My Animation Era

  Chapter 963 War scenes in animation

  The end of the year is approaching.

  The temperature in Jiangchuan also dropped sharply with the arrival of winter. Gu Miao, who was running around in long sleeves before, had to add a fleece jacket.

  He has been very busy recently.

  The animation "Shen Bing Xiaojiang" is about to start broadcasting. As Wanbao's main work in the second half of this year, its performance is also a point that he is very concerned about.

At the same time, the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" animation entrusted by CCTV has also entered the most exciting part. Wonderful war marching scenes such as the Battle of Chibi, the Battle of Guandu, the Battle of Yiling and the Six Out of Qishan are in full swing. .

to be honest…

  Gu Miao feels that the most difficult part of making these war scenes is not the production process, but how to conceive the storyboard and scenes.

  In the process of doing it, no matter what difficulties you encounter, as long as it is technically achievable, it will eventually be resolved satisfactorily.

  The conceivable process is very headache and torture.

big occasion!

  Soldiers from both sides gathered on the battlefield and fought towards the city wall or the enemy army with the sound of dull drums.

   Such a scene is described in words, which is actually very pale.

  Because the sensory stimulation brought by the picture is obviously much stronger than that of the text. In many scenes, listening to others and seeing them with your own eyes are two completely different feelings.

  In order to do this well and make the animated war scenes more shocking, Koizumi and Ma Kui made bold innovations and tried many new techniques in animation production, even taking into account the faces of each soldier.

Trivia!

  Whether it is animation or manga, as long as there are more than 10 characters appearing in the same screen, most of them are "passers-by faces".

  Better, at least draw a nose, mouth and eyes. Although these minions look like clones, they still have noses and mouths.

  For those who are lazy, just don’t draw the nose and mouth at all, just draw the outline of the characters directly, and it’s enough to indicate to the readers and audience that there are many people.

  Can Romance of the Three Kingdoms do this?

  The answer is no!

   In the frontal collision of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, it is unrealistic for everyone to draw eyes and noses, but it cannot be completely unpainted. At least the closer to the protagonist and core supporting characters, the richer the facial details.

  Take Prime Minister Zhuge as an example.

  Suppose a certain soldier is standing behind the prime minister with a pistol in hand as a bodyguard, then he is the soldier closest to the protagonist, so he will have extremely rich facial details, and may even have expressions and eyes.

"anyway…"

  Just as she made herself a cup of tea, Gu Miao suddenly thought of a question, turned to Ma Kui who was beside her and asked, "How did you create such a big scene where hundreds of thousands of people gathered?"

  A bird's-eye view is a must.

  But apart from the angle of view, the canvas is so big in total, and the content that can be accommodated is extremely limited. How to express that there are many people, at least hundreds of thousands?

  "Usually through the lines, tell the audience how much troops each side has invested in this battle."

   Ma Kui explained with a smile: "On the other hand, when we were producing, we used multi-view editing and rendering to show the huge crowds on the battlefield in a small way."

  In a single shot, there are actually not many minions.

  Even if there are the most people, standing in a dense pile of overhead shots, in fact, counting carefully, there are not many people in this pile, and there are more than a hundred people at most.

   Didn’t expect that?

  Looking at the numerous soldiers, the real number is less than a hundred, far less than imagined.

  This is also common sense in animation.

   Not only animations, those live-action film and television dramas, especially war costume-themed TV dramas, basically use this method to show a single scene.

  Based on Gu Miao's experience in filming anti-Japanese dramas, if a war scene can use hundreds of actors, it is considered a big production.

  Thousands of people?

  It must be a movie-level project. TV dramas generally do not use this scale, and the TV screen is small, so there is no need to cram so many people into the camera.

   Tens of thousands of people?

  Even with Zhang Guoshi’s standard of filmmaking, such big battles have never happened a few times.

  So in those film and television works, the big scenes involving hundreds of thousands of people are actually edited and spliced, or even vague concepts that are based on small things.

   No one really thinks that there are so many extras in filming, right? Do you really think box lunches are not expensive?

   Animation is the same.

  The TV screen is limited. To be precise, the resolution and canvas size are limited, and so many details cannot be accommodated at all. Therefore, when making a war plot like "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms", the number of characters is not as exaggerated as imagined.

  If you subdivide each frame, you will find that in this frame, the soldier in the distance is just a black pixel...

   "Actually, this question is not important. What is really important is how to highlight the mighty generals during the war!"

   Ma Kui knew very well that the great battles in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms were different from the history books. The role of the generals was amplified, and fighting a war was like playing a game.

  For the generals on both sides, killing ordinary soldiers is like mowing grass, and it is easy to solve.

  Can a real war be like this?

obviously!

  Romance contains elements of fiction and exaggeration. Generals, as stars on the battlefield, must highlight their strength.

  The most typical example is Lu Bu.

  Lu Bu is very powerful, but can he really wield Fang Tian's painted halberd, and be able to come among thousands of armies with ease? Do you know what the concept of "army" is?

   Tens of thousands of people, each of them can be drowned by Lu Bu with a mouthful of saliva.

  The extremely exaggerated performance of generals can be regarded as the more fantasy part of the original novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms".

  In order to present the brilliance of this part, Ma Kui and Koizumi made "open mode" for all general characters such as Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Lu Bu, and Dian Wei.

   Normally, they are fine, they look like ordinary people. At most, these generals are stronger, and they are not superhuman.

   But when they arrived on the battlefield, these generals acted as if they had opened Gundams. Unless the enemy generals came out, ordinary soldiers couldn't do anything to them.

   "If these generals are well shaped, and then the soundtrack is targeted, the war scenes of the animation "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" can be said to be perfect."

  Gu Miao thought of a sentence.

   For a wonderful war scene, the soundtrack should at least take half of the credit.

  The passionate music, especially the symphony with rapid drumbeats and percussion, is definitely the best catalyst to create a cruel atmosphere of war.

   If there is a sound of horseshoes in the middle, as well as the rapid panting and shouting of soldiers, the effect will be even better!

   Speaking of which...

  The five-element song in the animation "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" has a different style, but it seems quite appropriate to use it as an episode of the Battle of Chibi, the Battle of Guandu, etc.?

   Pork knuckle rice is really the best choice for fast food. I feel that the roadside pig knuckle rice in every city is delicious...

  (end of this chapter)