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Hey, anybody have a good method for building a good fight scene? I've got a swordfight just now that I've been putting off, to the stalling of my poor comic.. Problem is, both these people have to be good - leaders of their teams, deadly speed and strength, etc. - and I'm not sure how to make it exciting without having one or the other give in/lose face/etc. (Spoiler: The fight gets interrupted, so neither of them wins.)

~Brittany
http://dreamlikedestiny.keenspace.com

One of my favorite swordfight scenes is from Claremont/Miller's Wolverine miniseries. There's a scene that involves the swordsman who met Miyamoto Musashi crossing a bridge and neither would yield to the other, so they determined to have a duel. What follows is a series of "Sergio Leone" style shots showing both fighers sizing each other up before moving on their separate ways, without anyone having even drawn a blade.
If your fighters are that good, why have them fight at all? I've looked at some of your pages, and what I've seen so far seems to depend a lot on dialog and reaction shots. Why not use that? Since no one is going to win the duel, there's nothing to be gained by having them fight at all. If you believe the philosophy of kendo, the one who moves first is very often the loser...so build the dramatic tension on having the two fighters assessing each other and then, when one or the other begins reaching for his blade, bring in your interruption. The battle is set aside for another day, and you have not had either fighter lose face.
Just a thought.

The important thing IMHO is to make the mood of the fight reflect the two characters relationships. If the characters don't know/care eachother then it won't be a down and dirty but a little detatched. When it is personal the fight is often much more brutal with less attention paid by all parties to things like shivalry and morals. Remember. Fights shouldn't be for the sake of fighting but used to advance the plot.

But the MOST important thing you can do is to plan it our in advance. Twice if you can. First divide many sheets of printer paper in half and with stick figgures storyboard what you want to have happen along with the script. One pannel should take up one half of a sheet of paper. Or you can use the whole paper. I just like to save money. Then, take that storyboard and make a rough draft of what the final comic will look like. Do rough drafts for ALL the comics in the scene and not one at a time. If one doesn't look right do it again. When small tweaks don't work try something totally different with the layout. Often scraping and starting again is better than edditing. Then do your finals making any changes you think need to be made.

Scan, and you have your fight scene.

Show both fighters in the same panel. You can start them on opposite sides by showing them in different panels but when they fight, draw them together. Don't use a side view, directly above or directly below. Have the camera off to one side but abnormally placed so the viewer feels like he's dodging and moving with the fighters.

A low angle makes a character look big and powerful. A high angle can make a character look submissive.

Property damage, plenty of property damage. If the place looks like a trailer park after a tornado ran through it and neither duelist has broken a sweat yet...

Ah the fight scene.

There are several elements that go into a good fight scene. You need
1) the build up. You need to create the sense of tension and anticipation that comes just before two serious fighters intend to actually unsheith their swords. You generally do this through something of a tense standoff with dialogue, especially if you've got two REALLY good fighters or very powerful characters. They will test each other before actually engaging in combat verbally. This gives you a chance as an author to make it clear what their relationship is ( are they total strangers to each other? old friends? have they fought before? are they enemies? etc ) The readers need to understand this even if they sort of already know, make it stupid clear. This sets the scene for next stage. I can see you've already taken care of this stage more or less.

2) The Evaluation - Normally powerful fighters will, again continue to test with lesser moves before they unleash the powerful stuff. They will see how their opponant reacts to a lesser strike in order to get an idea of how to more effectively use the 'big guns' so there should be a few pages ( probably 2-3) of them crossing swords. Some parrying, dodging, disappearing, whatever you want for them to come to a quick draw. No dialogue generally here. Depending on skill variance between fighter or equality, some minor dramatic injury ( such as a scrape on the cheek ) may be sustained.

3) The Posturing - Now they both have an idea what they are up against. They will generally now posture and try to fake the opponant out as to what their next move will be as they consider it. This is another opportunity as a story teller to give further dimension to the characters as fighters with a bit of dialogue. Usually at this point they will comment on their opponant in some way. " Ah, you've gotten better since we last fought." or " You never did block your right side well. " You get the idea. Generally they will move towards taking the ideal position for their first true strike.

4) The Real First Blow - Now the opponants know what they are up against and thus will have chosen probably a lower 'first' move that is significantly powerful. They will now unleash this move on the opponant. This will generally always result in either one of three ways, the two fighters unleash equally powerful moves at the same time that cancel each other out, or both dodge/evade/parry their attack then ridcule them, or thirdly while they manage to avoid it the brunt of the assault, they still take some minor dramatic damage.

5) Recovery and Second Blow - Now both opponants need to recover so they will move to more defensive positions and ready the next attack. The Second attack is usually more powerful/crafty/creative than the last one, and is generally ment to manuver the opponant into the most susceptable spot for the final attack. This attack is usually too powerful to just cancel each other out, and thus is almost always dodged or parried, with or without injury.

Repeat step 5 for a third, fourth, fifth, and so on blow as long as you like, adding witting quotes, commentary and insults between the two combatants is generally recommended where appropriate to do so. In general you want to escalate it in terms of property damage until you get to the --

6) Resolution - This is where the fight ends. Depending on the kind of fight you want this can result in a bloody draw or a clear victory. Sometimes it is neither.

A few points to remember however when planning the fight; in order to keep it interesting the tide of battle has to clearly sway one way or the other and then the other person has to turn it some how, so that the battle isn't clearly being won. There has to be injury, loss, blood, property damage, etc. If there isn't any kind of see sawing it gets really boring. Two very powerful and experienced warriors aren't going to fight feebly and they are going to go all out. They will injure the other person. So even if there isn't a clear victory, you should plan for injury to the characters beyond little scratches. Its the excitement of seeing how they manage to avoid being defeated while still suffering injury that makes it exciting and the injury makes it more suspenseful.

You should script the battle and if possible get some friends to help you act it out so that you can see how well it works and get feedback. If you know someone who is a martial arts or fighter type person ( any type of fighting), getting their advice and feedback helps as well.

When you actually get to the point of drawing it, you will definately want reference. I'd suggest actually looking to movies for dramatic fight choreography. Get yourself a dvd of Gladiator, Troy, Highlander, Lord of the Rings or any other movie that has good fight scenes with swords. pause it and study how the shots are blocked at the hight of battle. How the forms are, where the swords go, how they are dodged or not, Then take those and exadurate it a little. Make it a little faster, wider, harder, heavier, etc. Make sure you pick interesting angles that make sense. You want to put the viewer in the action. You'll want to pick other 'camera angles' than just the typical side on or front on view. You definately want to show the whole body in big clashes. Try not to do too many headshots, you want to show more body and area shots. Although closeups of the injuries or critical strikes are appropriate. For really powerful strikes, don't be afraid to do some explosions or energy eruptions, especially considering you've got what appears to be a fantasy comic going on.

If you want to see my fight scene between two of my most powerful characters and how I handled it, you can read this one ( which involves a sword fight.. of sorts )
http://shifters.keenspace.com/d/20031219.html

Read from there to the end of "Dogfight". You might find some insipiration. I'm better at showing than explaining.

Hope that helps.

You guys are awesome! This is exactly the kind of help I was hoping for. It's still not going to be easy, but at least I have a better idea of how to approach it. Thank you! I'm excited...

I guess you could say a fight scene is like its own story because it has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

I think half of drawing a convincing fight scene is dramatic effect. This means using your camera angles to convey the motion and power of the scene, and using the characters' dialogue to build tension. I always like fight scenes because you get to go crazy with the panel shapes and arrangement. You don't really have to be a trained swordfighter to draw a convincing fight scene. I know I'm a geek, but I own 3 swords, so I like to swing them around to get a feel for swordfighting poses. I don't really know anything about swordfighting, but by just doing this, I've been able to feel how one would move while swinging a sword, and how it would affect your posture.

You can use background objects or settings as part of your swordfight, such as one character dodging behind a statue or being pushed towards a cliff, or balcony.

Depending on your preference, a fight scene doesn't need to have dialogue through the entire thing. Like the old saying, a picture's worth a thousand words. Just a character's facial expression can denote whether they are angry, scared, laughing, proud, or worried. Your characters can show emotion and build interest through just the art. That's not to say dialogue isn't just as important to help set the mood, at least before and after the meat of the fight. I think a fight scene visually creates a lot of energy, so the main thing is to keep the momentum going until the fight's climax. At that point, you want the reader to come away with either the satisfaction of one fighter besting the other, or the anticipation that they will meet again.

One tip I've read somewhere (forgot where, maybe even on this board) is to always draw your characters before they make a move or at the end of the move. Show both of them raising their sword, or show one of them striking and the other one parrying, but not one mid-swing and the other about ready to parry.

I've never drawn an extended fight scene myself, so take that with a grain of salt roughly the size of Kansas.

This isn't an answer to your question, but I hope you'll forgive me--I followed the link to your comic, and it looks rather cool; the art is quite stylin', though I actually sort of miss the colored pencils from the early strips.

Anyway, I'll be checking the comic better when I have a bit of time, but I'm excited about it. ^_^

As an alternative approach, go through Zuri's list and don't do any of those things. Instead:
Make the fighting occur unexpectedly.
Avoid posturing - fighters are either skilled or unskillled. If they are skilled, they will get on with things, if they are not, their body language will reflect this unless they're testosterone-soaked idiots who overestimate themselves.
Make the first blow hit hard.
Don't have the characters talk while fighting, especially if it's a fight to the death. Real fighters focus.
If characters are unevenly matched, there should not be a second blow. Even if they are equals, the fight may be over soon.

These things were among the reasons why Zatoichi was such a great, great movie. Slash, hack, on to the next scene. Although the movie as a whole was in no way realistic (see that dancing scene at the end), the fighting was convincing.

I was going to just give you my advice in just words, but I got carried away and accidentally started the first in a series of tutorials, which means you get a lovely little graphic:



Not all of this may be entirely relevant to a sword fight, but generally the most dramatic still-frame position in any particular blow in a fight is going to be just after impact.

As that relates to sword fights you don't want your guys to be just standing up normally and swinging their swords. When an attack is made, the other guy has to block it-- in which case he uses his sword to absorb the force of the attack into his body, which will move him in some way so that he will be in an off-balance pose. The greater the force in the attack, the more off balance the defender will be in the instant after impact. That, or he dodges it, in which case he is going to be in an unbalanced pose as he moves out of harm's way. The more he has to move to get out of the way, the more extreme the pose in your still-frame capturing of that motion.