3-D Stereoscopic Images

whoa.

Lighting a Scene in Maya

One-point lighting

Two-point lighting

Three-point lighting ( I used a green directional light to highlight the back of the "A")

Building a Scene in Maya

Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction

In reality, we usually take gravity for granted and won’t scrutinize the way things are unless something moves in a way that we won’t feel is right. That feeling doesn’t usually arise in the animated movies we watch because most often, it’s apart from our own. A truly fantastic world like the one found in Final Fantasy: Advent Children is filled with beautiful people with inhuman strength and skills. We are so caught up in the fast-paced actions and cool camera shots that it leaves reality at the door. The laws of physics can be broken for our entertainment and appreciation of a moment, yet when we watch a movie our focus is mainly on the story. If flaws are hidden well enough, they will be barely noticeable. A character will make a dramatic comeback with a surge of energy or push aside heavy stones with ease. Scenes will be romanticized to capture hearts. Sometimes I’ll unconsciously will a discrepancy to happen in order to have a story unfurl in my favor. It doesn’t matter in movies! Anything goes when it comes to making pictures come alive.

In Newton’s third law of motion, forces are always met with equal and opposing reactions. Whatever force is applied to another object, that object will have a reaction to push back. They always exist in pairs and their interactions result in mutual attractions.

There are plenty of examples in Final Fantasy: Advent Children where the action reaction principle doesn’t quite add up to its usual expectation. In many of the fighting scenes, the characters seem to suspend in air and then make thunderous impacts when they charge and collide. One of the scenes I chose is from the fight between Tifa and Lars. Lars and Tifa exchange a couple of swings and hits before I notice something funny. Lars grabs Tifa by the leg and with the effort one would use to swing a garment, swings her around and around. He swings her into the church pews and the wooden seats fly into the air as if they were made of styraphone. The reaction of the chairs against her limp body was barely there at all. It must have hurt, but her body would have been battered badly from the amount of force it took to smash through the pews without a visible reaction. Her bones would have snapped and her face would have smashed in. Lars also shows little reaction from the impact. He shows no slowing down; the consistent speed of his effort is mechanic, like his strength is made of pure robotic power. Another instance is where Barret, a big and tall man with muscles on every inch of his body. There is little recoil from Barret’s gun, which is attached to his arm. The gun is large, and contains several barrels as well as a central blaster where energy collects and launches. But for such a high bullet speed and such a heavy gun, the recoil on Barret would have been much more noticeable than what I see in the movie. Especially since the gun is attached to the arm, I would expect visible and violent recoil all on the right side of his body. There is a scene where Kadage falls over the side of the structure and Cloud follows hurtling headfirst with his sword. There is a sudden surge of power when Kadage transforms into his stronger form, Sephiroth, once he lands at the bottom. Cloud meets Sephiroth with his sword and the collision of it causes the metal under Sephiroth’s feet to buckle in and crack. Sephiroth is apparently the heavier one. Though Cloud has lesser mass he does not recoil as a result. The force seems to cancel out because instead of Cloud tumbling away he suspends in the air there, interlocked in combat with no visible recoil. According to the laws of physics, this would be impossible. Like the example of Mr. A and Mr. B, if Cloud pushes and Sephiroth holds, then both should have moved apart. Cloud being the one with lesser mass should have tumbled away. This instance of slow motion is constantly sprinkled throughout the movie because it dramatizes the moment. Sephiroth is the epitome of evil in this world. His first appearance in the movie must be emphasized. To have him staring at our hero in the face would be the cherry on the sundae. Sephiroth raises his head up slow and greets Cloud for a good 4 seconds before sending him reeling away.

In The Pirate’s of the Caribbean: At World’s End, many inconsistencies occur in the few fights scenes on sea. Firstly, the midget member of Jack Sparrow’s crew raises a shotgun onto his shoulder and fires. As I was watching this scene I was expecting the small man to jerk back, as a shotgun releases large shots at a very high speed. The man stood there, straight as a board, with no effect of recoil on his little frame. At most I anticipated a jarring of the shotgun butt against his shoulder, but the little man did not flinch at all. The laudable action of a small man firing a badass gun was too good to be ruined by recoil. As Captain Davy Jone’s ship is battling it out with Jack Sparrow’s crew, there is a scene where one of the men loads the cannon. Instead of a cannon ball, a monkey screams from the inside of the canon. The cannon fires and we see the monkey scream wildly, tail on fire, as it blasts out and over to the other ship and lands straight into the enemy’s face, biting and fighting. This example is in all ways a violation of the action reaction principle. The combined gunpowder and fire normally produces a force that propels a lead ball to a destructive speed. The blast from the canon would have ripped through the flesh of the monkey. The dense material and mass of the lead ball The monkey could not have reacted in that way given this purpose of the canon. The monkey does not have enough mass and density to exert a reaction to remain intact. The director is searching out ways to add more humor to the doomed movie. In the last battle where the pirates take on the British ship, the fight is drawing to a close. The pirates are winning. In calm surrender, the captain walks down the stairs like he is in a calm stupor. He descends down the stairs and cannons left and right are exploding the staircase. The camera zooms into where his hands are slowly sliding down the railings as he descends and the wood behind them explode with such close range. He is physically unaffected; his body isn’t thrown back with the force that the cannon’s impact explodes into through the air.

Despite the fantastic stretches of physics in Aladdin, it works for the outrageously expressive style of the characters and story. The most fun is probably when the soldiers were chasing Aladdin, and he manages to elude their clumsy clutches at every turn. When the soldiers are trying to catch Aladdin, he slips up and away on a rope and all the soldiers bonk into one another; recoil is instantaneous. The collision of the 7 soldiers sends them all into the air flying, making a hard hollow inelastic sound at impact. Swords shatter and their bodies make a neat arch backwards into the air. The exact opposite happens when soldiers fall into a rickety wooden cart. The cart is made to recoil and to our surprise has an elastic reaction. It bounces dramatically to show the impact of the weight. In reality it would have split into pieces, as the collective weight of the soldiers would have broken the reaction from the cart. When Aladdin is imprisoned in the dungeons, Jafar disguises himself as an old man with a cane. He needs the boy to help carry out his plan and when Aladdin questions how they will escape, Jafar simply reaches over with his cane and with a fluid motion, moves the heavy slab of rock out and over. There is barely any resistance, despite how heavy the rock may be. If Jafar is able to push the block of rock out that easily, I would imagine a full body slam could crumble the entire wall in an instant.

The discrepancies are more fun and more obvious to pick out from movies like Final Fantasy: Advent Children and Aladdin. The worlds in each of these movies are wholly different, though each one (I don’t know about Pirates) is a pleasure to watch. They are well disguised into the hype of the story. We appreciate these free falls, superhuman strengths, or humorous surprises as the memorable scenes, the ones that we won’t get to see in real life.

Outline of the Second Term Paper

Introduction-Science Fact or Cinematic Truth

II- Final Fantasy: Advent Children

- Fight between Tifa and Lars: Tifa smashed into church pews. The pews break, but there is no visible recoil on Tifa from the pews.

-Tifa is thrown toward a wall at a high speed, but manages to land lightly. There is hardly any momentum in her leap forward.

-little recoil from Baron’s gun, which is attached to his arm.

III. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

- Crabs carrying ship over sand dunes effortlessly. Inconsistent in that the weight of the ship would have buried the crabs into the sand.

- Ship on the sea hits a wave, dipping forward. Yet Will and Elizabeth, who are both locking lips don’t seem to react with the dip.

-Two ships fire at another on sea and the captain walks calmly down the stairs as the stairs on either side are exploding from canon fire. Such close range should affect the captain, but doesn’t.

IV. Aladdin

-Aladdin slips up on a rope and the soldiers collide into each other, recoil is instantaneous and makes a hard hollow sound.

-Soldiers fall from a building and all land in a rickety cart, which is made to recoil with more elasticity than normal.

The magic carpet can be soft and malleable sometimes, and then it doubles as stairs or a hard surface. It interacts with the action with suited reactions.

V. Conclusion

Extra Credit Survey

"This is to certify that I completed the anonymous mid-semester survey for Art/Physics 123 and am requesting the five points of extra credit.

As a student at San Jose State, I understand the university's Academic Integrity Policy (http://info.sjsu.edu/web-dbgen/narr/catalog/rec-2083.html)."

Stop Motion Character Animation

Rory spells trouble with an A-X-E. O Rory you Rascal, you.

I wanted to work with a character with hard movable limbs and a prop, so I used this unpainted munny. Yet I am a little disappointed munny doesn't have movable feet. I tried to experiment different walks with it anyway: stepping, sliding, skittering. I taped his axe to his hand so it wouldn't fall all over the place. For close shots, I put a piece of tape on the table which kept the camera tilted, but secure.

Reverse Video Reference of Walking

Law of Physics in an Animated Universe: Dumbo

Dumbo is a whimsical take of reality where physics are respected, but also granted that anything is possible. Dumbo is an elephant with ears the size of picnic blankets He thinks they are only good for ridicules, until he is pushed to actually flying with them. This is only one of the interesting aspects of physics in Dumbo’s world, yet there are many other aspects that happen, bending at different situations though not stretching too far from enjoying the story. The elephants are interesting observations for physics: although they are typically thought of as heavy and grounded animals, the elephants here perform extraordinary tasks that we would never expect. The fantastic possibility of Dumbo using his ears to fly seems even more unlikely, yet we cheer him on in excitement nonetheless. There are times when laws of physics are solid again, and objects take on something close to realistic weights. Yet some cross normality and are no longer accepted as part of this world. To contrast with Dumbo world, the hallucinogenic portion of Dumbo is stretched even further. It intentionally breaks the lines of what is accepted as part of what’s normal and what is pure fantasy. The fluctuation of how Dumbo physics, realistic physics, and pure fantasy work toward to carry the story and keep us visually entertained.

Most everything in Dumbo is animated with a squash and stretch that adds fun and malleability to the look of the movie. In the beginning when the animals are loaded into the train cars, the reaction of the wooden door hitting the wooden wall was appealing in that it gave a simple action life. A man would slide one of the car doors shut; it gave into the pull of that force, stretching with the pull and squashing with the contact. This example of applying squash and stretch onto something hard such as wood, introduces the rubbery and fun atmosphere of this world at once. If the car hit the other like it did in reality, I would expect damage and perhaps a painful crack from the force of impact. As a car would bump into another, the car would give under the collision and also recoil, as if the train was a soft object or character. The train eventually did reveal itself as a character, visibly straining under the weight of its animal cargo. It struggles forward at first, pulling one car and then another as it collects more strength. But the train stops suddenly and without added forward momentum, the caboose crashes into the still car in front of it, sending a domino effect and causing the head car to leap forward like a creature. The physics of this train reminds me of a caterpillar’s movement which is fantastic, since it would be working with an object much larger than a bug.

Despite the different weights of the animals in Dumbo, many of their interactions with each other and with their environment exemplify weightlessness. In the opening scene when the Stork was late with delivering Mrs. Jumbo’s baby, he pauses to sit on a cloud. He sets the bundle on the cloud next to him, which sinks through the cloud slowly. The contrast of the sinking bundle and the Stork marks a weight difference but generally, a cloud could never be dense enough to hold the weight of a stork, let alone a baby elephant. If we choose to look at this scenario realistically, these animals would have to weigh next to nothing to sit on a cloud. The fact that the Stork was even able to carry a baby elephant is unrealistic. However in his world, Dumbo seems to epitomize this delicate weight throughout. When a crowd comes to visit Dumbo and his mother, the kids start to harass him, pulling him by a tail or an ear. When a boy pulls and lets go of Dumbo’s ear, Dumbo recoils easily, like he were a stuffed toy. When Timothy the mouse decides to give the group elephants a scare, the elephants surprise us by climbing up poles and hanging off ropes in fright. There is a sense of weight from the ropes, as they bend with the elephant’s weight but the scene serves more as a humorous reaction. This weightlessness portrayed in the animals is the essence of the movie, pulling the viewer into a semi-backwards world, especially by giving elephants buoyant qualities.

However, there are times when the elephants act on strengths that bring destruction instead of the gentle air from before. Times of confusion and chaos disrupt the physics of this world. During the big tent performance, the elephants stack themselves up, some of them supporting the other with just their trunks. Though impossible, the illusion of mastery and accomplishment is portrayed through this tedious balancing act. The situation is convincing and entertaining enough to draw the attention to the story instead of impracticality of the act to begin with. This can also be applied to when Dumbo was to do a running jump from a catapult to land at the top of the elephant pyramid. Instead, he trips before the catapult, lands on his chin and miraculously soars over 200 ft in a horizontal path of action to hit the ball base of the pyramid. The momentum of the run could not have carried Dumbo that far, despite the buoyant physics he had at other times. At most, Dumbo would have traveled a few feet from where he tripped. As a result, more inconsistencies follow. As elephants tumble down, there is a scene where an elephant pedals its legs frantically to keep from falling and succeeds in slowing down a bit before one overhead falls in quick collision. Another elephant falls onto a tightrope and it flings her high enough to shatter a wooden platform. These tumbling elephants manage to destroy the whole arena within seconds. With chaos comes the force needed to execute it. If real physics came into play, the elephants would have fallen like dead weights and probably could not have gained that much time in free fall to destroy anything but where they landed. The destruction that comes with panic is exampled again when Dumbo is resting on a tree branch. When he realizes that he is up in a tree, his panic causes the tree branch on to snap. Like the bowling ball in a bag example, the larger acceleration of Dumbo frightened lurching against the branch caused it to snap due to the large force.

To divide Dumbo’s world from the world of hallucinations, physics bends in ways that are unusual to the characters and to the audience. When Timothy embraces a bubble tightly without having it pop, we start to question the boundaries of the universe’s physics. Not only is it impossible for a normal liquid to retain a a shape when hugged, but Timothy also hangs off of it, lifting him off the ground. Even in Dumbo physics this would have been a normal activity for Timothy. We can tell the two are slipping into delusions when Timothy asks Dumbo to blow a square bubble from his trunk. His trunk shapes-shifts into a square version and out of that comes the perfect square bubble. Although the characters of this universe do squash and stretch, the extent of it never reaches the extremes of shape distortion. As they two begin to hallucinate even more, they begin to realize that something is not right, especially when their bubbles begin to morph on their own! When these inanimate objects begin to walk in mid-air, disappear and reappear as different shapes, defying the reasonable laws of Dumbo physics, it starts to concern both characters and audience, for we know when normal physics now do not exist.

This was all I could get it by the deadline.. .I still wish to finish it.

The organization of my outline was not quite as accurate as I realized later on. There were some details I wanted to include but I couldn’t organize it well into my essay without deviating a bit from the outline.

The Laws of Physics in Animation Universe

Outline for First Term Paper

Movie- Dumbo

I. Introduction- Whimsical World

- Unexpected reactions from actions

- Normal laws of physics occasionally come into play

- Contrast of physics of the dream world

-Thesis

II. Squash and Stretch

-train animated in same style as soft bodied objects

o a. treated as a character

o b. squash and stretch action from train directly affects animals inside (reaction)

III. Animals exemplify weightlessness

-Stork sitting on cloud

- Baby animals falling

-Timothy the mouse playing with bubbles

- However, there are some moments when the animals seem more grounded,

displaying strengths like reality.

o a. Setting up the big tent

o b. Chaos and confusion gives into laws of gravity

i. elephant hanging off rope

ii. big tent act

iii. Dumbo on tree branch

IV. Laws of physics stretched even further in dream world

- Break when bubble morphs into shape on its own

- Squash and stretch in mid air

- Fantastic heights of morphing and malleability

V. Conclusion

-Summary of main points

- Restate thesis

Stop Motion Animation of Falling

The apple was the only ball-like object in my room, and I think it worked alright. I used a Kirk Varnedoe's High and Low book as my ground, and marked where it hit the ground with a ruler. I used a bit of red fuzz that I found to mark straight up, so it would bounce straight. I uploaded the pictures onto my computer and created the animation with photoshop. Oh yeah, and this was submitted late :(

Video Analysis of Path of Action: Jump

Tracker Video Analysis of Falling

Video Reference: The Drop

Recorded at 30fps.

Mini Portfolio

Hi ya'lll. My name is Annlyn and I'm from wholesome Folsom, CA. I'm majoring in Animation/Illustration and I'm currently taking ART 114 and 113b. I've taken one science class here at SJSU, and it was Geology! My favorite part was the lab because we got to study cool fossils and rocks from waaay back when. One of them was a rock with hundreds of layers, and peeled like the thing was made of PAPER. After leaving school, I would ideally like to work in the film industry and make real some personal projects I've had in mind.

Some samples of my work:

Here's my final animation from ART28. What wouldn't you do for a peach tha size of your head?

Introducing

the first post! let's roll it