How Do You Plan a Great Fight Scene with Weapons?

That’s a tough question because it is so specific to the situation at hand. It depends on the characters, the fighting style, the animation style, and what weapons you’re given to work with.
However, here’s some quick fight tips:
1) If there is any rule for planning a fight scene, it’s that the fight scene needs to eventually look like it wasn’t planned!
Fights are chaotic and messy, and maybe it’s just my personal preference, but the more choreographed a fight looks, the more bored I am watching it. As an animator, fight scenes are the one place where we have a terrific advantage over our real-life actor counterparts! Actors must work closely with their fight choreographer and rehearse their fight over and over in order to try to create something that doesn’t look *too* staged, but also doesn’t result in anyone actually getting hurt. Inevitably, the vast majority of these scenes DO feel like two people trying to hit their marks and not injure each other.
As an animator, you don’t have to worry about any of that, and can actually create something that has the ferocity and "messiness" of a real battle! To me, this is one of the single most exciting and fun things about animation, so I’m always extra disappointed when I see a fight scene on a demo reel or in a show or film that feels needlessly choreographed.

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