The animation in Scene 1 focuses on the confrontation between the protagonist and her mentor, followed by the moment where the protagonist is defeated. The actions are not overly complex, but I designed a series of key movements, including the character poses during the standoff, the preparation and anticipation motions, as well as the timing and speed of the fall. These elements were all carefully considered to support the emotional rhythm of the scene.
For the more complex shots, I also created corresponding animation references to guide the final performance.
It is worth mentioning the cloth simulation in this scene. Instead of using traditional Marvelous Designer simulations—which are very time-consuming and demanding on performance—I used Maya’s built-in nCloth system for the cloth dynamics. I will show the final simulation results at the end of this section.