Creating Stereoscopic 3D Images

Use the Green and Magenta 3D glasses for all of the images.

SJSU MLK Library

John holding a pokéball

Group of pokémon hanging out

Maya

Recreating Cameras and Lights in Maya

IMG_5796

Maya

IMG_5862

Maya

IMG_5925

Maya

Building a Scene in Maya

 J and P

one-point lighting

two-point lighting

three-point lighting

Second Term Paper

Defying Action and Reaction Principle

Introduction

In most animations and animation in games, they often defy the action and reaction principle. The three I picked out to demonstrate this is the Clown and Out from Animaniacs, the Great Wife Hope from the Simpsons, and a MMORPG game called Vindictus. Animations such as Animaniacs and The Simpsons would be defying action and reaction for comical purposes. For games such as Vindictus would defy the principle because it for balancing game mechanics or it had too many glitches to implement it into the game play. In order to figure out what is wrong with the action and reaction, it is best to analyze a specific scene that can be examined. Afterwards, it will be possible to identify the reason for the animations and the game to break the rules of action and reaction principle.

Animaniacs - the Clown and Out

A clown was hired by Thaddeus Plotz, CEO of the Waner Brothers, to entertain Wakko. We get to see a scene about Plotz having a phobia of clowns. Plotz have Dr. Scratchansniff to help him about his phobia of clowns, Dr. Scratchansniff then reveals that Wakko also have a phobia of clowns. After a few scenes of Wakko playing hide and seek with Yakko and Dot, the clown knocks the water tower metal door and greets Wakko with “Happy Birthday Nice Puppy Boy!” Wakko replies with “Ahh! Clown!” The clown begins to walk toward the open door and Wakko slams the door on the clown.

Wakko slams the door with a quick fierce force of fear. The door slam only stops the clown stiffly and flattening his face instead of being shoved off the water tower. It is obvious that the clown is not using a lot of force to walk into the door since he is only about to take one step and he is also caught by surprise. Therefore, the clown would not have enough force to balance the slamming door’s force with his walking force. When the door slams the clown, only his face becomes flat and the clown turns his face toward us showing broken teeth and bruised face and states “That hurt my face.”

The closing of the door only took about one second to happen and Wakko closes the door in about 5 frames. The door impacts on the clown’s face when his head just about to reach inside. The clown does not recoil back from the impact. Instead, the clown only shifts back to a halt and his face splats onto the door. This would only be possible if the clown’s head did not reach beyond the entrance yet, then the clown would look like he just pushed himself against a wall. If the door was stiff like a wall and not moving, the clown would be halted from where he crashed onto the door since he is not exerting much force for his strolling step. But even then, the clown should have recoiled even a bit. What we see instead is his face being flattened by impacting the door, which is not possible from a strolling walk unless the clown is forcefully pushing his own face into the door.

The Simpsons - The Great Wife Hope

This episode of the Simpsons is about the male characters of Springfield taking a large interest with mixed martial arts sports. Marge Simpson is appalled by the violence and decides to protest against Ultimate Fighting Championship. Chuck Liddell, the host of the championship, challenges Marge to a match. If Marge can beat Chuck, then Chuck will resign the championship. Marge is not the violent type so Homer helps her by contacting with people who can train her. One of the training is jujitsu and Judo by Akira. Akira tells Marge that his style makes use of counterattacks that utilizes the opponent’s strength to strike, but he also puts a little bit of his own strength too. Akira demonstrates this by letting Marge to try and attack with great anger, in which he just simply flips Marge’s charging attack. Immediately afterwards, Akira tells Homer to commence an attack. This is when the action and reaction goes wrong.

Akira says "hajime" to Homer, Homer builds up a running force with a distance about twice his height to perform a jump kick. Homer stops in midair with his jump kick pose. We see that Akira has stopped Homer’s jump kick with an open palm grip. Akira just grabs Homer's foot which completely negates Homer's force. This defies the action and reaction principle since Akira just stands and putting out his palm to stop Homer's jump kick, which is powered by Homer's kinetic force and weight, without being pushed. Akira is using jujitsu and Judo to counter Homer's attack but to be able to hold Homer stiffly in the air means Akira is using his own strength to balance Homer in his grip.

In order for the negation to make sense, Homer becomes weightless when Homer’s jump kick was halted by Akira’s grasp. If we carefully analyze each frame of the impact of Homer’s jump kick and Akira’s halting grip, we can see that Homer’s leg bends a bit. This means Homer’s action force is reflected back from Akira’s palm. Perhaps Akira exerts enough force from the ground to prevent himself from moving against Homer’s action force since Homer is in the air and Akira has the advantage of using the ground. Or Akira must have use Homer’s action force to be converted into Akira’s fingers to grip Homer stiffly in the air.  For a regular person, it is not realistically possible to stop Homer’s jump kick force without receiving some kind of reaction especially if Homer have more mass force hitting Akira who has lesser mass.

Vindictus MMORPG

Vindictus is a massive multiplayer online role playing game that is a fast-paced hack-and-slash. The setting of the game is set in Celtic Mythology. Players get to choose their characters that are set in specific class types. The players go through a series of quests to defeat the Fomorians so that Goddess Morrighan will appear and guide the people to Erinn. The dungeons of the game are instance type, limiting certain amount of players per dungeon. The dungeon’s maps are room by room containing monsters that will spawn. Both the player's character and the monsters defy the action and reaction principle when they are attacking each other.

When the players use normal attacks, the animation of the attacks would just hit through the bodies and make them flinch a bit. That sort of makes sense because normal attacks are light so it would not necessarily have enough force to push the monsters. The game defies action and reaction is more obvious when the player uses hard blows with smash attacks. One of the more obvious and easiest example to demonstrate this is a skill from the class character of Fiona using Shield Bash. When the monsters are still alive with health after the hit, they will take the damage without much reaction besides flinching but they will still be standing on their feet. When the monster is killed and the player uses a smash attack, the monster becomes weightless and flies very high. The weightlessness is explained from the player’s action since the character react normally without straining from the equal amount of reaction force by smashing the monster. This goes for monsters of any mass, whether they are small or large.

Environmental objects are another factor to this game to defy the action and reaction principle. When the character attempts to carry a heavy broken piece of a marble pillar, the character animation shows that the character have to put a lot effort and strain to lift it and even the animation for initializing the swing to bash the monster with it. Yet, the monster just merely flinches when they are hit unless the monster is dead. The intention of the game’s action and reaction from hitting the monsters could be to demonstrate how the monsters are fearsome and strong until they are defeated. When the monsters are defeated, the monsters become weightless and can be knocked around to make the players feel like they are now fearsome and strong.

Conclusion

For every action, there will be a reaction. Animaniacs defy the action and reaction principle, but it is intentional that their actions meant to create laughable reactions. The Simpsons decide to demonstrate the power of jujitsu and Judo against Homer’s feeble attempt of a jump kick. Vindictus makes the decision to create the action and reaction that can be realistic as possible but the players would always have to chase the monsters being knocked away, it would be really annoying to players so they can only make the monsters can only be knocked away if they are dead and also make the players feel strong. What the three does by defying the action and reaction principle is that they make the impact either seem to be more painful, powerful, or very weak.

Outline of second term paper

Defying Action/Reaction

In most animations and animation in games, they often defy the action and reaction principle. The three I picked out is the Clown and Out from Animaniacs, the Great Wife Hope from the Simpsons, and a MMORPG game called Vindictus.

Animaniacs - the Clown and Out

• Wacko slams the water tower metal door on the Clown.
• Wacko slams the metal door with a quick fierce force of fear. The door slam only stops the Clown stiffly and flattening his face instead of being shoved off the water tower.
• It is obvious that the Clown is not using a lot of force to walk into the door since he is only about to take one step and he is also caught by surprise.

The Simpsons - The Great Wife Hope

• Homer's jump kick stopped by Akira' s open palm grasp.
• Akira tells "hajime" to Homer, Homer builds up a running force with a distance about twice his height to perform a jump kick. Akira just stops Homer's jump kick with a grip of his open palm and completely negating Homer's force.
• This defies action/reaction since Akira just stands and putting out his palm to stop Homer's jump kick, which is powered by Homer's kinetic force and weight, without being pushed.
• Of course Akira is using jujitsu and Judo to counter Homer's attack but to be able to hold Homer stiffly in the air means Akira is using his own strength to balance Homer in his grip.

Vindictus MMORPG

• Both the player's character and the monsters defy action/reaction when attacking each other.
• This is more obvious when the player uses hard blows from smash attacks. A great example is a class of Fiona using Shield Bash. The monsters takes the hit without much reaction besides flinching. When the monster is killed, they become weightless and fly very high.
• Environmental objects are another factor to this game defying action/reaction. When the character attempts to carry a heavy broken piece of a marble pillar, the character animation shows that the character have to put a lot effort to lift it and even to bash the monster with it. Yet, the monster just merely flinches when they are hit.

What the three have in common by defying the action and reaction principle is that it makes the impact either seem to be more painful, powerful, or very weak.

Stop-Motion Character Animation

The Mighty Duck and LEGO Technic Show


My brother, Glenn Pham, and I picked out two toys that have many torques as possible that can pose. One is a toy of Check "Grin" Hardwing from Disney's Mighty Ducks. The other is a LEGO Technic figurine of an ice skater possibly a snow native tribe character from the Bionicle series.

I had to deal with some roto scoping for Grin's walking since it was difficult to balance him in some movements since his legs are unsymmetrical. I am not great at roto scoping so it could be obvious to figure out which frames I edited. My brother works on the ideas and snapping shots for the characters movement. I work on moving the characters to pose the gestures following my brother's ideas. Afterwards, I compiled all the images in Adobe Photoshop and compiled them into clips in Adobe Premiere to make the music video.

Reverse Video Reference of Walking

Clip A


Clip B


Clip C


Clip D


Reverse Video Reference of Walking - Fukkireta

First Term Paper

Laws of Physics in the Simpsons Movie Universe



Introduction

The Simpsons Movie is a 2D animated film revolving around the Simpsons family. As in the TV series, the Simpsons Movie leads the audience through different arcs of the story. The beginning introduces the problem of the polluted lake in Springfield. A premonition from Abe Simpson at the church warns about a twisted tail, thousand eyes, trapped forever, and EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). After a while, Lisa Simpson convinces people of Springfield to prevent any farther contamination of the lake. In a rush to get free donuts, Homer, with his impulsive behavior, dumps “Pig Crap” silo into the lake causing a chain reaction which a squirrel becomes mutated with a lot of eyes. EPA then decides to take action in preventing the contamination from spreading by closing Springfield off with a giant hard glass dome. The Simpsons managed to escape the dome after being chased by Springfield angry mobs. Homer will have to decide what is important to him whether it is himself, his family, or the people of Springfield. The conflict of the Simpsons story is usually caused by reckless behaviors from the people of Springfield but especially from Homer. These conditions allow the animators to show how physics work in the Simpsons world with dramatic problems, possible solutions, and comical situations.

Facing the Problems



In the beginning of the movie, the Green Day band fails to convince the people of Springfield to prevent the lake from farther pollution. The lake burns the band's barge like acid and the barge begins to tip over and sink into the lake. Before the band falls, they were able to stay standing on the barge even though their center of gravity has past their base of support. This shows how low the air pressure is when the polluted lake melts the barge. The band member closest to the top, which has a bit lower air pressure, is able to keep his standing position on the barge for 62 frames and about 2-3 seconds before he feels that he loses his balance. The other two members keeps their balance until the member closest to the top falls then everything else, even the drum set that has wheels, follows the leader. This is most likely impossible in reality especially for the equipment to have wheels and not slide down into the lake first before a unbalanced standing person, but it demonstrates how much pressure the lake radiates.

Compare the Green Day band falling off the barge to Homer’s attempt in riding a motorcycle in a circle loop in a sphere. Half way through the movie, Homer and his family have escaped to the outside of the dome and they try to win a pick-up truck in a carnival. Homer chooses to participate in a motorcycle dome challenge. Homer rides the motorcycle about 2.5 feet per frame which is about 60 feet or 42 mph a second. Homer slows down as he reaches to the top, he falls off almost immediately because he allows centrifugal force enough time to become neutral. This demonstrates that the world outside the dome and away from the polluted lake have mixed air pressure of high and low. Otherwise Homer would have stayed on top longer. On Homer’s third and final attempt, he succeeds in going all the way around by continuing to move 60 feet a second without slowing down.

Finding the Solutions



Near the end of the movie, Homer attempts to save Springfield by taking the bomb and riding the motorcycle all around the inner dome to reach the center top of the dome that has a circle opening that is about 32 inches in diameter. This opening is the only air coming from the outside world. This explains how Homer is able to ride the motorcycle without falling for about 2 minutes. Homer rides the motorcycle about 6 feet per frame. Traveling 6 feet a frame, which means the motorcycle is going approximately 144 feet or 96 mph each second. In reality it would be impossible. The dome that covers Springfield is more than 20 times the size of the motorcycle dome that Homer succeeds in going around 60 feet a second, does not mean going 3 times faster will help in going around the interior dome that is 20 times larger. The possibility of this happening is already introduced in the beginning from the falling of the Green Day band. In addition to the lake’s contaminated pressure and the lack of air coming into the dome, the air pressure inside the dome is high while the outside air pressure is low. In this case, Homer can stay intact on the dome’s inner surface due to the low air pressure outside making a larger centrifugal force outwards.



A solution that helps the Simpsons to escape from the dome is through a sink hole, that has the vacuum cleaner force, which was introduced in the beginning quarter of the movie. At first the sink hole seems to just be a task that Homer had to fix on his to-do list and he covers it with a sandbox and Maggie, but it displays itself as an escape route near the climax of the story. After the dome covers Springfield, Marge is looking outside because she misses the natural air. To Marge's surprise, she sees Maggie outside of the dome. Marge goes inside the house to tell Homer and when they are outside, Maggie is back inside the dome on the sandbox. After Homer shows his humor of idiocy, being tricked by his reflection and thinking he is outside of the dome, Marge and Homer goes out of screen. Maggie is then pulled into the sandbox and then she pops outside of the dome. The only part that is confusing about this is how Maggie gets back inside the dome if the sink hole supposed to vacuum things out. In this case, since Maggie is small she can jump back inside the sink hole with enough centrifugal force to push herself back inside the dome.

Fun Physics

The animators of the Simpsons uses physics to create comedy in their universe. One of these is when Cargill, head of the of the EPA, arrives near the dome to search for the Simpsons who just escaped out of the dome. Cargill's subordinate believe they lost sight of the Simpsons and then Cargill tosses his binoculars towards his subordinate who ducks away. The binoculars is moving 1 foot a frame until it ricochets from the dome and moves back towards Cargill with 2 feet per frame. This probably happens because the binoculars recoils from the dome which reflects equal amount of force that the binoculars have from Cargill's toss. Since the dome have an ongoing force pushing outwards due to the low air pressure compare to the high air pressure inside the dome, this causes the binoculars to move 2 times faster. This is a very short scene but it demonstrates the ongoing forces of air pressure that drives the story forward.

An example of an absurd physics is when Bart tosses the bomb, that meant to destroy Springfield, out of the opening hole at the center top of the dome when Homer escorts Bart in the motorcycle around the dome. The motorcycle is moving 144 feet a second and the bomb still flings straight up. The bomb happens to only move slightly enough for it to bounce around the rim of the hole. In order for the bomb to have move slightly instead of moving along the centrifugal force in direction of the motorcycle speed, Bart must have tossed the bomb backwards with enough force to nearly neutralize the centrifugal force. When the bomb bounces around the rim in rapid speed like a fumbling football, the air pressure is pushing it away from the hole. In this case, the vacuum cleaner force saves Springfield from being obliterated by the bomb. Otherwise the bomb should have fallen back inside the dome.

Conclusion

The law of physics in the Simpsons expresses the conflicts in the story which gives some logical reasons for the transition to flow through the chains of events that occur. Solutions to the conflicts are demonstrated through the laws of physics to assist the Simpsons to surpass their obstacles in the story, also saving Springfield at the end. The animators make use of physics to create comedy and action throughout the movie. For a TV series that attempts to entertain people for a film feature length have to play around more with physics, mainly to make things in its world more believable. For any story, whether it is animated or not, if the world that the story revolves in does not create the fundamental rules for its world, the audience would feel out of place and it would be difficult for them to understand the story and its world. After working in the physics and rules of the world is established, the animators can then make some absurdity in physics to make the situation more comical.

Outline of first term paper

Physics in The Simpsons Movie

I'm just going to list down what I can explain about, it might be a lot but I can narrow it down.

Introduction
The Simpsons has mostly been just a TV series until the appearance of the movie version. In order for The Simpsons to be entertaining for a film featured length, it has to focus in developing the physics in the world.

Body
Arcs:

• Bart shooting bebe rifle at Homer carrying loads of bricks - bebe bullet arc and falling
• Bart skateboarding and flings off from his skateboard - as a dare from playing the dare game with Homer.
• Mobs, elementary kids using archery aim and miss the Simpsons when Plopper, the pig, shoved the plank - flying arc, most aim was very precise that the apex and some aim were too high (not enough range) so they miss (some simply just miss).
• Homer rides on the motorcycle to win the prize by riding it in a loop at least once. fail 1 for falling off the bike Fails 2 times for not going fast enough and succeed when he speeds up
• Homer sledding with huskies jumping over a cliff. - arc
• Homer tries to ramp the truck with demolisher rack-em ball but did not swing enough force
• Homer and Bart riding the motorcycle around the dome - perhaps due to limited air pressure from the sewer cover size hole in the center top of the dome.
• Homer and Bart jumping the Springfield gorge. - arc

Ricochets:

• Springfield homeland security tries to shoot the dome put the bullet ricochet back at them.
• Ralph blowing bubbles to attack the dome but they reflect back.
• EPA leader, Cargill, tossed binocular and it ricochet back that him. - binocular flies slow but reflect by the dome with greater speed back
  

Falling object:

• Green Day band falling off of their barge into lake springfield - center of gravity and base
• Homer releasing the loaded bricks - falling brick
• Maggie tossed a rubber ball up to the air and it falls back to her - odd rule of falling object
• Maggie being sucked and spitted out of the sinkhole - ball flings out of Maggie's hand
• Bart rescue Homer and himself from falling off Springfield Gorge with his slingshot to fling back up the gorge.

Inertia:

• Homer pulled by a truck to get back home
• Stopping truck of the captured Simpsons.

Possible others:

• Bart fling off from TV antenna and fumbling on the roof
• Homer collapse through the roof - Homer's weight vs wood density
• The bomb fumbling around the hole of the dome

Conclusion
An animation series that attempts to entertain people for a film feature length should play around more with physics, mainly to make things in its world more believable and to make some absurdity for comedy.

Stop Motion Animation of Falling

The first thing I do when I am thinking about an idea for the stop-motion animation is the cast. The cast members consist of clay molded fruits and ocean creatures. All of them have round magnets behind them and the background is a refrigerator.


I also created an arbitrary graph of the odd number rule for reference of a falling object. With this I can double check if the falling object is quite accurate.


After having the cast for the idea and a reference, I start taking photos and compile them together in Adobe Photoshop and export the combined images as a movie clip into Adobe Premiere to edit the clip. The music is Honto Wa Ii Hito by Uematsu Noriyasu from an original soundtrack of an anime called Magical Pokan, which I cut and modified to fit the scenes.

Video Analysis of Path of Action

Image


Tracker Frame Video


Video


Having Fun with Tracker

Music: Fukkireta

Tracker Video Analysis of Falling

Pikachu enjoys physics! :D

Image:


Animated Image:


Video:

Video Reference

Shooting Reference Video:



"Fourth Down at Half-Time" Rule:

My Mini Portfolio

About Me:

My name is John Pham.

I am majoring for a BA-Art on Design Studies emphasis in Graphic Design. My talent revolves around digital media since I work a lot in my laptop. For example, if I sketch out something I like I would usually scan it into my computer and then color the drawing in Photoshop. I also like to create music videos when I have time or an inspiring idea for the narrative between a music I know and a film, movie, tv show, or an anime I saw.

Images:

Mystic Wars - A collage made in Photoshop for a project in DSGD 83


A scanned sketch that I colored in Photoshop.


Cyborg Pigeon - A magazine mount created for a project in ART 74. The image on the top right of the magazine is an image showing a pigeon on top and a x-ray of the cyborg parts on the bottom. The image on the bottom portion is the skeletal body of the cyborg pigeon that I crafted with thin steel wires and other parts from computer components.


Video:

Spike and the Lie Detector is a video compilation I made to synchronize a sound file from the Simpsons with the visual of clips from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I use this method to create most of my other music videos I created.

The First Post

Blogging for Physics in Animation course in SJSU.