HW 13 - Stereoscopic 3D Images

Red/Cyan


Red/Cyan


Green/Magenta


The only hard part is positioning the two camera shots so they will composite consistantly. I'd like to explore this technique a bit more sometime.

HW 12 - Lighting a Scene in Maya

One-Point Lighting


Two-Point Lighting


Three-Point Lighting


It's been too long since I last worked with Maya. At least this is a nice refresher before I try to sign up for the Maya class next semester.

HW 11 - Building a Scene in Maya

Nothing complicated, just quick and simple.

Second Term Paper - The Law of Inertia in Movies

Massive explosions, incredible speeds, death defying stunts, these are all hallmarks of today's high adrenaline action movies. Feats beyond what we see everyday makes for exciting entertainment. It is our way of finding escape from the dreary and boring events that we often experience in real life. However, we often do not notice that some of these effects are pushed too far for what reality will allow. Sometimes it is done intentionally for the sake of storytelling, and sometimes it is done out of ignorance of how real world physics really work. One example is the law of inertia. Essentially, mass resists change in movement. It takes energy to accelerate an object up to speed, and it takes energy to slow it down. This effect is amplified even more the heavier the object is. It is the reason why we should not tailgate while driving, why dishes will stay on the table while the tablecloth is jerked out from under them, and why football players can get concussions even with their pads and helmets. In many action movies, especially any movies that feature high-speed stunts, this law of inertia is often bended, stretched and even outright broken.

One circumstance of the law of inertia being portrayed unrealistically in movies is in sudden impacts. The movie "Iron Man," starring Robert Downey Jr., is an example where even a super-powered suit of armor would not protect you. In the scene where Tony Stark goes into his first major combat scene as the fully decked out, red and gold Iron Man he encounters a tank which shoots him out of the sky. Standing up from a rather undignified crash landing he stands up in one piece and deals out explosive justice to the tank. In real life, Tony Stark would not have survived such an encounter. Even if his armor were strong enough to withstand the direct hit from the tank shell, his body would not. The armor, being essentially a solid object, would probably change direction from the explosion in one piece, but the human body inside would want to keep going. Its inertia would resist the change in speed and direction. Even more so, the human body is relatively soft and with different parts that are of different densities. This is why concussions are so prevalent and dangerous in contact sports like football. Even though our skull has evolved to be a very sturdy and solid protection, the brain inside is still soft, having a general consistency similar to gelatin. As the head and skull come to a sudden stop, the brain will continue to move and collide with the inner wall of the skull and bounce around for a few times, causing injury. This would be a similar case for all of the internal organs as the body meets the sudden impact. While this is perhaps the biggest instance of the law of inertia being broken in the movie, there are several times when Iron Man comes to an abrupt stop without suffering any injury, most often by climatic landings from high speed flights, which also leads us into our next example.

Sudden, high speed landings from incredible heights is a common element of many movies that feature characters with extraordinary or even supernatural abilities, such as kung-fu and superhero movies. In Dreamworks' "Kung Fu Panda," there are many scenes in which characters would land from extraordinary heights. A specific scene that illustrates this particularly well is when the Furious Five make their introduction during the Dragon Warrior Choosing Ceremony. All five characters fall from amazing, nose-bleed heights above the monastery and land in the courtyard effortlessly. This, of course is unrealistic, but when one thinks about it, it is so unrealistic that they have to pan the camera in a certain way to mitigate the impact of the landing. If the camera were in a stationary position that showed the high-speed fall to the abrupt landing, it would not only be unrealistic in real life, but it would also feel unrealistic to the viewers. Landings from jumps require the body and legs to flex downward to absorb the energy of the fall. The further a person has to fall the more the body would have to bend to land safely. Pretty soon the body would not have enough bend to cushion fall in time to prevent serious injury. As special effect falls become faster and faster, the body would stop more and more abruptly and seem more and more unbelievable without special camera techniques to hide this little fact. This is a challenge for many action movies, even if the character could physically withstand the fall. "The Hulk" seems to be the standard cliche example where as the Hulk falls to the ground, he should plow through it in an explosive impact instead of simply landing with the ground intact.

Most of the examples where we see the law of inertia being broken involves sudden stops that the mass would normally resist, incurring damage on the softer bits. However, this law can also be broken on the other side of the spectrum in the form of sudden accelerations and there is nothing in the industry that illustrates the breaking of inertia more than in science fiction. Movies with space flight are full of challenges and physical errors that are never caught because the nature and dynamics of space lies beyond the understanding and experience of everyday people (like how there should be no sounds or fiery explosions in space because there is no air). In a simple example, in the movie Star Wars many characters fly around in X-Wings and Tie-Fighters during the fight against the Death Star, zipping by each other in high speeds doing their sci-fi space dogfights while casually bouncing around in their cockpits. Real life dogfights, on the other hand, are rife with peril, not only form your enemy shooting at you, but from the extreme environments and conditions placed on the pilot during changes of high-speed acceleration. Again, the human body is soft with a lot of clearance to move around, especially with inertia rears its ugly head. During high-speed turns and accelerations in a fighter jet, the body resists any change in its state of movement and in this case the part of the body that is of most concern is the blood. In climbs and other accelerating movements that causes intense G-forces, the blood, being a fluid, will resist the change of speed and pool in the direction opposite that of the acceleration. This can cause severe blackouts as the blood is pulled away from the brain. It is this reason that special flights suits are designed to inflate and squeeze on the legs to push the blood back into the rest of the body, though even this only mitigates the danger. The fun part about science fiction, however, is that they can always invent a device that solves any such real world science argument of why something is not possible, in this case: the "inertial dampener."

In the examples from the movies "Iron Man," "Kung Fu Panda," and "Star Wars," we have discussed and shown how movies often portray the law of inertia incorrectly. It is not always a bad thing to do, however. When done intentionally and thoughtfully for the sake of telling a good story, it can be a great device. It is the job of the storyteller to push what is possible to create excitement and help the viewer escape the mundane. However, when done ignorantly, such scenes can break the believability and shatter the entertaining illusion that the film was meant to create. Such films are then regarded as cheap and poorly done because it no longer holds that "suspension of disbelief." As it is often said: "you need to know the rules before you can break them."

Art/Physics123 Survey Extra Credit

"This is to certify that I completed the anonymous mid-semester survey for Art/Physics 123 and am requesting the five points of extra credit.

As a student at San Jose State, I understand the university's Academic Integrity Policy (http://info.sjsu.edu/web-dbgen/narr/catalog/rec-2083.html)."

HW 9 - Stop-Motion Character Animation

So far I do not like stop-motion animation. Dealing with gravity and making sure everything is in the right position for the camera is tough. I'm not going to deal with trying to be creative with this. There is just so much I don't know about stop-motion and I don't want to deal with learn it from scratch.

HW 8 - Reverse Video References

Oh, I felt so stupid doing these, but hey, homework is homework. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to cut the last three videos so they have extra video time.

First Term Paper

Movies are often known for bending and breaking the rules of physics, either for the sake of the storytelling or out of simple ignorant mistake. Obviously certain films push physics more than others. You are unlikely to see any pushed use of physics in a romance, for example. However, some types of movies tend to stand out. Kung-fu movies are notorious for bending the laws of physics until they break. Wall crushing kicks, mid-air combats, weightless feats of acrobatics, even outright flight are common occurrences in kung-fu flicks. Animated films are another. Animation, by its very nature, “push the pose” to what reality cannot do in order to communicate what is felt. That is especially true of the more cartoony and caricatured forms of animation. In this light, I figure that I would choose to analyze the physics of a film from both genres in the form of the hilarious movie by Dreamworks Animation, Kung Fu Panda. In this, film physics are pushed to their animated limits in a display that shows that with training in kung-fu a martial artist can gain the ability to bend the laws of physics to his own advantage. As the greater one’s kung-fu becomes the greater his physics bending ability becomes over his more normal non-kung-fu counterpart.


The first example presented here is the martial artist’s ability to fall from extraordinary heights and still land safely on the ground, a feat that is a standard in practically all kung-fu movies. The believability of this action relies restricting the camera view to the landing. If the fall and the landing were seen in a way that gives a consistent sense of the momentum, it would feel unrealistic for the character to land as safely as he or she does without crushing into the ground in an inelegantly kung-fu manner that only a super-powered comic book superhero can manage.

The earliest case of this presents itself at the beginning of the ceremony where Master Oogway chooses who the Dragon Warrior will be. As Master Sifu announces the Furious Five, they all fall onto the stage from incredible heights and still land safely on the ground. In order to hide the unrealistic physics of this action, the camera was positioned to follow and abruptly angle itself to hide the sudden yet weightless impact of the first lander, Tigress. After this camera angle has been set, the others would land as well. However, due to the new perspective of the camera, the height of the fall is not seen and thus the others can land, albeit with a strong sense of weight but not nearly consistent with the original height of the fall.

Another example of weightless fall is Tai Lung’s landing at end of the epic bridge fight. The scene makes its conclusion when a seemingly defeated Tai Lung falls tied up in the severed rope bridge on the side of the chasm opposite the Furious Five and the Valley of Peace. Incredibly, Tai Lung mysteriously builds momentum to suddenly swing up and land behind the Furious Five with a breakneck impact and in a manner too instantaneous to see. The entire midair action happens at a speed far too fast to be realistic and is hidden with the inability to see Tai Lung until after he lands. While a great way to turn the tide and defeat the Furious Five, that landing no doubtedly have crushed him of given a realistic treatment.

Perhaps one of the most climatic jumps in the film is when Tigress jumps off the mountain on her way to fight Tai Lung. This scene begins as Master Sifu admits to Po that he doesn’t know how to train him to become the Dragon Warrior. Seeing this, Tigress makes the decision to take it upon herself to fight Tai Lung. Standing on the roof of the mountain-top temple, she makes an enormous jump off the temple and off the mountain to the village below. After an exhilarating fall, she slides on an angled village roof and jumps onto another. This gives the illusion that she is slowing her descent in order to land unharmed. However, the angled slide was not nearly long enough to counter her momentum and thus she should have either continued to slide and crash into the ground or she would have simple crashed through the roof to begin with.

As illustrated, a kung-fu master would routinely jump or fall from amazing heights and with some camera magic, land without a scratch. Manipulated camera angles are very much used even in this animated film to disconnect the incredible distance and momentum from the point of impact to preserve the believability of the scene.


Another precedent of the kung-fu martial artist’s ability to twist the laws of physics to his own advantage is his or her power to apply a huge amount of force to high mass objects and creatures while being nearly immovable himself. Nearly all movies that show individuals with superhuman physical abilities have instances where someone would manipulate an object while the object would have seemingly no effect on the person. This is especially magnified by the major size differences in many of the film’s characters.

One of the most apparent representations of this movie staple is when Mantis and Sifu (both very small characters, especially compared with Po’s copious girth) would flip and throw Po around like a rag doll during his training. Mantis’s small size was exaggeratedly used to attack Po like an invisible assailant, throwing Po around by an unseen force. Soon after, Sifu would confront Po and toss him about as if he weighed nearly nothing, even lighter than what Mantis made Po appear.

Another example is the comical situation where Mantis is stuck holding up a severed rope bridge while the rest of the Furious Five fight with Tai Lung on it. At first it took four of them, Crane, Monkey, Viper, and Mantis to hold up the bridge. Then as Tigress came to deal with more than she could handle, Crane and Viper joined in. Finally, Monkey had to join the fight, leaving tiny Mantis to hold up all of their weight by himself. And while we can visibly see him struggling, he still would not have been able to hold up that bridge because he was too light (the slightest flick could have sent him airborne), and he had nothing but the friction of the ground to push off of. If he had something more substantial on the ground to give himself better leverage, it would have gone a long way to give this scene a bit more realistic believability.

A rather large instance of a character’s ability to move things while being immovable himself is in the scene of Tai Lung’s escape from the prison. When the villain is shot at by the ballistas, he then uses the bolts to provide a springboard for his escape. He then proceeded to effortlessly toss the ballista bolts into the air. But this isn’t the big physics bending event of the scene. What he does is jump up and kick the ballista bolts into firing velocity back at the ballista and the stone wall, all while barely moving himself despite being in midair. Even if made of lightweight bamboo, the large ballista bolts with their steel tips and reinforcements would likely weigh as much if not more than Tai Lung himself. Just kicking one in midair should have sent him flying backwards with at least equal speed as he had applied to the bolts, and yet he sent multiple bolts flying on the same jump without moving himself.

A movie kung-fu master often accomplishes feats of great force without an equal being applied back to himself. Even when two martial artists would combat each other, this would still apply depending on the degree of whose kung-fu was stronger. Isn’t it nice to have a built in mechanism to conveniently explain any inconsistencies in the physics applied to a cinematic kung-fu world?


The final illustration of the movie’s kung-fu ability to bend the rules of physics is perhaps subtle at first, but becomes perhaps the most obvious example when recognized: the characters’ ability to jump and reach a simultaneous midair apex and return to the ground well before inanimate objects following a similar path. Normally all objects would rise and fall at the same rate as long as air resistance remained insignificant. However, in the movie many objects would be thrown in the air while the character would jump after it, reach the objects apex at the same time as the object, and then land on the ground long before the object does.

One of the first scenes to show this difference in rising and falling speeds is when Sifu displays Tigress’s fighting agility to Po after they find him trying to practice doing splits at the training grounds. Here, Sifu throws a pair of tiles straight up in the air. When he gave the signal a full second or two later, Tigress would jump up, reach the same apex as the tiles at the same time, and kick them into rubble. After she landed a good two to three seconds later, the rubble from the tiles would then reach the ground.

Another instance of this occurs at the site of the Peach Tree as Master Sifu and Master Oogway discuss how Po could possibly defeat Tai Lung. Sifu takes a peach, throws it in the are, jumps, reaches the peach at a simultaneous apex (and casting a rather nice silhouette in front of a full moon), slices the peach and freeing the pit inside, lands on the ground, digs a hole with a quick kung-fu thrust, then finally catches the peach pit and plants it in the hole.

Finally, my last example of this physics bending ability takes place during Po’s final training test. Master Sifu offers Po a bowl of dumplings claiming that he has been trained and may now eat, if Po can take the dumplings. Quickly after it begins, the batch of dumplings is thrown up in the air. Sifu jumps up to immediately eat nearly all of the dumplings. While Sifu actually reaches his apex and falls down before the dumplings would have, the two paths of action still clearly travel and different acceleration rates, with the dumplings moving much more slowly than Sifu’s more rapid and abrupt jump.

A kung-fu capable character again possesses the ability to take the rules of normal physics and bend them to his own advantage by being able to manipulate his or her jump acceleration to a speed beyond that of a normal object. While the actual timing may vary, in each case the character in question was clearly able to jump well after the object, meet it at its highest point, and then land on the ground before the object could do so.


As shown, Kung Fu Panda is an excellent example of the power of kung-fu in a marital arts movie world. Whereas a normal person would be subject to more normal and less forgiving physical forces, a kung-fu master can push these laws to their own advantage in combat. Even any inconsistencies can be explained by the strength of the fighter’s kung-fu relative to the conditions of the situation. They are able to fall from extraordinary heights, apply incredible forces will being immovable themselves, and manipulate their midair accelerations to their benefit.

HW7 - Term Paper Outline

My term paper will be using Dreamwork's "Kung Fu Panda" as it's subject. As both an animated film AND a kung fu movie this film provides plenty of physics-defying stunts.

Main Thesis: Training in Kung Fu provides the wielder the ability to bend the laws of physics.

Topic One: Martial artists are able to reach a midair apex and return to the ground well before other objects.
Support:
- Tigress jumping to kick tiles
- Sifu planting the peach pit
- Sifu & Po fighting over the dumpling

Topic Two: Martial artists can fall from extraordianry heights and still land safely.
Support:
- The Furious Five introduction landing during the Dragon Warrior Choosing Ceremony
- Tigress jumping and falling extreme distance on her way to fight Tai Lung
- Tai Lung's sudden landing at end of the Bridge Fight

Topic Three: Low mass creatures are able to apply huge amounts of force on high mass objects and creatures.
Support:
- Ending credits with punching dummy
- Sifu and Mantis flipping Po like a rag doll during first day of training
- Mantis holding up the bridge by himself

HW6 - Stop-Motion Animation of Falling

For this animation I used some steel wire to suspend the empty bottle of gesso. I discovered that using the wire was particularly difficult because of the weight of the bottle (even though it is empty). I thought about photoshopping the wire out of the frames, but then would it make it that much different than just photoshopping the bottle into the scene? Would that be considered cheating? Hmm...

HW5 - Video Analysis of Path of Action

HW4 - Tracker Video Analysis

The yellow tennis ball in my previous reference video was somewhat difficult to see so I reshot it with a blue handball.

HW3 - Video Reference

Tennis ball drop at 30 fps.

HW2 - Mini Portfolio

Hello, my name is Brandon Moore and I am an Animation/Illustration major here at SJSU. I transfered from a community college so I've gotten most of my GEs out of the way and I am focusing on my art classes. I have just passed the portfolio review last semester thus I have taken all the classes that I could take prior to the portfolio, including Maya and Tidepool. My current art classes for this semester include ArtPhysics123 and Art114.

HW1 - The First Post

Here is the obligatory first post.