Third Term Paper: Scores

          Hey All! Due to swamps of work from Ani 115 and 117a, I have sadly decided to use the better of my 2 scores from previous Term Papers to count as the Third term paper.

           Term Paper 1 Score: 85/100
           Term Paper 2 Score: 90/100

           Thank you for viewing and hope you have a good night! (or day)

Outline for the Third Term Paper

Term Paper 3: Outline

Practical Effects for monster sets and scenes

by Alyssa Raven

Intro: When watching Pacific Rim and Inception, the viewers become encapsulated and mesmerized by the impossible believability of the scenes. Though parts of the films are CGI generated, the most iconic scenes are shot with Practical Effects.

Thesis: Though CGI Elements make it much easier to add almost impossible special effects to a movie, practical effects bring a completely different level of believability. Using Practical Effects ultimately helps immerse a character’s believability into a fantasy moment.

Paragraph 1: Pacific Rim

-       Built the Giant Robot Head Mechanism’s from scratch (not CGI generated)

-       Actually tossed and jerked the actors around inside the rig

o   Added a realistic quality to the character’s acting (felt like a punch or fall)

o   Physically felt exhausted to move the heavy robot.

-       Had real fire, cars flip, and hydraulics match for when the monsters shook the ground

Paragraph 2: Inception

-       Created a rotating corridor on a series of wheels and tied the camera to the rig

o   This made it appear that the characters were in place while the room moved

-       Created this effective illusion of manipulated gravity

-       Characters just walked and wrestled about in the rig (but had to be careful of large drops)

Paragraph 3: Why don’t studio’s use this method over CGI?

-       Very Costly and Time consuming (sometimes takes years to go from concept to fabrication)

-       Taxing on the actors

o   Ton of constant movement and tossing around

  

Conclusion:

 Pacific Rim and Inception were noted as having “stunning special effects” but after analyzing the scenes, we found that Practical Effects are what really promoted that feel of awe.

Thesis: Though sometimes a very costly method to use in movie making, Practical Effects such as enormous rigs and set designs are a full proof way of creating authentic physics and believable actions within a scene.

Character Animation: Catch Me

Stop Motion Character Animation

"Catch Me"

By Alyssa Raven

              Even though the animation is fairly short, I'm rather pleased with how it turned out. The for the first stage of the process, I thought of what two "characters" I could bring to life. I saw several clips of previous students using clay and action figures, which were both pretty cool. Eventually, I that I wanted to have some fun animating a creature and plat around with some imaginary poses and actions that could possibly go with it. I remember as a kid, rolling my Beanie Baby up into a ball and pretending thats how it got around. I tried to play with the same principle in the planning stage as well as create a quick story with it.

              Once I had a rough idea of the characters and story, I started messing with the placement and camera angles until I found a position very suitable. You don't see it in the film, but I used tape on the walls and the carpet to mark where everything should be for the poses. At that point, I honestly just experimented. I tried flipping the character, having it do head nods, moving the arms and legs to see if it could support itself, etc. The "Hawkmon" figure was less of an issue, but keeping certain parts such as the tail and back up proved to be a challenge. To solve this I used Q-Tips for support. 

              Theres actually quite a bit of pictures I didn't use (had around 400) which is why you see the lighting change in some areas. Painting out the Q-Tips and my hand also took a bit. Overall, however, I'm really glad that I was able to get the "roll" off motion for the character. If I had to fix it though, I would definitely fix the ball roll at the end and add more in-betweens, but the skunk is about where I want him to be in terms of his character. I hope you all enjoyed the small clip and at least got a little chuckle or grin out of it!

Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction

Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction

by Alyssa Raven

           When watching scenes from spectacular films such as Tarzan, Megamind, and so on, rarely do we call into the question the believability of the films. For the most part, great films follow the laws of physics in some way, making an action that would be impossible in a real world situation believable. But some films fall short of that believability, disconnecting the audience from what’s happening in the story and instead focusing on the absurdity of the actions. What I mean by this is when bad physics are preformed or executed in a special effects or animated feature film for the purpose of making it “look cool”. There are scenes from The Matrix: Reloaded, James Bond: Die Another Day, and even The Incredibles that each show how Newton’s action/reaction principle is being broken. When analyzing these scenes using Newton’s 3^rd Law of action and reaction, we find that the proper force resulting from the action doesn’t balance out and therefore makes the scenes seem highly fake or unbelievable.

            One of the most icon films in Hollywood history, The Matrix: Reloaded is almost completely compromised of fight scenes and chases. Though action packed and extremely entertaining to watch, the fight scenes at times are extremely unrealistic. What I mean by this is mainly the physics don’t make sense, resulting in something unrealistic to the mind and making it like an effects fighting scene rather than a realistic one. A good example of this in the movie is when Neo (the super action hero) is confronted by a small army of Smiths (enemy). During the conflict, we see a ton of kicking, punching and pushing, but after a while something just doesn’t appear right about the scene. If you watch the clip again closely, we’ll notice that the action force required to throw the characters back to hard/fast is not balancing out. As a result, when Neo flies foreword and punches a bunch of Smiths back a couple yards, it appears to be somewhat unrealistic. The unrealistic physics could have been on purpose to help make the world feel more “dream-like” or separated from the real world, but for the most part it just helped me notice the wire harnesses and CG added to the film. In order for the fight scene to appear more believable to the viewer, the forces between the two characters need to balance out. What I mean by this as an example is when Neo punches Smith back several yards; he can’t be standing almost completely straight with his feet together beneath him. In order to generate the proper reaction, Neo would need to crouch down and push off with a force equal to the magnitude needed to generate the yardage.  Now I don’t think anyone is real life can push someone back that far in one go, but by change the body position and the appearance of a great force on the feet and legs, the fight would probably look somewhat more believable.

The Matrix Reloaded: Fight Scene

            Probably one of the coolest special effects chase scenes in an action packed feature, Jams Bond: Die another day ha another set of physics issues. If anyone has ever watched more than one James Bond film, they’ll always note the classic Ejector Seat feature in the secret agent get away cars. The idea of being able to “eject” a passenger out of a car with just a click of a button has always fascinated action movie audience members. We’ve seen a similar “seat ejection performed on jets and stealth fighters when pilots are in peril, so the idea of an ejection seat and the believability of it seems pretty self explanatory. But when analyzing the physics, we start to see an enormous amount of force needed to both move a stationary object from rest and counteract the force of gravity pushing down on it. Overall, it’s actually fairly unlikely that an ejector seat in a car would actually work (air speed/force helped with Jet’s). Now the reason I’m talking about ejector seats is because in one particular chase scene during the movie, Die Another Day, we see James Bond’s car skidding upside down across the ice while the villain is closing in with another weaponized car. Just before a small missile hits James Bond’s car, he activated the ejector seat and supposedly generated enough force by the seat propulsion to flip the car back over to its right side. Mythbuster’s actually made an episode on this particular moment and I can accurately say that this action is false. In the Mythbuster’s episode, they set the car up in the exact same way (upside down) and build there own ejector seat mechanism designed to generate a force equal to a human’s weight on the ground. Not only was their mechanism unable to get the car off the ground, but also after adding a large amount of explosives equals to a force 10x a person’s weight, the car still was unable to turn over completely. In order to get the car to turn over, the mechanism would need to generate an action force a little bit greater than the car to counteract the gravitational force and weight. The whole sequence looks very cool, but unfortunately is not convincing.

Mythbuster's James Bond Ejector Seat Episode

            Now analyzing The Incredibles for physics purposes is actually a very picky thing for me to do. The whole movie is centered around great physics and a focus on having constant believability of weight within the actions. But one thing in particular stood out to me, but just one in terms of being unconvincing. When watching the scene when Mr. Incredible first meets Syndrome and Syndrome starts tossing around Mr. Incredible without any reaction other than his arm moving, it jumped out to me as false. Now this is a super Hero movie and I completely understand that “0-point energy” could be something that completely takes the weight, resistance, and force out of an object. But for real life physics, I don’t buy it and it’s just enough to make it unrealistic to me. Much like The Matrix: Reloaded scene I discussed earlier, having some small indication of resistance or reaction could make it more believable in terms of him not moving “thin air” and actually moving a person. The overlapping action created when grapping Mr. Incredible with the beam and then tossing him helps generate the believability, but with out the indication of an action force (moving something with weight) it feels somewhat computer generated for a moment. However, don’t rate the whole move based on this one little nuance, they rest of the film has great examples of physics and believable action/reaction with each superpower.

The Incredibles: Syndrome Encounter

            I cannot emphasize how important physics are to helping a movie feel realistic. “But it looks cool” doesn’t help make the movie feel plausible or a part of a real story. Sometimes in films like The Incredibles, you can cheat little nuances by creating alternative rules for the physics, but without basic principles such as Newton’s 3^rd Law, the sequences just seem very fake. For movies with a somewhat serious tone during the fight scenes such as James Bond and The matrix, its crucial therefore, to make sure that the physics is plausible before going ahead with something that would appear “cool”. Story and believability should always come before the action, which is once again why following physics fundamentals are crucial in spotting Cinematic fiction.

Outline for the Second Term Paper

Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction?
Outline by Alyssa Raven

Intro:
• What happens when physics aren’t correctly followed in cinematic films?
• Analyzing fight scene from The Matrix, The Incredibles with Syndrome encounter, and James Bond: Die Another Day  with the ejector seat turnover car.
• Thesis: When analyzing these scenes using Newton’s 3rd Law of action and reaction, we find that the proper force resulting from the action doesn’t balance out and therefore makes the scenes seem highly fake or unbelievable.

Paragraph 1: The Matrix
• There are several instance when Neo goes to push a Smith copy back and ends up shoving him several yards
• When he pulls the pole out of the ground too, it is done with such ease and lack of overlapping action that it seems too unrealistic (almost no weight indicated)
• Shooting up after a massive dog pile on his back (tremendous force would be required on his arms and legs to accomplish reaction)

Paragraph 2: The Incredibles
• When Syndrome suddenly zaps and flings Mr. Incredible around, it becomes pretty clear how absurd this action is.
• There is nothing (no action force) to allow for syndrome to move a heavy object like that

Paragraph 3: James Bond: Die Another Day
• Scene where the car is skating across the ice and James Bond uses the ejector seat in the car to flip it back over.
• Mythbusters actually tested this and the necessary force required to flip a car over is much greater that can be generated by a repulsion system.
• It makes for a cool action scene, but a somewhat unrealistic one.

Conclusion:
• Though some of the physics is made to fit the tone of the film, the act that the physics is somewhat inaccurate pulls the audience from the scene being reality (even for a split second).
• It is important to spot these mistakes, especially for basic principles such as Newtons 3rd law to make sure the audience doesn’t fall out of the story and believability of the films.

Reverse Video Reference

Clip A

Clip B

   My mom helped me out by showing me some moves and playing the appropriate music while studying the clip.

Clip C

(My mom's take on the walk)

   This walk was particularly hard for us to imitate because we didn't know if the guy was moonwalking or shuffling his feet. It was also hard to figure out what to do with our arms and was funny to watch what we did in the reference.

Clip D

Mom helped me again with this one. We had a lot of fun studying these and trying them, though the 3rd one was very frustrating for us.

Stop Motion Animation of Falling

       I don't think this video Looped it at all, but my original goal was to create a loop of this Action Figure throwing up a raquet ball. I first started by roughing out a sketch of the figure and then the spacing and path of action of the ball. Once I worked out all the spacings, trying first the one third rule and then the A La Chai method, I eventually drew the spacings on a long 11x24 layout paper, which I placed by the side of the board.

       To keep the ball and the Figure steady, I used bottle caps and tracked the path of action with a removable grid. After shooting the first pass, I realized for the throw I needed a couple more frames for the overlapping action/cushion needed for it to be believable. Unfortunately, when I shot it again by myself, it was hard to keep the camera steady (lack of tripod). I had a friend earlier help me, but she had to leave and I decided to reshoot the whole thing with the fixed frames to make it seem somewhat consistent. Overall I was fairly pleased, being my first stop motion animation. My only regret was the fidgety camera.