Creating Stereoscopic 3D Images

This assignment was way easier and more fun than I expected! It's exciting to be able to create 3D images whenever I want now. :)

Recreating Cameras and Lights in Maya

I unfortunately had a lot of trouble with this assignment! Even with the help of some tutorials, I couldn't figure out how to get shadows to cast on the plane that the object rested on, so I couldn't successfully recreate the image. :(

Original Image:

Maya "Recreation":

As you can see, there are no shadows being cast on the ground. I wish I could have solved this issue! Maya and I aren't very good friends.

Building a Scene in Maya

Special Effects in Animation and Live-Action

My first two term paper scores were both above 80; I will not be writing a third term paper.

Outline of the Third Term Paper

Introduction

-          Comparing the visual effects of tornadoes in the movies Twister and The Wizard of Oz

Twister

-          Computer-generated effects by ILM (new tech for 1996)

-          Fairly realistic

-          Some of the ways in which the tornadoes interacted with larger objects (like trucks) wasn’t accurate

-          The protagonists of the film would have never been able to outrun or survive being in the center of the massive tornado

The Wizard of Oz

-          Tornado created using practical effects (with cloth wrapped around chicken wire)

-          Pretty realistic (even was featured on The Weather Channel)

-          Characters would not have survived being in the twister

-          The house would have been destroyed if it had really been tossed by a tornado

Conclusion

-Very different approaches to depicting tornadoes

            -Both successful in realistic appearances, not as realistic in interactions with characters and objects

Stop-Motion Character Animation

I created this stop-motion animation at my house using an old Yeti toy I had lying around. I quickly drew up a plan for my animation (pictured below) and got to work. Some of the photos ended up looking funky in the end, because I had to remove hands and I am not that adept in photo manipulation in Photoshop. Then I messed around with timing a little in Windows Movie Maker and voila! 

The animation plan

The labeling of the strength cup

Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction?

Scientific laws in film and television, whether animated or live-action, don’t usually match up with reality. Take Newton’s Third Law, for example; “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”. This is very commonly misused or overlooked in media. Whether for comedy’s sake or to make a stunt work in a fantasy film, in the world of entertainment media, correct physics isn’t always the goal. Epic films like Lord of the Rings, popular shows like Pokémon, and Disney films like The Hunchback of Notre Dame are just a few examples of media that have broken this law of physics. Let’s examine them more closely.

               The Lord of the Rings trilogy is vast and epic and occasionally breaks the rules. One scene that has always stood out to me as a moment of bending the rules with physics is how Legolas mounts his horse before a battle in The Two Towers film. Legolas, while on foot, spots enemies approaching and as his army rides up to join him, he mounts his steed while the horse is in motion. He does this by grabbing a side of the horse’s neck, somehow arcing himself like a pendulum in the air towards the side where he has gripped, and then launches himself up onto the saddle.

Granted, this is a fantasy film and Legolas is an elf, so we can suspend our disbelief a bit, but this does go against many laws of physics including Newton’s Third Law. With every action, there must be an equal and opposite reaction, and that is not the case here. First of all, if his steed was trotting towards him, the weight of the horse would either knock him over, or if he had already gripped it, its gaining speed would have pinned him against its body; he wouldn’t have been able to get enough leverage to attempt to mount it from the front. The horse running forwards would be one action, and the reaction of him gripping the front of the horse would be for his body to move towards the animal.

               In the popular anime Pokémon, the antagonists Jessie, James, and Meowth of Team Rocket always “blast off again” when defeated by the heroes. This usually does not follow Newton’s Third Law; take this clip for example.

A Pokémon called Lickitung rolls into Team Rocket—this particular monster weighs about 144 pounds (according to the Pokedex), which would be akin to another human running into them. This knocks everyone (including the Lickitung) off the roof, where instead of plummeting down to the ground, they rocket (no pun intended) off into the sky, until they are merely a twinkle. There is no reaction present that reflects Newton’s Third Law here. When the Pokémon hits them, were it heavier than just a human, it may have launched them off the roof, but the impact probably would have rolled the Lickitung backwards. Instead it’s launched into the atmosphere with Team Rocket. The Pokémon also couldn’t have possibly launched them into space, even if it was significantly heavier. Team Rocket’s reaction to the rolling, was highly exaggerated. A more realistic scenario would have resulted in them merely falling off the roof.

               The Disney film The Hunchback of Notre Dame is overall a more dramatic and serious movie than most Disney animation, but it still has its slapstick moments in which laws of physics are broken. During the Feast of Fools, the lead Quasimodo gets humiliated and tortured in front of the festival attendees. The dancer Esmeralda comes to his rescue and frees him but because of her actions the city’s guards attack her. Then the action sequence begins as she makes her daring escape.

One of the crazy stunts is when a guy on stilts kicks the groins of four soldiers, launching them into the sky. Newton’s Third Law is broken here, since the momentum of the kick would not have created that opposite effect. The leg attached to the stilts would have stopped and gotten knocked back upon connecting with the soldiers’ armor, instead of continuing upwards in an arc. The soldiers would have never been launched into the air, and certainly not that high, the weight of their armor would not allow for that. At one point during the action sequence, the guy on stilts gets his pants pulled down by Esmeralda. A guard chasing her gets caught in the pants, and then is launched backwards into the sky. Once again, Newton’s Third Law is exaggerated here. It is possible that the guard getting caught in the pants could have been launched backwards, but the momentum is not equivalent. He was not running fast enough for the opposite effect to be him launching into the sky. If anything, the equal and opposite effect could be him getting knocked back and falling to the ground. For comedy’s sake, it is exaggerated and he’s launched into space while making a “Goofy-esque” cry. The last stunt that stood out is when Esmeralda catches a soldier’s helmet on her head, then throws it at three approaching guards on horseback, knocking all three out. The helmet then ricochets from there into a post, cutting the post in half. Even if Esmeralda had just launched the helmet directly into the post, the opposite reaction would not have been the post being cut in half, even if the helmet was metal. It would maybe dent it if anything. The helmet had bounced off the three soldiers’ heads beforehand though, so its momentum would have been lost even more, and the post would not have split.

               Even though these are three very different genres of television and film, they all ignore the laws of physics, including Newton’s Third Law for either comedic or epic effects. There are many scenes in each of these different media which exhibit believability too, but they made smart choices in order to evoke a certain mood or laugh—the physics were changed to fit the story they wanted to tell. Newton’s Third Law would not allow a horse to be mounted that way, or Team Rocket to “blast off again”, or for any of the stunts during Esmeralda’s escape to work. They are successful in the reaction they gained from the audience, and they make viewing these shows and films that much more enjoyable.