Animation Fundamentals: Batman of Shanghai

Angelo Rayner
Sep 7, 2018 · 3 min read

Batman of Shanghai, just like many other well composed animations artistically captures the artistic aesthetically appeal of animation by enveloping its content with the fundamentals of animation. As Wolf Smoke Studios {Youtube} is an extremely popular and well-versed animation studio, it is only natural that they masterfully employ concepts like the 12 principles of animation organically to their work.

Some of the more simple and minuscule principles show up frequently but with little emphasis. Along with very minor secondary action and slight exaggeration, there is also a higher quality sense in the staging of these characters in their environment. Very consistently the character that is the focus is located in either the center of the composition or in one of the focal points. They also are the only ones moving or have the most complex action in the sequence.

Framing: Catwoman [Left] Bane foreground [Middle] Bane Cart [Right]

Something else to note is one of the more convoluted principles: Pose to pose. It is sort of hard to tell, but there are a few sequences where characters change poses bymoving from key to key with pretty blatant in-betweens. However, one repeated action that really caught my attention were the sequences when characters morphed into different shapes. I could detect some slight squashing and stretch from the sequence when Batman morphed into fluid brush strokes that turned into bats, but not as much when it came to bane morphing into a ball. Both of these actions emphasized by the brushstroke accents that seem quite prominent through out the animation seem to show an alternative artistic approach to pose to pose.

Bane Transformation
Batman Morphing into Suit [Left] Bane Morphing into Ball [Right]

One of the most impressive things about this animation in my opinion is the overlapping action that takes place in several places. The moment I would like to take not of however, is the sequence where Catwoman is using her whip. While reading this complex action of her flipping around and performing her acrobatics, we also get to see how her whip follows her hand anchoring it to a specific spot on her body. At the same time we also see the whip has its own independent movement that does not follow her body. It is a completely different material with completely different constraints. It has more fluidity as a whip compared to the relative rigidness of her body. The same goes for her tail. Because of the way the whip seems to have its own independent action there is some argument that this is a secondary action.

With the amount of movement of all of these action there is even some noticeable followthrough on the secondary objects.

This short film hits most of if not all of the principles of animation overlapping most of them to emphasis one or two principles further.

BetweenTheFrames

Animated analysis from UMBC's Intro to Animation class

Angelo Rayner

Written by

BetweenTheFrames

Animated analysis from UMBC's Intro to Animation class

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