Recreating Cameras and Lights in Maya.

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Extra Credit - CTN 2014

Proof of CTNx 2014 attendance.

Extra Credit: Lighting a Scene in Maya

 1 point

 2 point

3 Point

I'm not 100% sure if I did the lighting right for this one, especially in the third light?

I did play around more with Maya's physical sun and sky though.

Building a Scene in Maya

Special Effects in Animation and Live-Action

My first two term paper scores were 92 and 94; I will not be writing a third term paper.

Outline for the Third Term Paper

Special effects have always been a big part of film and animation. In the past few decades directors and filmmakers have taken advantage of advances in technology to create more and more special effects to wow the audience. One of the more recent effects has been being able to create a spinning environment in which the character must survive in.

Inception

• Inception is about a group of strategists working together to convince the subconcious of a business owner of a decision against his will
• In the film Joseph Gordon Levitt's character, Arthur, combats dream security in a hotel room, and when his body has the sensation of falling, the hotel hallway begins to spin
• the way this scene was shot was the hotel room was actually built, and made to actually spin with the actors in it
• a camera was attached to the “floor” of the hallway, so as the room spun, it looked liked the characters were being tumbled about
• if the room was longer in one direction, the spinning effect spun too quickly, cause the stunt team to lose control and risk injury, to fix this the machine was purposely rigged to spin slower, if it was spinning on the long side of the rectangular environment so the actors could catch up before falling
• ex. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PhiSSnaUKk
• ex. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnPMCxPSeRM

Gravity

• In Gravity Sandra Bullock plays Ryan Stone who must survive and escape a severely damaged space telescope, and somehow return back to earth.
• The way these scenes were shot were done by creating a room/environment that was spinnable
• some of these scenes even suspended Bullock with wires, while the room spun around her
• the wires were taken out with green screen, to create the effect that she was in space.
• ex. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2U8juidXC8
• ex. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXGT4QOQn3U

Effects like these are absolutely stunning to an audience, as it leaves them in awe as to how it was done. This movie magic just keeps bringing them back time and time again, to experience stories larger than life.

Character Animation

For this project I worked with Christon Han and Russell Alindogan. We spent some time brainstorming, until we came up with the idea of a pose mannequin getting revenge on a human character playing with it.

 

Christon created some basic boards so we would remember what scenes were needed for the short film. We decided to have Russell be the human character in the film, because he proviced the best expressions, and acting. Both Christon and I helped direct Russell into pose and take photos for the animation. Christon also animated and posed most of the mannequin's poses, and I found the appropriate sound and music for the film's quirky nature.

Using a mannequin turned out very useful, as we were able to have the character "stand" without too much difficulty. When all the needed photos were done, they were compiled together in after effects for the final film.

Here's the final film!

Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction.

It's pretty much expected that on a trip to the movie theaters to watch an action or animated flick that the film the audience views has the Hollywood magic of broken physics. It may sound negative at first, but most of the time physics are broken purposely to make the film entertaining to the audience. It allows the audience to suspend their belief and be taken to another world, and be taken along for a visual ride of a lifetime. One of the most common broken laws of physics is the law of inertia. In animated and live action films, the law of inertia is broken to create epic scenes to entertain the audience. In many of the situations, the events would not be physically possible, and if they were it is unlikely any of the characters in the situations would have survived, let alone walked away uninjured. Films like the wire-fu epic Kung Fu Hustle, Phillipe Gamer's short film The Chase, and the popular animated feature Wreck-it-Ralph all took the privilege of movie magic to really push the entertainment factor at the expense of the law of inertia.

Kung-Fu Hustle is a 2004 action comedy martial arts film directed by Stephen Chow. The film has quite a lot of special effects, varying from CG animation, wire-fu, and green screen. The law of inertia is broken multiple times in this film, to either make the scene comedic, or to make a fight scene as impressive as possible. Many times through out the film, the characters fall from ridiculous heights or are hit with a tremendous amount of force that would normally kill a person, but they walk away with minor injuries, if any at all. The easiest scene to discern the broken physics is at the very climax of the film, when the main character, Sing, faces off with the big bad of the movie, Beast. During this fight, Sing makes a key mistake and Beast headbutts Sing in the stomach, sending Sing flying hundreds of feet in the air. Needless to say, no human being regardless of how strong they are would ever be able to headbutt another person even more than a few feet, let alone headbutt someone with enough force that the victim has enough inertia to fly a couple hundred feet into the air against the force of gravity. As the scene continues with Sing flying into the sky, he is able to miraculously recover mid-air by stepping on the back of an eagle. Sing reverts his direction and gains control of his fall, and uses the Buddhist Palm technique to defeat Beast. Right before hitting the ground, Sing once again reverts his inertia mid-air by using the compressed air from the Buddhist Palm, and lands perfectly uninjured. This is absolutely physically impossible by any human to be able to control and revert one's inertia merely by compressing air between oneself and the ground, let alone right before hitting the ground after falling a few hundred feet. Realistically, no amount of air compression would have been able to slow Sing's falling inertia from that height to allow him to be able to land safely without sustaining severe injury, let alone change one's direction of inertia and land perfectly uninjured. Albeit, as incorrect as the law of inertia in this film is, it definitely brings up the entertainment and comedic factor that the film is striving for.

The final fight in Kung Fu Hustle, the headbutt occures at approximately 5:45 into the video.

Another film that breaks the law of inertia is a short animated film directed by Phillipe Gamer, The Chase. In this film, a band of 4 daring women race and elude the cops in a high speed chase on at first what seems like a normal highway. It is later revealed that in order to escape the cops, the women must complete a double loop-de-loop on the freeway. The women are able to succeed in this challenge, and as they go through the loops, the cop cars chasing after them are unable to build up enough inertia like them to complete the stunt, and end up falling and smashing into the ground. The law of inertia is broken in this scene, as the cars the women are driving would not have enough power to build up the necessary speed and force they would need to keep their inertia against gravity and complete the large loops. Even if the cars were able to gain enough inertia to hold themselves upside down for that lengthy amount of time, it is likely the force would be so great they would have suffered some injury due to the crushing force. It would be more likely and realistic that like the cop cars, the cars the women are driving would have suffered the same fate the cop cars had, and fallen as well as they proceeded up the first loop against gravity. Nonetheless, the scene is well executed, comedic, and entertaining in the way the camera and music was handled, allowing the audience to suspend their disbelief and just enjoy the ride Phillipe Gamer takes them on.

Phillipe Gamer's The Chase, the loop de loop occurs approximately at 2:20 into the video.

Lastly, Wreck-it-Ralph is a 3-d animated feature film inspired by video games about a “bad guy” named Ralph, who wants to prove himself that internally he is actually a good natured heroic person. Through out the film, Ralph has several superficial attempts at being a “hero” before the film's climax in which Ralph relies his true potential of being a heroic person, with him willing to sacrifice himself to save his friend Vanellope. During this scene, Ralph is picked up by the mutated Turbo and flown hundreds of feet into the air above the Mentos' volcano. Ralph decides to give up his life, and breaks free from Turbo, and plummets down toward the volcano, and breaks the Mentos into the lava Pepsi with one powerful punch. This creates a lava beacon, that kills Turbo, and Vanellope is able to save Ralph before he hits the lava. As heartfelt as this scene is, it is guilty of breaking the law of inertia From the height that Ralph falls,realistically ,even if he were able to survive, he would have definitely broken most of the bones in his right arm when he struck down on the Mentos crust of the volcano due the inertia and force he had built up from the fall. However, like the previous films, because of the stylization and the way the movie is treated it the audience is able to accept this without questioning it. 

The final battle in Wreck-it-Ralph, Ralphs fall occurs at appoximately 1:35 into the video.

The law of inertia is a physic that many films break, and at the same time the audience is rarely conscious of it happening as long as it is well done. In the example films, the audience is introduced to the physics of the world very early in the film, so they know what to expect through out the film. In Kung Fu Hustle they use comedy and well done directing, and in both The Chase, and Wreck-it-Ralph the world is extremely stylized to help the audience suspend their disbelief. By doing this, these films are able to take the audience on an epic entertaining experience. Even though it can be at the expense of realistic physics, it's just enjoyable as a viewer to be able to taken to a world where the physics are laws behave differently than ours as long as it is well executed.

Outline for the Second Term Paper

Outline for the Second Term Paper - Broken Law of Inertia in Live Action and Animated Film

In both animated and live action films, the law of inertia is broken to create epic scenes to entertain the audience. In many of the situations, the events would not be physically possible, and if they were it is unlikely any of the characters in the situations would have survived, let alone walked away uninjured.

Kung Fu Hustle

• over the top comedy karate kung fu movie.
• Live action with a lot of heavy CG to exaggerate movements and create interesting characters and powers.
• Characters fall from ridiculous heights, without sustaining any damage multiple times in the movie.
• - in some scenes the characters are even thrown or physically struck with a large amount of force, and survive impossible falls
• the scenes do not feel “correct”. During these incorrect inertia scenes, the characters feel too 'light” and 'airy, or way to heavy for the mass that they physically have

Phillipe Gamer “The Chase”

• short independent animated film about team of 4 women racing and evading the cops on a high speed chase
• cars would not have had enough engine power to build up enough speed make the final loop at the end of the film
• they would have fallen alongside the police cars that attempt the same loop
• cars do not have enough inertia or force to make the loop at the end of the film
• under the circumstance that the cars did, it is likely the characters would have been crushed by the force

Wreck-it-Ralph

• Video Game inspired 3-d animated film about a “bad guy” who wants to be recognized as a hero instead because of his good intentions
• at the end of the film Ralph is willing to sacrifice himself by falling from extreme heights to build up enough force for powerful punch to save his best friend Penelope
• due to the height of the fall Ralph takes in the climax of the film and his heroic moment it is unlikely he would have survived.
• If he did survive his arm would likely be severely broken due to the force of impact.

Film gives us the power to suspend the belief of the audience, even if it s only temporary to entertain them. It is a creative way to manipulate physics and break the rules, even if it is not realistic or physically possible for the human body.

Reverse Video Reference

Stop Motion Animation of Falling

I created this animation by using a magnetic white board and magnets. I purposely chose a magnetic whiteboard because I wanted to figure out a way to orchestrate the objects without have to use string, or anything that might look too obtrusive. I wanted to keep it simple and just try to get the basic physics down as best as I could because animating because animating isn't really my strong point. Christon and I worked together for this one, and we set up the camera on a tripod to keep it steady. There were a total of 35 images shot, but 2 were removed to correct timeing and spacing.

The Laws of Physics in an Animation Universe.

The Dream Physics of Satoshi Kon's Paprika 

Satoshi Kon's Paprika is a 2-d animated film that explores the human subconsciousness and surrealist world of dreams. One of the memorable aspects of Kon's film is that half the film takes place in a grounded world based on realism, and the other half takes place in a fantastical dream world. The general gist of the film is about Dr. Atsuko Chiba and her team of scientists. They've created a machine called the DC Mini in which the user, in coordination with a patient, can dive into the patient's dream and experience the exact same dream. This opens new doors to psychological treatment as accessing the patients dream, allows the DC Mini user to view the patients unhinged subconscious. While treating patients in the dream world, Chiba creates an alter ego of herself. As her real self is introverted, stern, and succinct, her dream self named Paprika is literally a “dream girl”. She is extroverted, a flirt, and charismatic. The project is considered a huge leap in technology, and psychological treatment. However, at the same time, faces termination due to the dangers of overusing the DC Mini permanently submersing the physical state of the user into a vegetable like state, while their subconsciousness gets to live on in their very own dream world. The project is even later further jeopardized, as one of the valuable and powerful DC Mini's are stolen from the main lab.

Just like Chiba and Paprika's personalities, the physics of the two worlds contrast and play off each other. While in the real world physics are very realistic and grounded, in the dream world physics are completely thrown for a loop and anything is possible. Objects defy gravity, time and space is distorted, and squash and stretch is exaggerated to purposely show inconsistent mass. Inanimate objects come to life to create a parade of colour, people's masses growing to transform, and even “space” can be broken to connect dreams together. Kon really pushed what can happen in the dream world, to create a breathe taking feast for the eyes in Paprika.

In the very opening sequence of the film Chiba and Paprika treat Detective Konakawa, trying to find the source of his depression and anxiety. His dream shows the key to his anxiety, which is a long hotel hallway with red carpeting, and the corpse of a dead man floating to the ground as if he were light as a piece of fabric. 

 

The "fabric" like corpse in Konakawa's dream hallway.

The dead man is about 6 1/2 feet tall, and an man about that height should weigh and fall like he is about 170 pounds. To emphasis this Kon puts in the sound effects of wind, even though the corpse should have hit the ground almost immediately, and with quite an impact. Further more the rest of the physics in this sequence of the dream, besides the floating corpse, behaves realistically. Konakawa has his feet grounded from the force of gravity. Further putting emphasis and the floating corpse, Konakawa sees the faceless murderer escaping at the end of the hallway. The faceless murderer like Konakawa, is not affected by the weightlessness the corpse has. The corpse defies the natural physics of gravity that is effecting both Konakawa, and the escaping faceless murderer. Instead of hitting the ground like the 170lb corpse that he is, the corpse floats slowly in front of Konakawa taunting him with memories of the past. This is further pushed, as when Konakawa realizes what he is looking at, he goes into shock in his dream, and the floor falls away from him. He begins to plummet into the white space of his dream world, before he is awaken by a hypnic jerk.

A few minutes later in the film, it shows Paprika exploring the city at night after leaving Konakawa. What's interesting about this scene is that Paprika is exploring the real world, but due to her “dream girl” status and powers, she defies the physics of reality. As she explores the city, she skips around playing, but when watching the scene there is a noticeable difference in the time it takes her to hit the ground when she is mid skip. Each skip has a wide stride, and is extended by about two frames, a small change, but it plays a big difference. Paprika's skips are drawn out, and it feels like even though the real people around her are affected by the normal physics of the earth's gravity, Paprika's animation actually makes her feel like she is skipping on another planet with a slightly lower gravitational pull.

Note - Unfortunately this gif has actually been altered and sped up in comparison to the actual film, so Paprika feels less"floaty"

However, pay attention to the length of the distance in her last leap, as she skips off screen.

Another interesting aspect of the dream world is that neither time or space behaves as it normally would. Time can actually overlap itself multiple times, creating two of the same people, at the same time in a dream. In a later part of the film Paprika is closing in on the culprit who stole the missing DC Mini. She dives into a colleagues dream, only to realize that she has been tricked and the dream she is exploring is a clone of a previous dream she has already investigated. Whats interesting about this is that Kon shows this by literally showing two Paprika's. Time repeats itself twice in a reoccurring dream Paprika experiences, but on the second time around she attempts to warn her past self of the imminent danger. Whats interesting about the way Kon broke the physics in the dream world is that the viewer is left in the dark, until Kon reveals that there is a second Paprika existing in the dream. 

 

Pinnochio Paprika attempts to warn her former self.

In the dream world, one's physical appearance can move forward and back in time as well. When Paprika sits down with Konakawa to discuss his anxiety disorder and the cause, Konakawa realizes his trauma most likely happened when he was younger. The he subconsciously realizes this, he physical form changes into his younger self, when the incident happened. This is an interesting use of distorting the physics of time, because instead of distorting the time around a character, the time of the character is what is affected.

Konakawa coversing with Paprika in his dream when he stumbles upon a clue that his anxiety is likely tied to an event in his youth.

The physics of space is also distorted in Kon's fantastical dream world. Unlike the physical space of the real world, where one cannot teleport or merely rip holes into space to move about, in the dream world these are completely possible. Paprika literally breaks space to move from one location to another in the film. She does this in order to find the culptrit who stole the DC Mini, with the identity of the culprit hidden in a hole in the space of the dream. When she shatters the the space blocking this pathway, she gains access to a passage that connects the dreams of two different people. Spaces do not exist seperate from each other in the dream world, and they actually end up intertwined because of the DC Mini.

In the top frame, Paprika shatters the space of the dream, discovering a hidden pathway.

There is another example of spaces connecting is when a dreaming Konakawa collides his dream with the villains to rescue Paprika. During this scene the two dream spaces, the villains' and Koakawa's, exist separately at first, with Paprika being strangled in the dream of villain. In Konakawa's dream he witnesses this, at first helpless, on the screen of a movie theater. However, as he sees Paprika in danger, he literally pushes himself against the screen of the movie theater, attempting to connect the physical space of his dream, with the physical space of the villain's dream. As he pushes against the wall of his dream, it begins to stretch, and he physically rips a hole through the fabric of space into the villains' dream rescuing Paprika.

Konakawa forces himself into the wall of his dream, to rip a path open to another dream.

This aspect becomes even more interesting, as near the climax of the film the dream world and real world collide, and because of this the real world becomes distorted with dream world physics. An example of space being distorted is Paprika using a TV in Chiba's real world to travel quickly between two spaces. This is similar to how in the dream world, spaces can be connected as long as there is a path that can be found or a path that can be made. 

 Now with physics of the real world distorted, Paprika exists in reality, but still has dream world physics.

Finally, in the physics of the dream world, squash and stretch, and the mass of an object is consistently distorted. Inanimate objects come to life, and begin to squash and stretch to give them an ability to walk. In the video provided below, a few samples of this can be seen at 0:01, and 0:48. It is especially prominent in objects that are perspective heavy, like the refrigerator leading the parade. These objects squash and squish to the point where they should technically be breaking due to the material they are made of. In the dream world it=this can be exaggerated to the point where even objects that are made of solid materials such as metal, behave as if they are made of rubber.

When the dream world collides with the real world, mass can be manipulated and pushed to no end. At the 2:40 mark in the same video, humans transform into guitars and gold statues, however in both transformations their original mass is not consistent to their ending mass. In both cases each character gains about 1/3 extra mass to fit their new form. As unnatural as this is, simply because the dream world has collided with the real world, these bizarre distortions are now physically possible based on the laws of physics previously established.

 

Video example of exaggerated squash and stretch, and distorted mass in Paprika.

Satoshi Kon's film, Paprika, is a beautifully animated film that really pushes animation as a media and a form of story telling. The way he distorts physics in the dream world he creates through gravity, distorting space and time, and squash and stretch, is really only scratching the surface of the film, and the dream world he created. It's amazing to see how much thought Kon put in Paprika to contrast the grounded real world with the dream world, and it really shows the viewer how bizarre and broken their own dreams can be. At the same time though, the best aspect of Kon's film is that like a dream, when the world is as thoughtfully and exceptionally executed as Paprika is, anything is believable to it's viewer.

Law of Physics in Animation Outline - Satoshi Kon's Paprika

Satoshi Kon's Paprika - Essay Outline

Introduction

• Satoshi Kon Film, 2-d Animation
• The film takes place in a world similar to ours, where a device called the DC mini allows someone to join in on another's dream, with one person is asleep and dreaming. The dream can also be recorded and rewatched, and it is used to treat trauma and psychological disorders/distress.
• Paprika contrasts a realistic world, with the broken and imaginative physics of a dream world.

3 Hypotheses

Gravity

• Gravity is distorted in the dream world, Paprika's character can seem as light as a feather, to as a normally weighted human female if she decides to choose so.
• Objects and characters move in distorted arcs. The two bartenders are able to leap the distance of a wide street just by sprinting a short distance.
• The suspect of the Detective's drean film, when shot in the back, collapses into a rag doll, and floats slowly to the ground as if he is actually a piece of paper

Time

• Time is severely distorted in the dream world. Time is allowed to run both forward and backward in the dream of the Detective's. In his dream, he repeatedly shoots the same same suspect, over and over again in the same hallway.
• Events do not run in a straight line, even though the Detective's movie dream happens at the very beginning of the film, it repeats itself and is even watched by the Detective himself in a later part of the film.
• When the Detective confronts his fear, and finally shoots the suspect in his dream, the dream immediately cuts to the end of the “film” and does not show time passing.
  
  

Squash and Stretch and Inconsistent Mass

• When the dream world collides with the real world, objects that are normally solid/structured squash and stretch with distorted mass. Ex. The Dream Parade, refrigerators bend and squish in distorted shapes to walk down the street.
• People distort their bodies, and either gain or lose mass to turn into objects.
• Objects that are normally solid, bend and squish like worms to fly through the air in the Dream Parade.

Conclusion

• Kon purposely designed the dream world to be abstract and devoid of realistic physics to contrast it with the real world the film is half set in. It makes the film interesting, because it shows the viewer how abstract their dreams are, but when they are asleep and dreaming they buy into it without realizing.

Film Trailer

Shooting Video Reference

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Mini Portfolio

Hi, my name is Claudia Law and I'm in the Animation/Illustration program with a focus on Visual Development. I would like to eventually work in the video game industry as a concept artist. Currently I'm working on an indie game project with a couple of my colleagues named "Foster" as a character and environment artist. I enjoy working in small teams, as I feel it is much easier for everyone to get their ideas heard, and it is a better environment to have impulsive and creative ideas.

I'm also a very big film fanatic, with one of my current favourite directors being Bong Joon-ho. He directed the 2009 suspense film "Mother". I highly recommend this film to anyone that is interested in cinematography, because it has excellent shot compositions to visually tell a character's mental state without any use of dialogue or obtrusive cues. Some of my favourite animation directors include Miyazaki(of course), Satoshi Kon(Paprika, Tokyo Godfathers,etc), and Mamoru Hosoda(Summer Wars, Wolf Children, etc.).

In my free time I like to cook. For me, cooking is alternate from drawing when I feel too stressed out or overwhelmed. I really enjoy learning new recipes, and usually spend a lot of time watching YouTube Chefs. Some of my favourite YouTube cooking channels include Food Wishes, Byron Talbott, and Maangchi.

Lastly, here is my mini-portfolio for viewing. There is also my alternate BlogSpot for "professional" updates, and my Tumblr for more casual work.

Here is the trailer for "Mother" 2009.

The First Post

First post.