Lament of the Mind

lovelymidnamage:

libbykeppen:

wingiestbird:

Hi guys! I’m going to explain something about animation which will hopefully change your minds about this picture.

(from The Animator’s Survival Kit by Richard Williams)

In order to effectively convey movement, the animator has to use a line of action for key poses - the most prominent type being a C-curve. To make moves readable, the animator will reverse the C-curve with each pose, and tie each of those together with an S-curve.

Smash Bros is a fast-paced game, so the line of action needs to be very exaggerated to communicate the movement. To do this, some parts of the character need to be broken. The pose in this image is something you’d see for less than a second, so I highly doubt they’re trying to go for eye candy with it.

This part of the Nintendo Direct shows just how fast Samus’s movements are. Each pose is hardly discernible at this speed - even when the camera is zoomed in on Samus, it’s hard to see how broken her anatomy is. However, her moves remain readable.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Samus isn’t the only character that breaks. Every character in Smash Bros has exaggerated movement - some of them even have body parts that grow really big to give punches or kicks extra oomph!

Incredible flexibility as demonstrated by Shiek!

A massive Charizard hand resulting in a very distorted Wii Fit Trainer!

Yoshi is going too fast!

If this were a rendered promotional image like a poster, I’d understand pointing out the flaws in her anatomy. However, this is an in-game screenshot, and saying that it’s wrong to pose her like this is telling the animators to not do their jobs.

THANK YOU

Thank you indeed.