Laws of Physics in an Animation Universe (Paper Outline)

The Physics of Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs

1. Introduction to the Cloudy Universe

• Description of Swallow Falls and the characters and beings of the Cloudy world.

• Basic outline of the type of physics presented in this world (extremely exaggerated realism)

• Thesis statement about the three physical laws that the essay is structured around.

2. Physical Law 1 – Unrealistic Strength of Rat Birds (Consider converting to general physics of flight analysis)

• Explain the Rat Bird and its origins

• Examples of their strength (00:08:19 – Kidnapping Billy, 1:19:00 – Saving Flint)

• Analyze the differences between Rat Bird and real bird flight and attempt to calculate the strength required for them to personally sustain flight and the lift required to kidnap Billy and rescue Flint.

3. Physical Law 2 – Perfect Balance

• Explain the abilities of characters in this movie to stand and maintain impossible poses for the sake of being more expressive or comedic.

• Examples: Numerous unrealistic poses of Flint carrying the FLSMDFR (~11 min), Scenes of Earl yelling at Flint (~11 min), numerous Brent poses.

• Analysis of where the center of gravity of certain poses might be and why they would be impossible to maintain as well as the cinematic effectiveness of “pushed poses”

4. Physical Law 3 – Super Durable Characters

• Description of the type of abuse these characters can sustain without lasting injury

• Examples: Super fast acceleration/deceleration without injury (Flint hitting a stop sign (~15 min), Kids getting launched in a giant ice cream scoop, sledding off a roof into a dumpster. (~30 min)) and getting hit with high velocity food with no injury (falling food, Flint throwing snowballs)

• Compare apparent effects of concussive injuries on Cloudy's characters with what would be the expected accompanying injuries of similar events in the real world

5. Conclusion

• Summation of the various physical laws that have been altered in the movie. Maybe some contemplation of what would be different if the movie only followed realistic physics.

Stop Motion Animation of Falling

This is a brief stop motion of a falling clay ball. The first unexpected complication for this project came just from trying to find a good orientation for my built-in webcam and once I realized that there'd be no way I could shoot this project in top-down fashion, I had to improvise. Using soft modeling clay and a long paint brush, I crafted the ball and the manipulating tool. For the falling motion, I tried to adhere to the "odd rule" in the small amount of space I had while attempting to show other animation principles such as squash, stretch, and adjusting the contact frames. However, I failed to take into account the frame rate and hold length of each frame so my attempt to follow some of those principles weren't particularly successful. After a few reshoots I noticed that my first, simplest take was the most successful and that is what I've uploaded.

This is the first stop-motion animation I've done in a long time and I quite enjoyed it. I'm eager to fix this animation in my own time and attempt to get more creative with it.

Tracker Video Analysis of Falling

This was a simple assignment until I came across the part that required me to hit the "plots" button which I could not find anywhere on the program. The help file was of no use either, as it assumed I could find the button. I instead used the Data Tool to graph the data and while I could not find how to specify which data I wanted it to visualize, the resulting graph seemed vaguely correct.

The reference video used was what I shot last semester for my brick drop animation in Art 28. The frame rate of the file was 29 FPS.

Video Reference

frame rate: 15fps

Tape roll dropped four feet onto carpet. Black markers on door indicate 12 inch increments.

Mini Portfolio

This is a photo from my first time working in the studio as a photography student

After a while I discovered that people were my favorite subject and continued to regularly shoot them even after I stopped studying photography. This picture is from the first time I went to an anime convention to take pictures of the people who go to anime conventions.

This is a video of my brick drop from Art 28.

I suppose that you can glean from the video post that I am an Animation/Illustration major. My aspiration is to graduate with a focus in animation and, for security's sake, land a nice job at a studio. There's a handful of film and game studios that I would feel proud to work at, but what I really wish I could do is work on independent animated shorts one day.

I think that I share a lot of influences with other animation students, going back primarily to Golden Age Warner Bros. and Disney work. I would also say that cartoons and videogames from the late 80s and early 90s were a large influence on me as well- the cartoons because they were the first serialized stories that I ever became engrossed with in my life and the videogames because during that period developers were pioneering an unexplored medium and managed to create some of the most entertaining multimedia products I've ever experienced using extremely limited hardware.

The 1st Post

This will be my blog for my "Physics of Animation" class. I will use it to turn in my assignments.

There are many blogs like this, but this one is mine. I will keep track of it.