FEATURE STORY |ƫ333ċ (%06) #ċ*!0ƫđƫ^47E
ric, why did you start
mimicking the moves
from Tekken and other
fighting games in your
YouTube videos — was it just
for fun, or was it a planned
career move?
Since most of the moves
in Te k k e n were originally
performed by stunt performers
wearing motion-capture outfits,
and then animated in 3D, it
seemed at least plausible to
replicate them back into real
life, so I took it on as a personal
challenge at first. It became a
much bigger project as fans
demanded their favourite
characters, and the whole
process has brought some great
opportunities as well.
Your kicks — and more
specifically, your kicking
combinations — are truly
something to behold. Where did
you develop these skills initially
and how many hours go into
honing and developing them?
When developing a kick or
kicking combination, it’s easy
to just rehash old ideas. There
are only eight kicks, after all,
with modifications using a step,
jump, 360, reverse, etc. So when
Donnie Yen or Tony Jaa create
new kicks or combos, you’ll see
them repeated over and over
in popular culture for years. It’s
tempting to copy and paste that
popular kick or combo into a
fight scene or demo reel and
then work the action around
it, so you see ‘tricking’ combos
in fight scenes where stuntmen
line themselves up to get hit, like
they’re running into a propeller.
As an action designer, if you’re
really thinking ‘within’ the
fight, then you choreograph the
stuntmen first and then craft
kicks and combos around that.
From there you pick basic kicks,
apply the modifiers, and you’ll
have a brand new kick combo
every time. Honing all these kick
modifiers is an ongoing project,
which started with my 200+
kick taxonomy in 2012 called
The Kicktionary.
Is it difficult to recreate the
timing of the game, or is the
start-to-end time of the Tekken
techniques on screen a close
approximation of reality?
The timing for combos is
where things get difficult. Most
of these combinations in Te k k e n
are individual moves that are
animated together, so it’s unlikely
a performer ever did a single
10-hit combo, but doing them in
real life is the hardest part.
Where did your martial arts
journey begin and where has
it taken you in terms of styles,
teachers and places?
I started martial arts when I
was 12, in karate and kickboxing,
but the teachers were unreliable
and I dropped martial arts for
a while to focus on gymnastics
and weightlifting. Andy Leung
taught me taekwondo at age 20
(2002) and Dennis Ruel and
Ray Carbonel have taught me
Hapkido since 2004, followed by
some boxing and iaido [Japanese
sword fighting] under Andrej
Diamantstein, and whatever
things come along the way.
Martial arts training is great,
but choreographers have known
for a long time that trained
killers make terrible stuntmen!
If the choreographer tells you to
do a roundhouse to hit this guy’s
head, and you complain that
your style or whatever doesn’t do
roundhouses to the head, or you
decide to kick him in the nuts
instead, you can’t be a stuntman.
Amazing fighters don’t know
how to pretend to lose, or they
can’t make a simple jab look
good. Martial arts training has
to be tempered for the camera if
you want to go into stunts.
What does your training
regimen look like over an
average week?
Typically these stunt jobs,
like motion-capture and fight
choreography, are most like
sprinting: high-impact, fast-
twitch motions in short bursts,
hundreds of times per day,
combined with big motions that
have a tendency to tear muscles
and ligaments. Strength and
speed-oriented training helps
with this, along with lots of
kettlebell work and weightlifting,with some isometric routines
to keep flexibility. Add martial
arts in the mix and it’s a full
week’s work.
Given your own training
has been in specific styles,
have you ever found it difficult
to mimic some of the Tekken
moves, which have been
developed to emulate a wide
range of different martial
arts and character traits? And
which character/art was the
hardest to do?
Some characters are
technically easy but their
flexibility is crazy, like Zafina
or Lili, but the fans are always
happy if they see the same moves
but with your own flare. The
most technical character has
been Raven, whose combos were
insanely hard. Baek’s move-list
was a struggle, and then Harada-
san [Te k k e n producer Katsuhiro
Harada] said that most of it was
hand-animated! I’m holding
off on doing the moves for
Eddy until I become a capoeira
maestro [master].When did you become a
Tekken fan...and are you as
good at playing the game with
your fingers as you are with
your fists and feet?
I was awesome at Tekken 2 as
a kid — I spent a few hundred
dollars in quarters on it at our
arcade and wiped the floor with
everyone. Nobody challenges me
at Tekken 2 anymore.
Given your ability to do
the techniques, have you ever
been approached by the game
developers to don the sensor-
covered suit and bust out the
moves for a character?
They put me in a motion-
capture suit for a lot of Mafia- The other video games are a
secret at the moment. It’ll come
as a surprise once the big one is
announced, and I’ve got a killer
idea for how to announce it to
the fans.
You are a self-made stunt
hero, having seemingly created
a role for yourself in film by
building your own production
company and playing every
Jacobus (L) does
battle in Rope a DopeGetting ham-fisted
in Mario Warfare