Bonus Points: Lighting a Scene in Maya

One-Point Lighting

Two-Point Lighting

Three-Point Lighting

Outline for the Third Term Paper.

Special Effects Live-Action

Movies: Neo in the Matrix, Yoda in Star Wars

Special effects: Character Fighting Animation

Thesis: In the following, I will examine the special effect technique of CG character fighting effects use for Neo in the Matrix and Yoda in Star Wars and the effectiveness of the effect in each movie.

Neo:

-       -   Created using character scan of the actor.

-        -  The environment of the scene is all computer generated.

-        -  Movement is a combination of motion capture and hand animated.

Yoda:

-       -   Created by referencing from a clay model.

-     -     Character is put into real life environment.

-        -  Fabric movements was animated with help from expert specialize fabric movements.

Comparing both techniques:

-       

              -Neo has less weight on his movement than Yoda.

-          -The lighting in Yoda’s scene is more believable than Neo’s.

-          -The difference of physics for both fighting scene. 

Conclusion: Even though both movies were made with big budget, the fighting scene of Yoda’s is better executed that Neo’s.

Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction

Newton's Third Law

Entertainment medias are well known to stretch the believability of their own created world to fit their narratives. From story to character development, they only resemble the real world to some extent. Certain world requires both story and character to be close to the real world as possible while some are way far off. The same can be said for the physics of such worlds. The physics in such created worlds are able to stretch and bend, just like the story and character development, into something that barely resemble the real world properties, such as the third of Newton's laws of motion of classical mechanics. Newton's third laws of motion of classical mechanics states that “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”. In the following, I will be exam the physics principle of action/reaction that is being incorrectly portrayed in Power Rangers Light Speed Rescue, Heroes of the Storm, and One Punch Man.

            Power Rangers are famous for heavy deviation from the real world and their flying kicks are well known to violate Newton’s Third Law. Every episode of Power Rangers has at least one scene of a Ranger jump in the air and kicks a lineup of bad guys, one immediately after the other, with no effects of recoil. As described by the third of Newton's laws of motion of classical mechanics, all forces occur in pairs such that if one object exerts a force on another object, then the second object exerts an equal and opposite reaction force on the first. Therefore, the said Ranger wouldn’t be able to continue to his kicking campaign down the lineups of bad guys and whimsical monsters. In the real world, the Ranger needs to somehow recover from the first kick since the action and the reaction are simultaneous then jump again to land another kick. On top of that, the kicks barely and sometimes not even touch the bad guys and all of them are over exaggeratedly falling back. The force of the kick that being deliver does not have enough energy to force the heavy monsters to fall back in such a manner. Yet, the movie magic is able to allow the breaking of the third law to happen consistently.

            Next, we will look a video game character named Falstad Wildhammer, is a ranged assassin hero from Heroes of the Storm, who consistently breaking the action/reaction principle of physics just because of his existence. Falstad is a dwarf who rides on a gryphon mount named Swiftwing. Thanks to Swiftwing, Falstad is able to strike enemies from afar and fly to distant parts of the battlefield. However, his existence on the battle is stuck in a limbo where he is neither flying or on the ground. He is still being affected by grounded attacks while he is seen floating above the ground and he can’t fly over obstacles unless he’s activated his ability that allows him to fly a short distance across the battlefield. During the time that he is “stuck” on the ground Swiftwing is seen flapping his wings. Yet, the flapping action does not seem to provide him with lift. Consider the flying motion of birds in the real world. A bird flies by use of its wings to push air downwards. Since forces result from mutual interactions, the air must also be pushing the bird upwards. The size of the force on the air equals the size of the force on the bird. Action-reaction force pairs make it possible for birds to fly. The force that Swiftwing provided with each flapping of its wings shouldn’t be enough to provide them both with enough lift to fly or float.

One-Punch Man is an interesting case study because it is an anime and also parody of the superhero genre, therefore the physics in this world can deviate far from the real world properties. In this particular scene, we see Saitama, the hero of the anime, air punch his apprentice, a cyborg named Genos, during a fight to measure their strength. This punch is no ordinary punch because the punch is so powerful that it levels a mountain range. Yet, Genos, who face is mere inches away in front of the punch, is not affected by its powerful force. If a mountain range some distance back is leveled by the punch, a face at the source of such force should receive more of that force than what the mountain took. At the same time, Saitama leaves no trace of a reaction force applies to the ground he is standing on. When something is exerting force on the ground, especially from such a powerful punch, the ground will push back with equal force in the opposite direction. Since the ground is made up of about the same stuff as the mountain range, Saitama should have left about an equal about of damage on the ground. 

Power Rangers, Falstad from Heroes of the Storm, and One Punch Man proves that the content does not need to follow the real world physics in order to make it believable. Newton's third laws of motion of classical mechanics is a big part of our reality. But in the fantasy world of the entertainment medias, action/reaction principle of physics is malleable into any shape and size that the creators of these worlds wanted it to be.  As long as the world that these characters live in does not contradict the physics that they already established, it will not break suspension of disbelief of the audiences.