Creating Stereoscopic 3D Images

MLK Library

Lovely Mother's Day Flowers

Not-so-lovely Outside Flowers

My Big Tubby Baby

~*~3D Selfie~*~

Recreating Cameras and Lights in Maya.

#1

• Original: 
  
• Recreation:  
  
• 2nd Direction: 
  
  
  

#2

• Original: 
  
• Recreation: 
  
• 2nd Direction: 
  

Extra Credit: Lighting a Scene in Maya.

Comes in four flavors!

Original: 

One-Point Lighting: 

Two-Point Lighting:

Three-Point Lighting: 

Special Effects in Animation and Live-Action

My first two term paper scores were 90 and 85; I will not be writing a third term paper.

Outline for the Third Term Paper

I. Introduction -

          A. Introduce both movies.
          B. Thesis - To compare and contrast the chocolate waterfall in Willy Wonka and The
          Chocolate Factory (1971) to its descendant, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory.

II. Body - 

          A. Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory.
               a. Man-made with a mix of chocolate ice cream and water.
               b. The 'river' looks less like chocolate and more like sewer water.
               c. The waterfall itself is very shallow and spurts more like a water-hose than a waterfall.
          B. Charlie and The Chocolate Factory.
               a. Man-made with 'fake' chocolate.
               b. The 'river' has a lovely chocolate viscosity.
               c. Full-bodied and pours like you'd expect a chocolate waterfall should.

III. Conclusion - 

          A. Waterfalls are an extremely hard visual effect to replicate.
          B. Use less water if your waterfall is not made out of water.

Stop-Motion Character Animation

This was a solo project, created using model magic and my niece's toys. Since I lack a tripod, I used some of the model magic to hold the camera steady on a book that I moved around as I shot (although I should've taken more frames per movement, because it looks extremely choppy). I got the room as dark as possible, then lit it using a desk lamp and that's pretty much how this came to be. 

Also, thank you for the extension! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to put it to much use, but it's appreciated nonetheless. 

Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction.

          For as long as there's been modern technology, there's always been cartoons and games published to appease the general masses -- or, in these specific cases, children. Although they might not all get it right, the creators of these gaming and cartoon universes try to create a world that at least resemble real-world physics. Sometimes, however, there comes a creator who turns their nose up at these rules and scoffs, who sees the laws of the common man and decides, nah, why even bother? And as much as these specific cases bother the crap out of anyone who has half a clue what to look for, seen through a child's eyes, these intentional slip-ups are so awesome in their fallacies that breaking the rules is (almost) worth it. In this essay, we will look at three different instances of totally radical rule-breaking as seen in the fight-scenes of three different pieces of media: Final Fantasy: Advent Children, RWBY, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. While the law of action/reaction is one of the most important, these specific fight scenes down-right ignore them in the name of entertainment. 

          First up to bat on our list of law-breaking perpetrators is Final Fantasy: Advent Children. Released as a sequel to the insanely popular game Final Fantasy 7 in 2005, their creators -- Square Enix, have had a love-hate relationship with real-world physics since the game series first began in 1987.  A dedicated fellow could write their entire graduate thesis on how many times they specifically break the law of Action/Reaction, but for the sake of this essay, we will stick to nit-picking specific instances in this singular battle. Fifteen seconds into it already provides us with a giant, metal issue -- namely, the broadsword. What sort of material is it made out of that it's light enough that the twiggy-armed protagonist can wield it one-handed? But is then shown to be powerful and durable enough to fend off an attack from the man who just exploded a giant hole in the concrete? If this broadsword really is as strong as it appears to be, then the protagonist shouldn't be able to swing it around without stumbling all over the place. Hell, he shouldn't be able to heft it onto his shoulder and wear it like a particularly garish metallic scarf. And he really, really shouldn't be able to be flung 50-feet in the air by a super-charged attack and have the sword travel at the same velocity as him. Which leads us to the next glaring error: why wasn't the entire building sent crumbling when the protagonist landed on top of it after an attack that left a ground-shattering hole down the side? And then again later on in the clip, when they're bouncing around inside of a building like ping-pong balls, crashing against supports that -- well, that remain resolutely undamaged, regardless of how fast or intense the fight becomes. In fact, the only time the building actually seems to break is when the characters slash their swords at it, or use super special magical to command it all to fall down. Our last and final example, coincidentally, has to do with over-powered magic in the form of commanding a giant swirling vortex with little to no adverse effects. The guy just stands there, hand raised cool as you please and hair gently flowing in the wind while these giant clouds are whipped into a lightning storm that continues well after the swordplay has begun. Even pardoning the fact that these two characters are wizards, there is no other change, no flying debris, no non-magical people spiraling up into the vortex, just a giant black storm cloud that somehow exists without affecting literally anything at all. Of course, the scene ignores all of these very obvious faults because otherwise, both of these characters would take themselves out before they ever had the chance to fight.

          Our next player (pardon the pun) is RWBY: Players and Pieces. Produced by RoosterTeeth in 2013, this series is barely out of its infancy, and it shows. Not only does every fight scene play out identically, they all break the same basic principles of Action/Reaction. Our first violation occurs right at the start of battle, when the large bird-monster flies right through an equally large bridge and brushes it off without even slowing down. It's just a quick swoop in and out to let our heroes know that it's absolutely on, but you'd think that even a shadow monster would recoil after eating the side of a solid stone structure. Then again, if the bridge had caused a reaction strong enough to momentarily stun the bird, then the battle would've been over too soon. Or perhaps not, taking into consideration that no matter how many bullets they unload into this creature, hardly a scratch is left on it. The only time it even stops is right before it dies and explodes into a shower of rose petals. But you'd think, with all the attacks aimed its way, it'd be forced back or even made to flee and lick its wounds. Although, the weapons themselves might as well be made out of paper for how much recoil they inflict on the user -- which is to say, none. One hero even has a bazooka hammer that she uses to send herself flying across the bridge, but it neither disintegrates beneath her when she lands nor breaks her legs. Just like before, it makes sense to ignore these sorts of things because otherwise there wouldn't even be a battle in the first place, but it's hard to be awed when the only thing that seems to do any damage is straight-up ramming into things. 

          Our third and final combatant of the essay comes from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Although one could argue that Nintendo, it's producer, is not a company known for treating the laws of physics with love and respect, Legend of Zelda might be one of their only 'realistic' series. As long as you ignore the swordplay, anyway. Our first problem in this scene is when their swords lock and magic's flying every which way, and you'd think they'd be putting all their strength into it. Except when someone manages to get the upper hand and push the other one away, they barely budge. On the flipside, after being hit a specific number of times, one person will fly backwards onto their back, regardless of how hard they seem to be hit, and the other person definitely doesn't go down with them. In fact, no matter how intense the swordplay or how hard they hack away at each other, there's zero reaction upon impact; nobody gets pulled back or is even really affected by the weight of their own sword, which then begs the question -- how are they getting hurt by a weapon that seems to have no reaction, no matter how hard you swing it? But again, watching two fellows clumsily duke it out doesn't sound nearly as impressive.

          Battle scenes are the most intense part of a story, and they require a certain sort of rule-breaking to push that ideal even further. If all we ever got to see is people being pushed and pulled every which way by the weight of their ridiculous weapons, while it would be hilarious, it would ruin the effectiveness of the scene itself. So sometimes, making battle scenes more epic requires a creator to gently put aside the law of action/reaction for awhile. Not just because they want to show these characters are 'professionals', but because they want to show off a certain dramatic flair that comes with not flopping over as soon the hero swings their sword.

Outline for the Second Term Paper

I. Introduction -

       A. Introduce all three movies/video games/etc.
          B. Thesis - While these fight scenes may follow the rules set in their own worlds, they break the rule of Action/Reaction to show, well... more action.

II. Body - 

          A. Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children.
               a. The ridiculously huge weapons.
               b. 'Jumping' up the sides of entire buildings without completely obliterating the ground below.
               c. Summoning a giant swirling air vortex while somehow not getting sucked up into it.

          B. RWBY: Players and Pieces. 

               a. Giant bird-monster crashing into the huge bridge doesn't slow it down at all.

               b. Shooting huge magical weapons with no recoil. 

               c. Hitting the monster without actually causing any visible damage.

          C. Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

               a. Epic sword stand-off that gets super intense but only ~gently budges one person.

               b. Barely nudging someone, but they jump fifteen feet back onto their ass. 

               c. Any sort of sword-swinging in general is met with little to no reaction.

III. Conclusion - 

          A. Making battle scenes more epic requires certain worlds to gently put aside the law of action/reaction.
          B. Magic makes everything possible. 

Reverse Video Reference.

I think the hardest part in all this (besides having to look at myself repeatedly) was just trying to get the staging right. Like, I'd frequently find a really good spot but then realize I couldn't place the camera in a way that wouldn't cut off my feet or my head. Also, for some reason I thought replicating the actions would be super simple, but I must've spent an hour just reshooting some of these, and even then I'm not 100% confident in what shots I've chosen. But overall it was actually a super fun assignment!

Stop Motion Animation of Falling.

The first thing I did was, of course, think up a concept for how I wanted it to fall (and WHAT I wanted to fall). I figured magnets would be easiest, because I could just set them up and snap them without having to worry about going into photoshop to edit myself out of every single frame. Once that was settled, I brainstormed like a bajillion different falls before deciding on kind of a diving-board scenario, which quickly turned into falling into a black vortex because I couldn't figure out how to use magnets to create a rippling water effect. How it was ACTUALLY done is that I waited until everyone vacated the house, set up the magnets how I pleased, and used the counter across from the refrigerator as a stand (in lieu of a tripod). Then I just shot it frame-by-frame until I was content, stuck it all into quicktime, and this is the final result!

TERM PAPER: The Laws of Physics in an Animation Universe -- The Lion King.

The Lion King is one of many classic 2D animated features created by Disney and released in 1994. Over time, there have been continuations to the franchise, and it eventually branched out into different mediums, such as performance art and (extremely challenging) platform-gaming. Although many people will say that The Lion King is just Hamlet in cuddly big cat form, it still manages to captivate audiences the world over, and happens to be one of my favorite movies even as an adult. While I can't say this movie treats physics any differently than most if not all animated movies; by warping them to the extreme, it does so in a way that is not only humorous, but at times can be dramatic and intense and still somehow keeps the viewer totally immersed in the story. So although The Lion King may resemble our world in many ways, it manipulates physics as we know it to both entertain and lead the movie along.


The first thing we're going to cover is how this particular movie treats gravity. For the most part, The Lion King keeps pace with real life gravity, but there are certain objects in certain scenes that break the rules entirely. The very first scene that comes to mind is when an older Nala confronts Simba about running away from his past, and Simba so very casually hops on a hammock made out of vines. Now, at this point in the movie, Simba is a fully-grown adult lion, which in the real world weigh somewhere in the ballpark of 500 pounds -- more than enough weight to snap a few thin vines.

"I don't know how I'm suspended up here, either!"

Somewhat along the lines of this is the scene when Timon and Pumba find a young Simba near death in the middle of the desert and decide to take him home. It takes a little effort on both of their parts, but they manage to get Simba up onto Pumba's nose -- at which point they proceed to prance their way to a screen fade-out like he's not carrying several dozen pounds of lion on his face. There's even a whole musical number dedicated to trampling on the laws of gravity titled 'Hakuna Matata', where not only does a lion somehow manage to use a single vine to support himself, but the happy trio trample across what is obviously a rotted out old log several times throughout the song, and none of them are getting any smaller. This is subverted somewhat when an older Simba attempts to use the same vine to swing into the water below and it actually snaps. Of course, in each of these scenarios, gravity is altered because otherwise there'd be an abrupt sense of action, or a scene would drag on too long, or simply because regular gravity doesn't allow for such fun musical shenanigans, and our protagonist can't die simply by falling through a rotten old log.

Next up on the big list of things that The Lion King edits about real-world physics is the size and balance between everything. Although there is sort of a blurred line between size and the way gravity treats animals in this movie, we'll stray away from comparing plants to animals and instead compare animals to the other animals around them. The biggest, most glaring error is Simba's (and Nala's) strangely tiny size when placed up against literally any other animal throughout the beginning of the movie.

When Simba is first born, it makes sense for him to be so very small that he fits in his mother's arms, but when transitioning to what we can assume is a late childhood stage -- he walks and talks perfectly well, and he's allowed to wander about -- he doesn't appear to have grown that much bigger at all. Sarabi is still very capable of cradling him, his father's footprints are ridiculously huge in comparison, and a hornbill is roughly the same height he is.

 Then later on, we see in 'I Just Can't Wait to be King' just how small he is. Or, at least, how large giraffes are. They're much taller than any other animal in the Savannah, and are perfectly able to hold posture while a lion cub jumps on their heads, and at one point Simba uses one of their backs as a stage. In fact, these cubs are so small, they're the peak of the giant animal tower at the end of the song. If I can commend them on one thing, it's that at least they kept them consistently puny. But once again, this seemingly strange oversights make sense; because everything and everyone else is so huge, we're drawn to the things that stick out most -- that is, Simba and Nala and their freakishly small animal bodies.


The last and probably the least offensive of all the physics-defying aspects of The Lion King is the way they handle their arcs and paths of actions. They mainly come in two different flavors, the first and most prominent being pouncing. Now, real life lions can in fact leap enormous lengths -- roughly 30 feet, in fact, but the way they handle it during the stampeding scene is just this side of too much. Mufasa leaps and dives and handles himself as to be expected when one is faced with a horde of wildebeest, but even if he weren't facing those odds, it'd be impossible for him to jump straight up vertically as high as he did to be able to climb out of the valley. The way he falls is also a little suspect, because Scar really didn't do much other than push his paws off the rock, which wouldn't be enough force to propel him the way that it did. And although it was super awesome, Simba probably wouldn't flip and spin the way he did throughout the course of that entire scene. Another pouncing scene that seemed a little strange was when, at the movie's climactic battle, Simba tackled and pinned Scar with what seemed to be little to no lead-up. But besides those sort of intense battle scenes, there are those 'running away' moments, both when Simba is running through the spikes to escape the hyenas, and when he's chasing Rafiki down, where the viewer is focused in on his face and his path and instead of turning, it just seems like he's really, really dizzy and off-balance. Much like anything else, these effects are present to create drama and also because shaky-cam is really cool.


So a movie about talking animals -- several of which wouldn't even be found in this specific biome -- trashes some of the more traditional aspects of human physics. At the end of the day, we know it's not real. Flora is played up to be ultra-tough because, ultimately, these animals are mimicking human actions, and it wouldn't be very pretty to paint them sitting on rocks or stumps all the time. Lion cubs are made smaller than their real-life counterparts because that just means more fun adventures, more drama and excitement, and mostly, to connect with viewers who are just as small as them. Venturing away from real paths of action help create a sense of drama and urgency. At the end of the day, all these deviances play an important role to make The Lion King what it is -- a visually stunning piece of art.

Term Paper Outline -- Lion Analysis.

I. Introduction -

          A. Introduce "The Lion King".
          B. Thesis - The Lion King may resemble our world in many ways, but manipulates physics to tell its  story.

II. Body -

       A. Gravity - 

            a. Older Simba somehow relaxing on a few frail vines when Nala confronts him.            
            b. Walking across a rotted-out log in 'Hakuna Matata'.             
            c. Vine-swing in an earlier part of 'Hakuna Matata'.              
            d. The Elephant Graveyard scene.
            e. However, the way younger Simba hangs onto the branch during the stampede        scene subverts this somewhat.            

       B. Weight and Size -

            a. The entire 'Can't Wait to Be King' scene, especially the very end.           
            b. Mufasa and Young Simba's fluctuating size.            
            c. Pumbaa carrying away an adolescent Simba on his maw. 

       C. Arcs and Paths of Action -

            a. Mufasa's leaping during the stampede scene.             
            b. Rafiki guiding Older Simba.           
            c. Older Simba and Scar fight scene. 

III. Conclusion -

         A. Movie physics are more heavily manipulated during musical numbers. 

         B. Having the wonkiness of the physics makes such a dark movie just a little lighter. 

Video Analysis of Path of Action.

The Picture:

The Parabolic Arc:

The Proof (that I actually filmed this):

Tracker Video Analysis of Falling

The first three assignments -- As seen on Tumblr.

1. The First Post.
2. Mini-Portfolio.
3. Shooting Video Reference.

Here's to hoping for no more hiccups from here on out!