Help Me Plan A Creature Fight

#1

Hi everyone! I’m a student animator going into my final semester soon, and for my final semester our brief is to do whatever we like. So, in my final semester I want to do a creature fight between these two characters:

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I’m having trouble planning the exact choreography of a battle between these two, so I was hoping to get some input from anyone who would be interested in sharing their thoughts. I’d like to know based off of what the characters look like (assume they are roughly the same size), who do you think would win in this fight? What do you think is each characters fighting style? Are they both just wild animals viciously scrapping to the death or are they smart and fight more intelligently? Why are they fighting in the first place? These are all questions I would love to discuss.

I’d love to hear what people think about what I’m planning and what your thoughts are on fights in general… what makes them exciting and what sort of things would you really want to see from these two characters? My goal in the end is to have a really epic fight that’s very back and forth with some good battle music to accompany it. Once I start this project, I’ll post videos of the WIP stuff in this topic and hopefully get some feedback from anyone who is interested.

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#2

The demon is wearing a loin cloth. That implies some sort of intelligence to fashion that. The dragon certainly appears more wild in nature. I’d go that route for fighting styles.

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#3

I can see the demon being cunning and using a weapon. But that dragon has 3 heads AND 2 arms…so…he gonna win.

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#4

I was thinking of giving him a flaming sword actually. Sort of like when the balrog from LOTR creates one from nothing. I think visually that could be pretty cool and it gives the demon a better chance of winning since the dragon has a lot of heads to fight with :stuck_out_tongue:

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#5

That’s actually a really good point, I’d never considered that before about the loincloth.

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#6

They both have wings so I’m definitely assuming there will be an aerial clash, but I hope it won’t be too much trouble to keep them in the air for a lengthy period. Is this a type of gorey battle or clean cut?

Appendage slicing, screeching, etc.

I’m sure the demon/gargoyle will find the multiple Hydra heads to be a nuisance and disable a few of them, disabling a head is a (I believe) crucial way to defeating a Hydra

#7

I won’t be doing gore just because it’s extra work for me on top of the animation. I don’t really do VFX stuff so I’m purely just focusing on the animation side of it. I plan for it to be quite an aggressive fight, possibly with some weapons for the demon to use.

The way the demon rig is set up makes it really awkward to try and do flight, it just rotates and moves awkwardly and unrealistically so I will likely not be doing aerial combat on the demon’s side but I definitely plan to have the dragon doing some flying.

I’d thought about possibly having the demon disable one of the heads and having it limp for a period of the fight, but I’m not sure if that would just feel too awkward? Or do you think that’s something that would be cool to see? Like maybe it takes out one of the heads and the dragon trips over it at some point because its completely disabled?

#8

i cant lie, the first pic didnt load correctly and it does not look good when blurred.

but anyways, the demon has hands, maybe he could grab both heads and smash them into the middle one?

while the dragon could bite into the demon’s arms and hold him down + something else

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#9

I like the idea that they start in the air and end up ripping each other’s wings apart. Perhaps the one with 4 legs has an easier time to keep his wings so he stays in the air and tries to use that to his advantage and that is when the Demon guy uses a tool (Sword etc… due to having arms) So that should be his strength.
In general creatures that use tools due to the right appendages have that as their advantage while the other creature uses it’s own natural features. In this case claws and wings to gain advantage. However, with the 4 legger clipped he loses a lot of his advantage. So if you wanted to have a good clash it should lean heavily towards the 4 legger at the start. Perhaps instead of a flaming sword, the demon finds some sort of tree trunk/makeshift weapon that helps him. Depends on where you want them to fight and why they are fighting to begin with. Territorial? Is one guarding something the other wants. In general, the demon looks more intelligent based on the stills.

The demon’s spikes would encourage the demon creature to rush the monster and wedge himself between the heads as the heads would be getting interrupted by the spikes. What is the consensus on battlegrounds and motives?

#10

The initial idea I had was that the demon is feeding on another dragon it’d just killed, and then the second 3 headed dragon comes in and is angry about it and that’s sort of how the fight kicks off.

I like this idea too, the only issue is the demon rig’s wings can’t really move realistically enough to make it look like it’s actually flying. It just starts to deform in weird ways so I think it’s only supposed to move a little bit here and there in response to how the body moves. Unless I had it so the demon could levitate?

I’m still working on the actual battleground setting. I was thinking something like this:

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Its fairly simple and has some rocks to interact with during the fight. What I would really like to do though is sort of a really high fantasy abandoned gothic cathedral/castle with an outdoor garden area, but that’s just even more work for me to do and would just take too long to get done to the quality I want

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#11

The desolate landscape works well enough I think. Maybe already have the demon wings be damaged from the previous fight? Adds backstory and weight to the new engagement and would explain why it has wings and doesn’t use them.

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