Borrow from the Best!

When you start to layout an animation scene and not sure how to do it, this is a good time to see how other people have solve this problem. I have been working on this short called "WatchCat" and there are a few sequences were we have a fight between the hero and the bad guys. 

Believe it or not, I'm not a Martial Artist expert, so to animate a flying kick I need to find an expert in the form of visual reference. Bruce Lee was probably the best reference when it comes to doing this action and makes it look cool at the same time.

Stop reinventing the wheel!

I did a little research to see how a good fight sequence is cut together. At first, my scene was too much little a dance and lacked any kicks or punches in the editing. Luckily, there are a lot of people fighting each other in films and so here was the result of my research.

Chen vs Susuki - Chinese Connection Scene study from Toondini on Vimeo.

Here's the animation based off the reference footage the scene is still in production, but the timing is looking better.

http://watchcatfiles.blogspot.com/2016/08/borrow-from-best.html

So whenever you find yourself fighting to figure out how to put a scene together or make an action work, borrow from the best reference images and videos you can find.