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