Creating Stereoscopic 3D Images

 Red/Cyan Images

Recreating Cameras and Lights in Maya

Original Image

My Renders

Building a Scene in Maya

Special Effects in Animation and Live-Action

My first two term paper scores were 91 and 92; I will not be writing a third term paper.

Outline for the Third Term Paper

Introduction:

-My main focus: Water flows through small tunnels.

-Compare between life action TV show and CGI in game play.

-Water sluicing in life-action could look fake while CGI water sluicing can be realistic and intence.

Body

A: An example from an old TV drama A Journey to the West（1986）

  -Method used to create rapid water flow.

  -What works: Look like real water

  -What doesn’t work: not rapid enough.

B: Example in Capcom’s Game Resident Evil 6 (2012).

  -Method: CGI

  -What work: Convincing and rapid enough to make impact.

  -What doesn’t work: Not realistic enough

Conclusion:

It is hard to recreate rapid water flow to indicate danger.

It is either hard to make it realistic or have big impact.  

Stop-Motion Character Animation

    Basically I used my cousin's toy bears to shoot this stop motion animation. I did some story boardings before I took pictures so that I had a clear plan to shoot. My cousin Sarah helped me to hold the camera while I was managing the position of the two characters. And I use Photoshop to get rid of my hands in the scenes.  It was pretty fun and challenging to make a stop motion animation.

Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction

Films can be representations of real life stories, or it can be completely fictional. Yet, sometime it can be really tricky to distinguish what is science fact and what is make-believe. When a film wants to be both believable and magnificent, the filmmaker will try to trick the audience’s eyes by bending the laws of physics without being noticed. One of the most important components of films is the character. If the characters merely do the things that normal creatures are capable, then not a lot of people are going to care about their stories. Therefore, the filmmakers will give them super powers to break the physics rules of the reality. And the audiences will feel like: ”Oh, this scene look like it can happen around me.” As a result, the audiences are wiling to accept whatever happens in the films and like the characters. One of the most popular laws of physics that the filmmakers like to play with is the Isaac Newton’s Third Law. As the filmmakers want to show the difference among the characters, the effects of actions and reactions between the two characters will be manipulated away from reality. Base on what I have been observed, there are three popular ways to play with the law of action/reaction. They are the recoils of actions, resulting accelerations and magnitudes of supporting forces. 

       Kung Fu in all kinds of films almost always breaks the law of action/reaction. For example, one of Kung Fu’s functions is to eliminate the recoils of actions. In Kung Fu related films, as a character punch or kick, his or her enemies will fly away with the Kung Fu master stay in the same spot. It looks like the Kung Fu masters don’t need to endure any forces or any pain when they punch. That’s not true. 

Let’s look at an example from Kung Fu Panda episodes-Secret Of The Furious Five. In the story of Master Mantis’s past, Master Mantis kicks two bugs away and maintains the same position on the air for a while, with a confident smile on his face. That’s incredible and impossible! According to Isaac Newton’s Third Law, When object A exerts a force on object B, the object B simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction on the object A. 

Therefore, Master Mantis is experiencing the same magnitude of force of his fabulous kick as well. Even though the speed of his body does decrease to indicate that he has some recoil of his own action, it still doesn’t look like it is the same magnitude of his kick. But this manipulation of recoil present how well the Master Mantis’s Kung Fu is. It shows that his slender body can endure huge force without being blown away.   

There is another way to show interesting relationships between two characters bending Newton’s Third Law. That is playing with timing and resulting accelerations of an action. Let’s look at an example from Chuck Jones’s Tom and Jerry-Ice Skating, which is my favorite animation when I was little. As Jerry and his nephew Nibbles enjoying their skating indoor, Tom silently holds on to Nibbles tail. The problem is that neither Nibbles nor Jerry notices it. 

Their skating doesn’t even slow down a bit. It look like they don’t feel Tom’s action because there is only one force that the mice dragging Tom. That is incorrect! Base on Newton’s Third Law, there is a force exerting on Nibbles and Jerry from Tom. This force should slow them down. What’s more, Jerry and Nibbles are far lighter than Tom; they should slow down significantly. I remember that when I was watching this when I was little, I didn’t know it is wrong at all. All I think is like “Wow, Tom is so smart!” or “Oh no, Jerry and Nibbles are going to be in troubles!” Even though that might mislead me about physics, what I felt from the scene was what the filmmakers want kids to think. The purpose of this film is to entertain kids, not teaching the kids about the correct laws of physics. However, as an adult, we should recognize what’s wrong with it. Yet as an animator, we need to know how to trick out audience’s eyes without being noticed. 

Not only animated movie can play around with Newton’s Third Law, live action can do it too. Here is about Kung Fu again, which is mean to break the law of Action/Reaction. In Kung Fu Hustle, directed by Stephen Chow, as the strongest villain punches the landlady and her husband, he doesn’t step back to use one leg to support his body. 

This scene looks incredibly unrealistic because the lack of supporting force for the villain. When the villain exerts a huge force on the two people, he needs a same magnitude of force from the opposite direction acting on him to keep his body stand still. In the scene, the only force to support him from the opposite direction of his action would be the friction from the ground, since he stands straight up. The magnitude of friction depends on the fiction factor of the contact surface and the object’s mass. Since the villain is a normal size adult wearing a pair of sandals, there is definitely not enough friction for villain to stand still. However, the villain punches without a supporting force does scare me a lot because it tells me how strong he is. His straight-up standing distinguishes him from all the other bad or good characters, telling us that the main character will have a extremely hard time with this villain. I believe that is what the filmmaker wants the audience to feel. Breaking the law of physic is not because the filmmaker doesn’t understand the laws of physics, but because it is a way to tell story, to bring out points.   

It is very easy for both animators and live action filmmakers to make completely science fact production, but the films can be really boring. So they bend the laws of physics to tell the stories that we cannot experience in real life. The characters that we can’t see in real life are very attractive to us. One of the ways to show how special they are is to break Newton’s Third Law as they doing an action. They can have as little recoil as they want to; they can have different resulting acceleration and they can beat up people without reasonable supporting forces. They are not real, but they are fun to watch.

Outline for the Second Term Paper

I．                 Introduction

 A.       A law of physics that are very popular and fun to play with: Action/Reaction

 B.       Bending the physics law of Action/Reaction can create dramatic or hilarious scenes

 C.    To make the scenes believable we need to understand the real face of the law of Action/Reaction

II．              Body

A．        To emphasize the gorgeous fighting skills of a character, the recoil of the character is eliminated as much as possible.

   -Kung-fu Panda

   -Create a dramatic scene.

B．         In an action, there are incorrect timing and resulting accelerations based on the characters’ mass.

   -Tom And Jerry

   -Create a hilarious scene.

C．         When a character is exerting a super strong force over something else, the character needs a same magnitude of force from the opposite direction to support the character.

   -Kung-fu Hustle

   -Create a scene that is both dramatic and hilarious.

III．           Conclusion

A.               Even though bending the law of action/reaction can result in dramatic and hilarious scene, we as animator should be aware of it by not pushing it too much.

B.                It is still so fun to play with it.

Reverse Video Reference

     It was quite fun to do this assignment. I asked my cousin Sarah to help me to shoot and she cannot stop laughing about it.

Clip A

Clip B

Clip C

Clip D

Stop Motion Animation of Falling

 

 First I came out with this idea when I was lying on my bed and think about what I can use to make the animation. Then I did a lot of story boarding to figure out how I can use the environment and what kind of propts I need to use. As a result, I decided to use my dog pillow and a cat doll.

I asked my cousin Sarah to help with my shooting process. Basically, she hold the camera and I moved around the object since I know how they are going to "act".

And then I went into Photoshop to crop myself out of the image. It was an nightmare of such a big amount of image I need to PS. After I cleaned up all the images, I used iMovie to compose. To get the right timing I add and delete a lot of images.

The Laws of Physics in an Animation Universe

In every animation, a new world is created. Compared the worlds in animations to the real world, the animation worlds have imaginary creatures, distinct society systems, and fabulous new laws of physics; all of these allow audiences to enjoy what they cannot experience in reality; especially the new laws of physics that the animators play around to build the foundations of the new worlds, they make every animation distinctive from each other. In this essay I will talk about one of the Disney classic movie Mulan, released in 1998. In the movie, animators distorted the real world’s laws of physic to entertain the audiences and illustrate the ideas they want their audiences to understand. However, it is a dangerous game to play with the laws of physics, because going too far will cause confusions.

One of the main purposes of making animation movies is to entertain audiences; and Exaggeration is a great tool for it. Exaggeration in animations means pushing the states beyond the reality, and making things to do more than their capabilities, such as jumping too high, eating too much, or stretching too long. Let look at a great example. At the beginning of the movie Mulan, Mulan’s grandma goes across a busy street with her eyes closed, and then two carriages run into each other and leave a ruin of explosion behind her. 

  

  This scene exaggerates the consequence of carriages accidence. In real life, carriages won’t run really fast as they are in a busy street shown in the movie. Even if carriages collide, they will just break their front part at most. Though, the whole carriages fall into pieces in the movie; it looks like they blast from inside out. Yet, this exaggeration seems appropriated. One of the functions of exaggeration is to make fun, and this scene does look funny. Besides, this exaggeration also shows how much the grandma doesn’t care about the consequences her behaviors cause. Another example is from the dragon Mushu. In the last fight with San-yu in the emperor’s palace, Mushu uses only one blow of fire to burn out all the feathers of the evil hawk in half of a second

Despite the fact that in previous scenes Mushu’s fire basically serves as normal fire to burn stuffs. 

 

Anyway, this exaggeration does look funny. What’s more than that, it humiliate the evil hawks. In brief, exaggerated scenes are entertaining and common in any other animations. The exaggeration means that they won’t happen in real life, so they surprise and amuse the audience. It is a good tool for animator to use.  

Bending laws of physic can not only entertain audiences, but also consolidate the ideas pointing out in animations. In Mulan, animators twist Isaac Newton’s the Law of Inertia to highlight the qualities of characters’ physical-ability. For instance, to be on time for the matchmaker, Mulan jumps out from her horse and lands steadily without any inertial effect.

 

According to Isaac Newton’s Law of Inertia, an object moves with constant, uniform motion until acted by an unbalanced force. Therefore, even though there is strong fictional force from the ground, Mulan should still have a lot of momentum as she just touches the ground; and she should more or less move forward in the same direction with her horse. Yet, taking off the inertial effect just telling the audience about how physically strong Mulan is, as she can land from high-speed horse so easily. Further more, it is a clue hidden that, Mulan is very different from the other girls who might never ride horses before. It totally makes sense that she fails the matchmaker later. On the other hand, twisting the Law of Inertia can describe how bad a person’s physical-ability is. In the boot camp, when the rookies are trained above water on some wooden stickers, they bump into each other and maintain on the air for a long time. 

 

This scene is very funny, and the reason of it is that all the rookies fail to control their body flexibly. That is to say, because of inertial effect, the rookies stay on the air after they stop moving forward. Nevertheless, they stay there too long, since there is gravity pulling downward without any other forces to balance it. Yet, stretching the law of inertia, animators can impress the audience by showing what the characters can do or cannot do. However, if animators push it too much could result in unbelievable scene. If the rookies bump into each other and maintain in the air for a really long time, and make a long “train” behind Li Shang. Then audiences would realize immediately that “Wow that is impossible to happen”. So we need to be ware that there are limits to distort the laws of physic to present the points.

Besides twisting the laws of physics, animators can also create new ones. Creating impossible forces help to amuse audience and support the characters’ for their tasks in stories. For example, in the last fight with San-yu, a kite flies Mushu and the cricket directly to the firework’s tower without any strong and “obedient” winds.

 

 Creating this imaginary winds is to serve Mushu to get to the place he wants. Otherwise, it will take forever for them to walk and the process of getting to the place is not significant to the movie. Moreover, imaginary force will create funny scene as well. As Shang’s troop meet with San-yu at the snow mountain, everybody is trying to escape from the avalanche, and Ling’s hat fly high without a reasonable force. 

 

It is similar to Mushu’s situation. Ling doesn’t throw the hat; nothing else is flying except for the hat. It makes no sense, but it looks funny and tells the audiences that Ling is very panicking. Just like a cat, when cats are scared, their fur will straighten up. So the hat acts as the same way; it flies high to show how scared Ling is. All of these imaginary forces designed by animators to help characters to achieve their goals or to amuse the audience. It is good to use imaginary forces so that the movie doesn’t have to stick to the reality’s rule and explain every detail about how it happens. But animators shouldn’t create any force that looks funny or helpful. That is to say, they need to be “real” for the world in the animation. Mulan is not a pure fantasy or Sci-fi movie, so if animators push the impossible forces too far will result in confusions. For example, if Ling’s hat fly 10 feet high and fall back to his head, audience will begin to think about where does the force come from, instead of feeling the intense of the scene. We don’t want our audiences to loose focus from what animators want them to see.

Mulan is great movie that teaches me a lot about the physic in animations. There are so many tools for animators to use to build an interesting world in a movie. One of the best ways is to bend the real world’s laws of physic, so that the audiences can experience what they cannot see in real life. For animators, breaking law of physic helps story telling and creates funny scenes to amuse people. However, pushing too far will result in confusions and make poor-developed movie. As a future animator (or illustrator), bending laws of physic will be really helpful to amuse my audience and consolidate my setting to the world. On the other hand, I should also be concerned about how far I can go to maintain my works’ clearness.

 

 

Term Paper Outline-Mulan

I-              Introduction

A. Walt Disney Feature Animation-Mulan(1998)

B. Thesis: Breaking laws of Physics allows animators to create hilarious scenes and manifest animations’ key points.

II-            Body

A.     Exaggeration creates laughing points.

1.     When Mulan’s grandma goes across the street with her eyes closed, two carriages run into each other and leave a ruin of explosion.

2.     In the avalanche scene, the big fat guy Chein-Po holds all the guys up with a relaxed expression on his face.

3.     One blow of fire burns out all the feathers of the evil hawk in half of a second.

4.     When the Stone Dragon falls apart because of Mushu, the upper part remains still on the air, when the lower part has fallen to the ground already.

5.     Shan-yu uses his head to break the roof of palace.

B.     Playing around with the aw of Inertia can emphasize characters’ physical-ability.  

1.     When Mulan jumps out from her horse, she lands without any inertial effect.

2.     When Mulan’s comrades are trained above water on the wooden stickers, they bump into each other and maintain on the air for a long time.

C.     Impossible Force and Force Reaction.

1.     A kite flies Mushu and the cricket directly to the firework’s tower without any strong and “obedient” winds.

2.     When everybody is trying to escape from the avalanche, Ling’s hat fly really high without a reasonable force.

3.     There are only 12 men to carry a tremendous 2m x 2m x 6m stone lion to break the door.

4.     The collapsed pillar of the palace is made of wood, but it stays still when Mulan is standing on one end of it.

III.               Conclusion

A.      Breaking law of physic helps story telling and create funny scene.

B.      We as animator should know the start points and bottom line to break law of physic.

Video Analysis of Path of Action

 

Tracker Video 

                                                                          Five Jump Video

Tracker Video Analysis of Falling

Shooting Video Reference

Mini-Portfolio

Character Design Out of Class

I really enjoy doing character design in my free time and I also love to think about the stories that happen in their lives. The two above are two fairies.

Ani112A Character Design - Pitahaya Family

 

This is an in class project when I was taking Annabel's Ani112A. I really enjoy the class and the projects. The setting for this pitahaya family is that, they are wealthy mafia family. However, the kid prefer to study instead of bullying the weaker. 

Ani112A Anamatic 

I really like the story I presented in this anamatic. 

Something About Myself

My name is Ranran Lu and I am an Animation/Illustration student here in SJSU. The class I am taking for this semester are Ani113A, Ani51B, PHYS123 and Art 149. For this semester I am going to apply for BFA program. I am kind of nervous, but I believe that I can make it! I will try my best because I love this major so much. I am so lucky and blessed that I can choose the major I want the most. BTW, I am an International student and I am from China. Nice to meet you!

The First Post

No regret, but self-criticism.