oh, hello. I didn't see you there I was busy enjoying some generic brand eggnog
we're talking art styles again today but first this episode of funk TV is
sponsored by the letter T when I was young 3d Dragon Ball games look let's
face it awful they looked awful the idea of turning any anime into a video game
was always conceptualized with an understanding that it would be at best
an interpretation of the medium like you see the characters and go yeah okay I
get the idea close enough oh my god drunks
so then how is it fast-forward to today could you show me this and tell me it's
3d no you're blatantly lying next they're gonna say it won best fighting
game of the year too needless to say we've got a lot to talk about I know
that I'm gearing up to talk about fighter Z for a bit but first we've got
to go back in time to the far-off year of 2014 arc system dropped this new game
guilty gear xrd and the first thing everyone immediately noticed was where
the heck does it look like that needless to say people had questions up until
this point no one had ever really pulled this off
it was fucking witchcraft people were riding in the streets I think I don't
know I was busy back there and being the absolute maniac he is
Junius Eamon O'Meara came out to GDC and explained exactly what was up which by
the way I'm not gonna go away in-depth here cuz I'm not a developer I'm barely
even a functioning adult but I highly recommend this video if you're into deep
dive talks about visual design anyways the sparknotes version is basically this
the iconic 2d style was accomplished using cel shading complex character
models lighting tricks imitating outlines and an anime framerate being
the huge wok being the huge wapis I am I'm gonna splurge about how cool some of
the stuff is that first one on the list may seem familiar to you if for no other
reason than the fact that you're staring at cel shading right now dummy tf2 is
from the start praised for its cartoony style which is all thanks to its usage
of cel shading there's some pretty cool breakdowns on how it works on YouTube
but the gist of the idea is that shadows get sharpened making 3d models appear
more rigid and cartoony there's also another famous example of cel shading
and gaming which speaking of what are you doing here no no no I have
straining Ortiz are not a lot around here anymore leave the legend of zelda
windwaker there is no shortage of articles praising this game's art
direction which can easily explain why when it came time for breath of the wild
we saw a return to the form because it's fucking awesome and given these true
examples it's probably obvious to you now why I personally want to talk about
what makes 2d imitations so cool refer back to that list complex character
models is a broad bullet point but for the sake of clarity I'm referring to how
character models need a lot of polygons and a lot of bones for animating the
bones part makes enough sense but why so many polygons well aside from these two
things work in tandem with each other by maximizing what you can animate on a
model you make it possible to simulate imperfection in 2d animation in other
words Steven universe I'm sorry I'm sorry it was a potshot I know but you
get my point here in anime every frame is hand-drawn which means everything
it's just a little different each friend clothes moving faces changing but with a
3d model everything moves too realistically there's no imperfection
when you're on model a hundred percent of the time so by creating these complex
character models you can literally recreate imperfections face details
changing just a tiny bit every frame close weighing just a little to
cartoonishly already you can start to take in why they get so uncannily close
to 2d but this next part is just as cool being anime frame rates your average
cartoon generally runs around 24 frames per second meanwhile your average video
game runs at least 60 assuming you're not a console plebian ignore that that
means to really knock home the 2d style you've got to artificially limit the
framerate of your character animations this might seem counterproductive
especially for a fighting game but it's important to not underestimate exactly
how much information you could convey through 24 FPS the property closing and
camera angles you can purposely present the fighting a move object I don't even
animate the show at 24 fps it's like 12 even my mouth is auto-generated I'm a
hack fraud and I'm glossing over these ones for time but lighting and outlines
make just as much of a difference to conveying 2d give an anime characters
are drawn without lines and given lighting tailored to the character
rather than the realism of the scene it makes sense that even these
minor things become immediately giant when they're stripped away none of this
technology is particularly new it's been around a while so let it sink in that
nobody ever really went all-out with it until 2014 that's mad it came as no
surprise that when fighters he was announced it was from the exact same
guys who made guilty gear dispel your personal opinions of Dragonball for a
minute and let us all come together to acknowledge that this game has finally
done the series justice and I don't just mean mechanically though it is very good
to good in fact I can't play this game because everyone destroys me in no I
mean visual justice these visuals are tit-for-tat with the anime so much of
the posing in this game may as well been lifted directly out of panels from the
manga some of this Oh Maj posing isn't even physically possible in a 3d space
proportions just don't work that way and this is where the animation principles
come in enter squash and stretch all right no this is not a realistic way to
stretch your arm so stop it Gohan you're gonna hurt yourself
it's already a pretty good video on YouTube touching on this by tibi sky and
check it out if you don't have the time but by utilizing this you can further
shorten the gap between 2d and 3d getting creative with body proportions
when catered for a certain camera angle lets you pull off these especially
impactful poses and I'm not even sure where to fit this part in but while
watching these camera pullback videos I noticed another cool trick too with
these close-up shots they spin the character with the camera locked onto
them and it makes this cool anime moving background effect you'll notice that so
far all of the games I've talked about are 2d fighters like yeah imitating 2d
visually is cool but it's definitely made easier by only having two planes of
movement to work off on but there's one more game I want to touch on a fighting
game with not two planes of movement not four points of movement but three yes
three planes of movement killa killed the game if yeah it's not the best title
we agree on that but this game takes on all the
fundamentals from guilty gear and fighters II and does it all in a game
where you see the characters from constantly changing angles I cannot
fathom how difficult this must be to pull off you need a lot of experience in
the industry to do it and guess what it's another arc system game but I mean
it makes sense they've knocked it up twice pretty
effectively you can especially appreciate their work in these clothes
ah geez well there was my ad revenue may as well appreciate this work a bit long
game isn't even out yet so it's hard for me to go in-depth but it looks amazing
and just so I can really hit home how cool it is visually contrast it with
another recent anime game my hero ones justice looks tacky generic anime
fighter tacky I don't even mean mechanically I've never touched the game
but in my opinion it's not even a contest between these two visually and
between you and me kill the kill is easily in my top 3 anime of all time
so maybe I'm just looking for an excuse to gush but this game if nothing else
we'll hopefully pave way for even more games which utilize the same visual
design concepts later on I think that we're gonna see more and more of it soon
especially from anime games that's it thank you for watching my video consider
it a belated Christmas gift today's December 27th which actually
marks the 10th anniversary of my YouTube channel a bit on YouTube a bit longer
than that but for all purposes today is my birthday so go ahead get me a present
I'm ready you you did give me a present right that's really disappointing guys
you know what I'm gonna give you one more chance here go over there and drop
me a $1 birthday present we'll call it even then and you know what if not
that's fine too I'll fund my eggnog addiction out of pocket if I have to