Towel fight

Towel fight by =MixedMilkChOcOlate is an emoticion depicting—what else?—two emoticons fighting with towels. The great thing about emoticons is that their intention is to be simple and straightforward; to convey an emotion, an action or (in recent years on dA) a brief scene as clearly and concisely as possible.

The concept is clear, though not executed flawlessly. I cannot ignore the lack of detail in the towels. I know full well that only so much detail can appear in such a small working area, but the towels here only seem to be white lines of varying thickness. Where as the emoticons are given depth by their shading, the towels just seem flat. The action of twisting the towels is not done too well either. The emoticons' hands don't move at all and, therefore, fail to correctly convey the motion that goes into twisting a towel for whipping. I really do like the animation in the emoticon. The poor towel-twisting aside, the rest of the animation is almost flawless, save for one frame in which the pink emoticon's towel freezes briefly.

I have seen one towel-whipping emoticon before, but no towel fight emoticon. There are emoticons depicting fights with various "weapons", but it does take skill to emulate the free-flowing nature of towels, ropes, cloth, etc. in an emoticon. Also nice is the way it is not simply one emoticon hitting the other, then vice-versa. Here, one emoticon dodges the other's attack and unleashes one of his own before they both get a good hit in on each other, almost making for a sort of mini action scene.

I also like the way the artist spent some time getting in some small details. The pink emoticon recoils slightly after being hit. The blue emoticon's body compresses appropriately upon impact with the ground. I almost wish the same would have been done upon both emoticons landing hits on each other (neither one moves). The pink emoticon's spin after being hit is, perhaps, my favorite few frames in the emoticon. I think it's a very well-animated action.

Not as well animated is what the blue emoticon does after hitting the pink emoticon. It appears to be flipping backward, but it's not too clear. The expressions aren't too impressive either. A smile can be seen very briefly on the blue emoticon's face, and I'm not sure what the mouth of the pink emoticon is supposed to be. A smile? A scowl? I really can't tell.

Framework should probably be looked into. I mentioned the frozen frame of the pink towel (after they both hit each other, before pink starts twisting again). Upon closer inspection, I also noticed that, just as they go to twist the towels, their bodies drop down one pixel, then jump up one pixel during the towel-twisting. Minor imperfections, but once they're noticed, they become annoying.

While the animation is very nice and I can see this finding use in dAmn or, as the artist has already done, as a plz avatar, it does not completely demand use. Part of the impact of emoticons is their utility. This will be used by some people—humorously starting fights with friends. The problem is not with the emoticon itself, but with the concept. More often than not, the emoticons used most are those depicting one person doing an action to another. I can see one emoticon towel-whipping another emoticon having a greater utility. Again, that is no fault of the emoticon or the animation; just with the decision to make two emoticons fighting each other.

All in all, a very nicely done emoticon, only a few minor details preventing it from perfection.