best you can pretend the slowness isn't there, and at worse you make everything feel even slower, which is precisely the problem Flurry has right now. For a "Speed" pool attack, it's incredibly slow, both in terms of visuals and in terms of root time.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.