a breakdown of my wc22 r2 aesthetic combo

[stevenueve]

the combo in question:

i planned this combo months prior as secondary in priority to my r4 combo of which i intended to be the main presentation of my ps aesthetics development. unfortunately i had to do doubles and this ended up being the best demonstration of my abilities, though im pleasantly surprised with the general reaction towards it. like most of my combos, i started off in the middle with a cool sequence as a backbone and some vague ideas for what to include. in this scenario, the sequence was 0:04-0:09, starting with the index back and ending in the tw sonic. i knew for certain i wanted to include an overextended index back but i didn't have a concrete plan for including it until i had to start filming for r2. on with the breakdown now:

0:00-0:04 - build up and index bak

when the results were out for r1 this combo was fully realized except for the beginning, which was simply the index bak. i ended up including it in there because some time during the construction of the rest of the combo i wasn't able to fit it. i was satisfied with how the later parts of the combo looked and didn't want to jeopardize it by being stubborn, so instead i placed it in the beginning and thought up other options to deal with the problem. at this stage my r4 combo was fully planned and i had no intention of changing it, so either i included it in r2 or it was thrown to the wayside, which would've been a huge shame. the main conflict was that the setup was a slow, tension building visual leading to a climactic end with the bak, but the rest of the combo was constructed to be very bombastic, with several very short buildups into satisfying tricks. i wanted the impact to be big, and as impact is created through contrast, i would've drowned out the bak using a similar short timeframe setup-release template, so i was pretty committed to the initial idea of a slow buildup.

there was a decent amount of work that went into thinking up the sequence leading to the bak, despite how simple it is. following the rule of impact-through-contrast, i knew it had to be a mostly palm-up, relaxed sequence. what's interesting is that the first draft was fully pu, and a strict following of the prev rule would conclude that having a pd section would reduce impact, but i thought that it looked too detached transitioning into the bak. in retrospect there was huge contrast, but no buildup because nothing was foreshadowing what came. i say in retrospect because at the time it simply 'felt right' to include a pd section. as is with visuals and combo structuring, much of the effort is trying to navigate intuition and piecing together vague and mildly tangential ideas into something decent. it would be interesting if we had an objective visual impact measuring machine to see if i actually lost any impact with the pd inclusion, but ultimately what matters is that it looks good, and looking back it was a good decision.

0:05-0:09 - post-bak to twisted sonic

i delegated r2 as the "easier aesthetic combo" and thus kept the thought of lowering difficulty and the standard of material to below what i would usually accept. my r4 was created before my r2, and i would've tried to match it in material had i not kept to the plan. this part of the combo was born out of that underlying philosophy and includes downsized versions of dc links, vague, simple ideas i had, and other easy links that really just add time to the combo. i didn't intend this section to be bombastic initially, but the first few ideas i had were direction changing arounds and the simple cardioid and i just kept the visual going. there's really not much to say about the structure of this part of the combo other than i created it thinking it looked cool, which was good enough. if anything this section is a light attempt at pushing the quality of material that can be done on sc, in contrast to my r4 which is going on a warpath in pushing sc difficulty.

a little note on execution: besides a few thumb positions, not much thought was put into the execution, such as how i should manage arm motion or tempo. this is because my intuition for these things was already very strong, and i really only had to do things that felt right. as for my path in developing this intuition i might talk about another time.

0:09-0:14 index around rev and post

0:09-0:11 is probably the best part of the entire combo structure and visual wise. the initial thought was that i had to break away from the direction changing section of the previous section to make room for the finisher, of which i like to build up to spinning in only one direction. ia rev 12 ~ pp ~ ma rev and the pu bust 12 caught pd were each taken from two other spinners and i merged them to create a seamless transition into the direction i wanted. i generally struggle with directional changes because i try to avoid doing them directly from a pass or simple charge, and ideally do them midway from an around or wiper trying to get them to flow well with the rest of the combo. this wouldn't have mattered in the previous section, but for the one leading to the finisher i wanted to use more traditional structuring in my book, which is single directional spinning with short setups and a priority over intricate linking and cool finger positions.

fortunately, i remembered that goat had done a seamless directional change in dance above the floor that looked well enough, but i didn't like how he used it as a simple direction change. i wanted to use it to create build up while simultaneously changing directions to pu wiper rev 12, a trick that had great impact as all the fingers were flared out in contrast to the trick directly before with three curled fingers, the trick was wiper based and among the more showy ones, and the position was maintained static for longer than the positions in the previous section.

one possible mistake i might've made was treating the wiper as a finisher and building up to that instead of the true finisher, which probably caused it to steal some flare. otherwise, the choice was pretty optimal and flowed well from the links leading up to it.

[Convg]

Thanks for posting. It's so valuable to get such detailed insights into how other, more experienced people plan their combos

[V 0 1 D]

Really nice to hear your thought process on this combo. I remember sitting watching it with a smug thought that PSH would think they had it easy for the first 4-5 seconds, only to have the rest of the combo systematically disintegrate any hope they had of succeeding against you. The ensuing Twitter drama around your win was probably one of the funniest things I've seen in the entire year.

[raiz]

Finally got around to reading this. Thank you so much for sharing your thought process during the creation of this combo. Really invaluable information here, and a lot can be learned here!