Building a Scene in Maya

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Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction

            There are many things that are stretched within the world of animation for either comedic purposes or to make things look realistic. Reality is stretched to create a realistic sense of power and awe within a scene. We stretch the reality to bring entertainment value to the whole scene. The reason why animators “stretch reality” is to bring more entertainment value to a scene. The main reason I am saying scene is because some of my particular examples are not specifically in film, but rather scenes within video games. The way that people react to forces of gravity, momentum, and general opposing forces within cinema and other types of artistic mediums are not realistic. The ‘stretching’ of reality creates a suspended disbelief for the entertainment value the artists try to bring to the screen.

            Within the video game series Kingdom Hearts, there are many cinematic scenes that show off an exaggerated reality and physics that would not work in our world. Within this world the characters are able to jump and glide across abnormally large distances, which is not normal for people of their average size within our own set standard of physics. Excluding the use of magic and materializing weapons out of thin air, the obvious differences between our worlds, another huge difference is the way the characters handle themselves within fights. A notable example of this is the cinematic sequence in Kingdom Hearts 2 that shows off a fight between the main character, Sora, and a mysterious figure who is later identified as Roxas. While both characters are roughly the same size and the same mass, they both seem to exert more power than what would generally be perceived as beyond their own physical musculature limit. In this fight, both characters are attacking each other with their own identical one handed weapon, Roxas holding two while Sora only holding one. The part in particular I was to talk about in this scene is when both of them jump up to attack each other in midair. While they both jump up at each other, the force they are exerting in air while nothing anchoring them while they swing, their movement almost looks like it should be pushed back after their blades collide with each other. But when the blades hit each other, neither of them move at all away from each other until they become near the ground.  Other characters have similar reactions with their weapons, however the most unbalanced character is Saix. Within most villain characters, their weapons are suppose to be intimidating, but his claymore in relation with his body is almost his size along with top heavy. While his overall movements seem to be consistant for someone to swing a weapon of that size, his overall speed and dexterity with his weapon are not in sync with the size. He moves with a great fluidity and grace, rivaling smaller, lighter characters, and is capable of jumping great heights that are beyond unrealistic. He also only mainly wields and holds the weapon with one hand, and even throws it with only one hand. Another part in the game is when Sora is fighting a specific character named Xemnas. Within this fight, Xemnas retreats all the way to the top of a skyscraper, and as retaliation, Sora goes running up the side of the skyscraper to face Xemnas who is falling from the top. While this scene is a bit strange, and instigated as sort of a mid-battle cinematic to amp the action, the fact that Sora runs up the building seems a little out of place. The additional fact that he runs up several stories before faltering to the effects of gravity and flipping over into a back flip. He retains traction to the walls a lot longer than expected, almost as if he’s running up the walls with minimal resistance before the actual force of gravity catches up and pulls him back down. However, it is accepted as normal within the scope of the game, if only because this sort of “reality stretching” is done consistently.

            Another example of a world with unrealistic or stretched physics is the world in the animated movie, Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children. While this movie was also made by the same company that made the Kingdom Hearts series, this was their second attempt at actually making a full animated feature. Even though they do have similarities in the ways their worlds work, there are also key differences in which the worlds operate. This movie is full of great fight and chase scenes, none of which abide by the general laws of physics that we mere mortals must live by. The ending fight in general defies the rules of gravity and force numerous times.  The main character Cloud is fighting his nemesis Sephiroth. Both of which are relatively fit characters that wield giant swords. While I’m not addressing the fact that Sephiroth is slicing through buildings like butter, the fact that the two of them jump almost effortlessly with their swords that they couldn’t possibly physically swing, and other supernatural effects that can be defined as “movie magic”.  There is one scene in particular when they are fighting on a piece of rubble that has fallen from a building. I am not sure if that could be possible, but could be argued with the demo in class with the book and the piece of paper falling at the same speed due to the book blocking the air resistance. However, as this particular part of the fight progresses, the debris broke in half and they are falling parallel to each other while fighting, using their sword swings to seemingly keep themselves attached to the actual debris instead of falling downward with the rest of gravity, because the way the rocks turn are perpendicular to the force of gravity. It is really strange indeed.  Another scene that demonstrates this is way earlier in the movie. A female character, Tifa, gets thrown by another villain character, Loz, at a wall. However, Tifa counters the attack by spinning to cushion the impact by crouching down onto the wall. She retaliates by repositioning herself to spring off the wall and back at Loz. This shot does seem rather confusing because of the fact of gravity, and that she moves her feet upward to spring outward. Considering the shot is glorified to show that she dissipated the force by exploding the pedals off of flowers. It seems a bit farfetched that this sort of thing is happening in games, but there are other, worse examples.

            Chaos Legion is a game made by Capcom, and the animation is decent at best, but there are some scenes within this game that are strictly horrible. In relation to forces and traction they do pretty well, but the sense of weight of characters and path of motion in their dramatic scenes are rather lacking. The main character Sieg is trying to save his ex companion Delacroix from destroying the world in his mad companion. However, there is one scene where Delacroix’s lover Siela gets stabbed in the chest. She falls at a weird arch along with the fact that she also seems to fall with no recoil impact for the sword that had stabbed her. She and the blood that is coming from the wound seem to defy gravity and fall weightlessly. The same could be said about when Delacroix falls from the top of the platform in the temple. The way he falls defies his center of gravity and normal traction with the ground, he seems to arch upward instead of actually remaining on the ground. It is through this weird type of relation to physics that makes the game seem almost comical in its execution.

            Though most of the stuff in movies is not accurately depicted of real life interactions, there are lots of ways that the animators can create a believable world without actually having it be 100% accurate. There are many ways that we do end up suspending disbelief to create a more enjoyable world, because even with the strange things we can do within our own world, there are times in which we do want t experience something that is not physically possible.

Term Paper 2 Outline

Introductory Paragraph:
- Talk about the concept of fact verses fiction in film and in animation
- Talk about reliable forces and sense of weight in terms of force and momentum.

Example 1: Kingdom hearts 2
- The cinimatic fight with Roxas
- The fight with Saix
- Compare to the rest of the game series 

Example 2: FFVII Advent Children
- Fight on Motorcycles
- ... The entire movie is full of examples of this... choose a few.

Example 3: Chaos Legion
- Delacroix fall from the tower
- The stab scene

Conclusion:
-  They do this to create an epic/other worldly feel in terms of power
- Fiction.. obviously
- End in another happy face :D

Character Animation

My animation that I made by just doing a straight ahead type animation style.

http://youtu.be/hXPLQQh8ugc