Building a Scene in Maya

Special Effects in Animation and Live-Action

My first two term paper scores were both above 80; I will not be writing a third term paper.

Outline for the Third Term Paper

Special Effects in Animation and Live-Action

1. The universe revolves around us! Actors move around the world, or the world moves around them

• Moving and controlling the man-made environments are an example of practical special effects, which involves utilizing real solid props
• Placement and movement of set pieces can be directed in clever ways to create illusions of character's interaction with surroundings
• With the right set design and ability to control it, filmmakers can make the actor appear to be moving from place to place
• With the right technique to control the man-made sets, characters can interact with places where the actors are really not, or move in ways only possible in the depicted environments

2. You, The Living (Du Levande)

• A Swedish language black comedy drama film directed by Roy Andersson
• Despite taking place in relatively ordinary local places, every location is built right in the production studio, including locations that appear to move away from characters
• In one scene, a girl dreams of having married her musician idol, and they move away, with the two of them inside an apartment building that is being relocated by railway. Outside the window, what appears to be an entire city is actually a series of miniature buildings, with the couple and their apartment room being dragged through the city models across the inside of the production studio
  
• No green screen was used
• The entire film, including all outdoor scenes, was filmed indoors

3. 2001, A Space Odyssey

• A scifi film directed by Stanley Kubrick, which takes place in a centrifugal space station

• The challenge of the film was to create the illusion of actually being in outer space, and to do that, they need to simulate a zero-gravity environment

• In one example, a woman can be seen walking up along a curved wall, until she is actually standing upside down on the ceiling. In reality, the actress was still standing and walking right-side up, but instead, the entire room she was in was designed to rotate around her, allowing her to stand and walk on the walls as they gradually move along below her feet. The camera also rotates, as it follows and stays in the same orientation as the room at all times. 

4. Conclusion

• Whether it's due to the expenses of CGI and other digital special effects, or simply the directors/filmmakers passion and sense of creativity, with the right attention to detail and filming technique, the film can look very realistic and successfully take the viewers into their world. 
• These examples of using real models as practical effects are very successful in recreating their intended environments, and the way the actors and actresses appear to interact with their surroundings makes us believe that they are real.

Stop-Motion Character Animation

Inanimate Wings

Artists and animators can be very ambitious. That's one of the best things about us, and also one of the worst things about us, because in my case, it creates one of my apparent weaknesses: I overlook my own limitations, and I plan to do more than I can actually accomplish.

This is my first character animation in stop motion, and it's not nearly as polished and spectacular as I dreamed it would be. I didn't even have enough time to edit out the strings like I did with the leaf drop animation.

But just one look at my amateurish makeshift "studio", and I'm pretty sure my passion, ambition, best efforts, and probably insanity are obvious.

My character of choice was my basic wooden mannequin. I chose this over making my own clay character because I feared that I would spend too much time designing, detailing and polishing the look of a sculpted figure; another one of my strengths/weaknesses. And to give myself enough space, I did this assignment in my bedroom in my parents' vacation home in Modesto.

I took the advice I got from the professional critique for my leaf drop assignment, and built myself a rig so that I can suspend my character in the air without doing it by hand. I built myself a surprisingly elaborate miniature studio in my room, which consisted mostly of shelf cubes as walls, with meter-long metal rulers stretched across as my "ceiling". I then created a kind of crane made of a foam cylinder, which I cut out the center, and popsicle sticks. I planned on using this as my marionette-style controller, which I am able to drag around on the rulers, rotate horizontally, and lift my character vertically by pulling and pinning the strings on the foam crane. I attached the strings onto my mannequin's waist (the center of gravity) and each shoulder, so that I can control which direction it's facing. Once again, I used my smartphone for my camera for the convenience of voice commands, and had it standing on another foam plate for ease of sliding and rotating.


Thanks to my overdone mini-studio, the easiest part to animate was surprisingly the jump, because the crane made it very easy to hold in position in the air. But the hardest part to animate were the parts when the mannequin was standing on the ground. The more still it was standing, the more difficult it was to maintain its position without falling over, and the more the character moved around, the easier it was to animate without the need to be too careful with the character's poses.

The overall structure and placement of the studio was rebuilt and readjusted numerous times due to changing necessities, conditions, and objectives. And I wished that I had used a clay figure instead of a mannequin because I didn't realize how incredibly difficult it was to control a mannequin's poses and movements with its limited flexibility.

Was this a gruelingly difficult assignment? Yes it was. Did I overdo it? Sure feels like it. Am I pleased with the results? Not as much as I had hoped. Did I have fun with this project? Yes I did!

Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction

Movies Vs. The Law of Conservation of Mass

Matter is the tangible existence of all physical objects, regardless of what shape and size in which they appear. They can come as the hardest solid objects, or something soft and flexible like paper and water,  and they can be inanimate objects like rocks and materials, or living matter such as animals, plants and people. And the matter of an object is measured by mass. According to the law of conservation of mass, matter cannot be created or destroyed by chemical reactions or physical transformations. But in the event that they do somehow change radically, whether in size and volume, or by chemical makeup, the mass of the resulting matter must be equal to the mass of the prior materials. Even when the human body grows in size and strength, it occurs slowly and gradually and is only possible by the consumption and sustenance of nutrients; food eaten and absorbed into the body.

But what happens when the matter of the object appears to be shrunken in size and reduced in volume and weight? Where does the mass go if it cannot simply disappear and reappear? Well, reduction of mass without convincing explanation is the stuff of fiction, and fiction is where we get away with stuff all the time. What was that old saying? "It's only a crime if you get caught." Fiction is, after all, just a story, and stories don't happen, they are told. They are written by writers, and the best writers can convince most of their readers. This is no different in movies, where stories are shown and we actually watch them happen.

One such example of watching mere stories and clearly impossible transformations happen in front of us is in the Harry Potter films, based on the novels by J.K. Rowling. The Harry Potter franchise revolves around a children's school and entire society of witches and wizards, which pretty much includes the whole package of what you would expect from mere fairytales: broomsticks defying gravity, creatures of highly implausible evolution, moving objects without touching or other physical forces, etc. Yes, it's very much magic, and it's quite strange to use magic in fiction to demonstrate scientific violation, since explicit fantasy knows what it is, isn't hiding what it is, and so, on principle, can get away with that sort of thing. But what a lot of people don't realize is that fundamentally, magic isn't magic unless it has a scientific reality to interact with, and a realistic audience to convince and amaze. There's no such thing as flying unless there's gravity, even for flying broomsticks. That's what magic is: "unreality" happening in reality.

One such example of magic against science is the transformation between human being and animal. In an early display of a witch's magical powers, Professor Minerva McGonagall on her first day of instruction, transforms from a cat to her human form, clothing and everything, demonstrating not only the ability to change her appearance and size, but also her mass, weight and genetic composition to that of a cat. Where does all of that mass go? What kind of highly implausible chemical reaction could have happened to make such a radical genetic-level change to the very biology and chemistry of her body? It clearly wasn't merely a change in shape of already existing matter. A realistic-minded audience would have a more likely chance to ask such questions, but when a story is not hiding the fact that it is fantasy, the suspension of disbelief is more than easier, it's pretty much a prerequisite. So therefore, it is needed that we don't overanalyze the physiology and physics of a human and a cat and what happened in between.

Fantasy can get away with a lot of things, as long as it has a solidly established world and reality that tells its audience that stuff like that can happen. However, there is fantasy, and then there is science fiction. Science fiction is where stories are told with a more convincing display of science that currently exists only in theory or is still thus far undemonstrated. This is pretty much the basis of science fiction, and it's usually told through feats of technology and space travel that we are expected, and hoped, to believe can happen in the near or far future. And convincing the audience of that will require more scientific plausibility, or a really good liar (writer). Some writers and movies tell it better than others, while others hope not be asked about the unrealistic applications of science.

Enter Michael Bay! Disappointingly, his infamous 1998 film, Armageddon, will not be the movie in question. However, his 2007 movie, Transformers, deals with aliens. Despite how much fun, or old, it would be to point fingers at Mr. Bay for his ability of scientific reasoning, his Transformers film franchise deals with a fictitious alien technology, which, to a degree, should be able to get away with more stuff. But to what degree?

The key characters of the Transformers films are the transformers; alien robots who have the ability to transform into machines of approximate equal size, most famously cars and other vehicles. They arrive on Earth in search of a relic from their home planet, which is a giant building-sized cube. To Bay's credit, the transformers are very intricately designed to accommodate for the size and mass of the real life machines and vehicles that they transform into. But even with the plausibility of fictitious alien technology and the efforts of shape-changing mass-matching robot designs, the movie couldn't get away with everything. The conservation of mass was put into question several times throughout the film franchise.

In the first film, the villainous robot, Frenzy, was small enough to transform into a radio boombox, which originally matched its approximate size, until the robot gets beheaded by the heroes, and its still living head transforms into a Nokia 8800 phone, an item well too small to turn into simply by reshaping itself. In addition, it restores its body later in the film by coming into contact with the Allspark cube, which inexplicably has the ability to create new matter. The Allspark cube itself can defy the laws of conservation of mass by shrinking itself from the size and weight of a building to the size and weight that can be carried in the arms of the human protagonist. Understandably, however, the convincingness of such feats of mass-changing depends on the audience's choice not to question where all of that mass disappears to, and the limits and seemingly magical qualities of alien technology that does not exist in real life.

Finally, there is the fictional conservation of mass that exists in a more practical medium than magic and technology; the human body, and in this case, superheroes. Probably the most popular superhero power is superhuman strength, and that requires beyond-human amounts of muscle mass, and where that muscle comes from and how to fit it in a human-sized body is the stuff of science fiction. The films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe continuity produce several different superheroes, with varying degrees and applications of muscles.

Probably the most subtle and realistic appearance of superhuman muscle mass is that of Captain America. He has the body and size of a typical athlete, and the strength to push cars. He is nowhere near as big and monstrous as some steroid users, but easily stronger than every one of them, due to his body being upgraded not only to the peak of potential human muscle, but also close to the limits of near-perfect physical efficiency and performance. These extra, super-compressed muscles, however, apparently come, not from food and sustenance of equal mass, but rather from a chemical serum that inexplicably overnourishes his originally frail and emaciated body.

Another example of a lot of muscle coming from apparently nowhere is the Hulk, a superhero who is normally a scientist of average human body, but when angry, can transform into a green musclebound giant human perhaps as big as twelve feet tall. He apparently obtained his powers from exposure to gamma radiation, which, in real life, would not explain where the actual muscles and extra mass come from and where it disappears to when his transformation ends and he becomes a seemingly normal human again. As the Hulk, he does get stronger the angrier he gets. Perhaps anger can create matter and add more mass to his muscles?

But probably the most glaring violation of conservation of mass is Ant Man. This other superhero has the ability to shrink himself to the size and weight of an ant, but retains his muscle mass in a very condensed form, allowing him to perform feats of superhuman strength. This is apparently explained by a technology which allows him to reduce the distance between the atoms of his body. However, pretty much no further explanation of any kind was offered, or really even possible, about how he was able to reduce his own weight to that of an ant, allowing himself to ride on a winged ant. Similarly, no explanation was given about how he was able to inconsistently change the weight and density of other objects whose size he changes as well, such as a military tank, which he was able to shrink and carry around on his keychain, and a toy train, which he was able to grow into the size of a real-life locomotive with enough weight and density to break out of a house. Density of an object is supposed to be equal to mass divided by volume, and the realistic result of the same amount of mass divided by such massive increase in size and volume is a very small amount of density, and the object would become rather fragile and light enough to float away.

And to add even further violation of common sense, Ant Man was able to shrink even further to below the size of an atom and even quarks; smaller than the smallest and simplest confirmed particles of matter. In the climax of the film, he was forced to shrink to subatomic size in order to fit between the molecules and penetrate the antagonist's high tech armor, allowing himself to attack the antagonist on the inside. No explanation was given to how he could defeat his opponent when all he could realistically do is attack the armor's mechanism one atom or molecule after another, it was never explicitly confirmed that his own shrinking suit gave him subatomic oxygen to breathe in the time he was smaller than oxygen itself, and the film also overlooked the possibility that Ant Man would likely have become a literal black hole by the rapid rate and amount of his own mass collapsing on itself.

In movies, there is science, there is fantasy, and there is knowing which is which and knowing what happens when they meet. Sometimes entire universes are a fantasy and follow different rules, and other times, it's magic disguised as science for the untrained eye, or confused as science for the untrained writer. The best movie and the best writers are the ones that can trick their audiences that it's realistic, or trick them not to ask about it. Sometimes they freely break the law of conservation of mass, adding mass or making mass disappear by shrinking and growing objects right in front of audiences; a rather clever way to pull a disappearing act and getting away with stuff by hiding in plain sight. And other times, a movie's only hope to create our suspension of disbelief is to sufficiently entertain us enough to distract our attention away from reality. Whatever way they do it, some do it better than others, and others, not as much. Either way, as a movie audience, we can only hope to hear a good story or a story from a good liar.