Stereoscopic 3D Images and Animation

Maya Scene Assignment

One Point Light

Two Point Light Three Point Light

Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction

Tony Opee

Physics of Animation

Kung Fu Panda.
Scott Pilgrim.
Iron Man 2.

The three movies have certain elements that are interesting to look at in terms of the action and we will be looking closely on how the laws of gravity are applied in this movie. In the three movies we will look into the distribution of weight and how believable it is in terms of how it’s portrayed in the movie to show a certain action and how it supports the character, how much energy a character has and how that affects its movements and how it’s portrayed in the film, the use of props or tools the characters uses or interacts with and determined whether that interaction is realistic. Believability of movements of the character based on size weight and weight shifts of the body, how the character affects the environment he/she lives in. What happens to the ground when they jump or fire a weapon or even something as simple as sitting down? We will conclude with our observation to see whether the films got the desired effect by showing us the laws of physics in a way that is believable or they bend the rules by trying too much to make it believable. We will also look at the fiction of the film and see if it would happen that way if it was applied in reality in terms of it being feasible.

Let’s now observe Kung Fu Panda. KFP is an animated movie that is primarily made for all audiences, but it was mostly made for the younger audience. When watching this film I really didn’t realize how much the laws of physics were broken in this movie until I closely observed the actions and the characters in the movie. KFP takes place in the digital world because is computer generated and the artists had to make up physics rules that that world is governed by. Some of the rules that are broken are the characters are talking animals that stand upright and walk on two legs. In contrast the world the characters live in is fairly normal looking with some magical characteristics mostly induced by the characters. The movie takes place in a valley and the main character Po is a large clumsy panda that seems to stumble upon everything, Tai Lung, Tigress, Monkey, Mantis, Viper and Crane. Po being an anthropomorphic character he stands on two legs in the majority of the movie. This is one of the rules that were broken for the film because pandas naturally stand on all fours, but the movie they changed that and his hind legs being really small the character looks unnatural standing up. Also this shifts his center of gravity upwards significantly. Tigress is also an anthropomorphic character that stands on two legs. Tigress is the more serious out of the other characters. She is the serous character out of the furious five she is the dominate one because she is obviously the leader of the group. One can tell by the aggressive moves she has and when she lands she creates a loud thud. The creators had different laws of gravity that was applied to her because in the scene that she decided to go out and prevent Tai Lung from coming to town she jumped really high as if she was flying then she landed on the roof and the roof didn’t seem to break or shatter.

They decided to make her really light, but at the same time strong. The rest of furious five decided to follow her and they applied this rule across the board because the characters were also moving and jumping really high on the roof when they were following Tigress. Defying the rules of gravity in this particular movie works because they are animated and it’s also applied consistently across the whole movie and also conveys to the audience that these characters have some kind of super powers and should be looked as heroes.

Now let’s look at the movie Scott Pilgrim Vs the World. The story takes place in Toronto Canada, where Scott is a bass guitarist of a group called Sex Bomb-Ombs. He dates a high school-er called Knives and then later meets a strange girl from America called Ramona Flowers then he started losing interest in his current girlfriend.

Scott realizes after being attacked by one of Ramona’s ex that he has to defeat all her 7 evil exes in order to date her. This is where things started getting interesting in this movie. The main characters Scott, Ramona, Knives and the seven evil exes defined the rules of gravity greatly because of all the fight scenes that occurred. Scott first gets attacked by a character called Mathew Patel. He came flying out of nowhere defining the rules of gravity. The movie was made in a 80s video game style. In the fight scenes the characters tended to stay in the air longer while jumping. This happened throughout the movie there was even a part where Mathew Patel character was suspended in the air and he was creating fire balls that he threw at Scott Pilgrim. After the fight scenes the characters would go back to normal obeying the physics rules. The breaking of the laws of physics in this move worked really well because of the 80s video game style they were trying to portrayed. It was a good contrast to the seriousness and dialogue parts of the movie.

The third movie I evaluated was Iron Man 2. I enjoyed this film because it was fun to watch and also it made me want to create an Iron suit just like the Tony Stark’s who is the main character of the movie, but we don’t have the technology to do so. I guess I will wait for that day then I can fly around the world with my iron suit in the future. So let us begin. Iron Man is an American super hero film created by Marvel Comics.

Okay let’s evaluate this film in detail shall we? Tony Stark has this suit that is made out of iron; he sits inside the suit and controls it from inside. Interesting detail that was mentioned by Tony was that the suit has a filtration system that turns urine into water that is drinkable. In reality this in fact is feasible. So the rules in this world are generally simple and they mostly follow the laws of gravity in the real world. The only part that could take some criticism is the iron suits. Tony Stark’s suit was animated so there was a lot that could have been done in order to make the suite look believable. First the suit did feel bulky enough it was animated as if the suit itself was alive rather that someone controlling it from the inside. For example, when Tony Stark was in the suit and just walking around the suit, it looked really light despite it being made out of metal. They really didn’t show how metallic the suit was. Iron man flew and landed hard from great distances, we know in the laws of physics when things stop suddenly by outside forces whatever is inside tends to want to keep going. In the case of iron man when he lands really hard on the ground he should be in pain or have his blood vessels rapture due to sudden stops from extreme speeds.

In conclusion we observed three movies two live action and one animated one. All three movies have CG elements to them and all three had a clear style that governed the world the characters lived in. As we see in the case of Kung Fu Panda they clearly had to create the whole world so it makes sense when the artist created the characters and show some clear distinctions between the villain and the heroes based on their movements. The good guys were the strong characters and how we could tell that is how they landed and jumped. The bad guys when defeated would fall easily and also spend more time in the air falling compared to the quick swift movements of the villains. The design and all the physics rules that were created for the characters worked really well for the move and everything fit perfectly. The second move Scott Pilgrim vs. The World was a good example of how the rules of gravity were defined in a live action type film. The movie had a good transition between the physics defying fights and musical battle scenes vs. the normal dialogue scenes. It was really refreshing watching a movie such as this and not get disturbed by how they made the characters jump tremendous heights. The last movie I evaluated had some challenging things and one thing that stood out like a sore thumb is making the iron suit believable. Being an animator I understand how difficult it is to animate something in a way that is believable to an audience let along something that is animated next to some live action elements. CG with live action films have come far, but there is still a gap there in making animated CG characters look real and also look like they belong in the real world.

Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction Outline

Tony Opee
Animation of Physics
Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction? Outline

The three movies I decided to pick for this assignment are...

Kung Fu Panda
Scott Pilgrim
Iron Man 2

These three movies have certain elements that are interesting to look at in terms of the action and we will be looking closely on how the laws of gravity is applied in this movie.

In the three movies we will look into...

• Distribution of weight and how believable it is in terms of how its portrayed in the movie to show a certain action and how it supports the character.
• We will look at how much energy a character has and how that affects its movements and how its portrayed in the film.
• We will examine the use of props or tools the characters uses or interacts with and determined whether that interaction is realistic.
• Believability of movements of the character based on size weight and weight shifts of the body.
• We will also look at how the character affects the environment he/she lives in. What happens to the ground when they jump or fire a weapon or even something as simple as sitting down.
• In conclusion we will evaluate our observation to see whether the films got the desired effect by showing us the laws of physics in a way that is believable or they they bend the rules by trying too much to make it believable. We will also look at the fiction of the film and see if it would happen that way if it was applied in reality in terms of it being feasible.
  

Thriller Stop Motion Animation

Reverse Video Reference of Walking

The Laws of Physics in an Animation Universe

Tony Opee
Physics of Animation

10/19/10

Predators

The movie starts out with the main character free falling from an extremely high altitude. He reaches his terminal speed before deploying his parachute before hitting the ground. I think if it was real life then I would have violently hit to ground because the parachute did look like it opened in time for him to fall to a terminal speed with the parachute open in order for him to reach the terminal speed with the parachute open. It would take a couple of seconds longer since it takes time to reach a terminal speed with different objects occupying different thickness for the air resistance to catch it.

The characters are in this strange world the physics rules work the same as it would on earth except for some things. The lady character tried setting a campus on the water with a life and a magnetic pin and it kept spinning meaning the core of the planet they are in doesn’t have a north pole or a south pole. So far the sun has not move ever since they got to that place the characters are starting to believe that they are not on planet earth. The planet is vast and there are visible planets when you look into the sky I figured if there were planets in close proximity like that then the gravity strength would be different from earth.

There came as scene where there were dog like creatures. They ran really fast, but they were larger than dogs and they also looked heavier. The way they were animated they looked like they were barely touching the ground while they were running. Also the way the animals were running the ground didn’t have any disturbance from their feet.

Judging from the atmosphere and the way the characters are breathing and moving around I would say that the air pressure of this planet is similar to earth. If it was slightly larger or smaller the human characters would have trouble moving around, breathing, and even talking. The alien creatures are larger stronger and they move pretty fast. They also have cloaking devices to hide themselves and also they use heat sensors to see their prey. They have advanced weapons like lasers that shoot some kind of energy.

At this point of the movie everything is pretty much similar in terms of physics rules as the earth’s the air pressure, gravity air quality based on how they are breathing and how projectiles such as bullets, fire and smoke act in the environment act very similarly to earths. Visually there are some things that are so different from the earths for example the creature sizes, the sky filled with planet and the sun not setting for a long time. Since it’s a move visually it has to look like something we have never seen before to give the elusion that we are in a different world. This was done for the sole purpose of not confusing the audience when they are watching the movie. They had to put some rules that are familiar to us earthlings so that we can concentrate on the story and get entertained by the movie.

Almost at the end there was a fight scene a swords man vs. the predator alien. The human character was moving in a more realistic manner and the alien was moving kind of slow like its some guy wearing a costume. The thing that was done to make something that is realistic and has physics rules then the movie makers were not successful in portraying the strength and weight of the alien characters. The aliens looked like people were in them, but their faces were pretty realistic.

The alien fight scene began and the two aliens started fighting each other. They were moving in a really slow pace. This fight scene was more realistic because it looked like they paid attention to their size and the weight of the aliens. The movements of the aliens are slow and they took time to swing their blades. One scene where there was an explosion near one of the aliens showed the alien tumbling backwards in a way that is not realistic. The explosion happened in real time but the way the alien was pushed backwards didn’t have a realistic tumbling reaction because of how the alien flipped slowly in the air.

Okay now it’s going towards the end of the movie and we have the scene where the main character covers him with mud so that his heat signatures are not detected by the aliens. I further looked into this to find out whether it’s possible to block heat from being visible by a heat detector with mud and according to myth busters that is would be false. One thing that would happen when you cover yourself with mud is your body would warm up the mud and you would be detected by a heat sensor. One clever thing that the human character did was he set fires on multiple layers to confuse the alien because they see the infrared light. I also learned that you can block the infrared light by placing a piece of glass in front of the sensor.

Another fight scene went under way and the characters did some major damage to the alien which of which one could see the green glowing blood. The green blood looked like it was emitting light. So it would make sense if the alien would have visible green glowing veins flowing in his body that would be visible in his exterior body. The green glowing veins would also add an interesting texture to the alien design and would make the whole things congruent with the bleeding out of green glowing blood.

The movies are made to entertain us and we honestly don’t know who this world would be like in terms of physics rules. I am guessing other worlds would be totally different from our earth and everything would act differently in terms of physics rules based on subtle differences in size of planet, air pressure, and gravitational pull of how close it is to the son. These attributes have to match exactly to earths in order for human life to be sustainable. Having this in mind movies tend to have earth like words that a similar to earth’s in terms of types of vegetation, atmosphere, air and animals. For entertainment purposes we need features of that world to have some similarities to earths or else it would take time for the human mind to process all that information while paying attention to the movie.

The planet where the characters were in the movie Predators was set in a world that is very similar to earths. The vegetation in the beginning of the scene resembled what one would find on earth. The actors even mentioned some places on earth because they were trying to figure out where on earth they were. Also as the characters were walking in the forest one character encountered a plant and as he was about to touch it the other character warned him about touching that poisonous plant and he even mentioned the name of the plant. The only way he would know the plant is if came across it on earth or he read about it. These are ways they used to make the world familiar to us earthlings as we are watching it we could relate what’s going on with the characters. Another thing that made this move interesting because of the similarities of the planet to earth it gave us something to relate to and also it made us feel more sympathetic to the characters that were in this alien world. There were some subtle differences like the character mentioning that the sun never moved from the time they where dropped on the planet. In terms of the spectrum (hues) of the movie they had a similar choice of colors as earth. I would think that in other planets plants would be different color or they would have a slight difference on how they looks since the sun is out longer and the nights are longer. I would picture the leaves to be small and the forest to be slightly different due to the temperature and creatures.

The movie kept me engaged due to the design of the world they kept it simple and straight to the point, there were no crazy physics that was going on that would have the audience process while watching the movie. There was nothing that was that unique to in this film that would make the physics rules jump out at me. I think they closely designed this movie to closely match earth so that we can concentrate more on the action and the story. Now that I watched this move with the aliens in their natural habitat I would like to go back and watch the older predator movie that was based on earth to see how differently the aliens acted on planet earth.

Outline for Movie

Tony Opee
Physics of Animation
Outline for movie

Predator

• The world and its physics rules it has.
• How different the planet is on comparison to earth?
• What are the surrounding stellar atmosphere that affects its physics?
• How is the gravity in the planet?
• What are the creatures like?
• How heavy are the aliens and the creatures?
• How long are the days and nights?

Trip to Pixar

Stop Motion film

Tracking Jump

Please not that the recording is not working but the assignment was completed :)

Tracking Assignment

Ball Bounce

Mini-Portfolio

I would describe my work as unique and different. The art that I uploaded sums up my personality and was done with two of my close friends. I really like how they capture my true personality of which I try to bring to my art work. My art involves having fun and paying attention to details I guess that is why I am drawn to CG.

I am somewhat computer savy with an artistic view of the world and computer graphics fits my style and description of my unique view of the world.

I have created my first blog

Hello world I now have a physics of animation blog and I can't wait to learn and experience new things related to the physics of Animation.

Tony