I needed something to tide me over while waiting for John Wick: Chapter 4 to come out, so I made this. Took me about three months to get it done, from early- or mid-December to early March (not that I worked on this every day.)
By sheer happenstance, it just so happens that exactly a year ago I was working on my Widow Wick animation (a.k.a. my first major animation project.) That project, too, features Black Widow as the protagonist, has John Wick sensibilities, was started in December (of 2021), and was completed in March of the following year. Looking back, I’d like to believe I’ve improved as a self-taught animator in the past 12 months…
…but I’m still a bit disappointed in the overall quality of my work.
Hey!
This looks epic man! There’s so much work put into it, awesome effort.
I would say some of the animation has a fun cartoon-y movement to it but that could be a style too, but I can’t say much about it because I know absolutely nothing about animation xD
And hell yeah, it was super entertaining, thank you
Hopefully if i do another one of these, the cartoony style you mentioned will either be a deliberate thing that I decide to add, or just entirely missing (cause I do kinda want to push for realism with my animations. )
The better you get, the better your artistic eye will get as well. Expect to feel the same next year even when you improve. ;D
Humans are hard to animate naturally and these are ambitious, complex animations animations with multiple figures physically interacting. Some of the fighting was admittedly a little stiff or cartoony, but I’d say a couple specific sequences really (particularly the one where she’s fighting Iron Man if you want a specific example). Overall it’s a beautifully done cinematic work, well lit, shaded, and composed, and despite my previous statement, MOST of the animation is expressive and natural.
I’m not sure whether you’ve done most of the modeling yourself or if you mostly used third party assets. If you’ve done the modeling yourself, then I should add a compliment for that as well. If you’ve used third party assets, that’s not surprising with a project as complex as this.
I appreciate your usage of “when” instead of “if” I improve.
Seriously though, thank you for your comments! They were a great morale boost after a long (and often disheartening) project.
The character models I used, along with the weapons and the majority of set dressing, are all 3rd-party models. Some weapons like the hammer, and drill, and branch (that Black Widow uses to club Iron Man with) were downloaded from Poly Haven. The only thing/s I modeled were a few of the environments-- specifically, the place where Black Widow fights the blonde chick, and both of the hallways (the sort of industrial, subterranean tunnel and the one where the fight against Iron Man takes place. It’s basically the same tunnel, with slightly different textures, set dressing, and lighting.)
I call it the “shifting goal posts of creativity” - the better you get, the higher a standard you’ll hold yourself too and the more adept you’ll be at critiquing your own work. Really it’s really a mechanism for growth that keeps you continuously improving because you’re motivated against stagnating. Which is why I said “when” you approve instead of “if”, naturally you’re going to get better with practice if you keep aiming higher.
And this is definitely a project you should be proud of.
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