Reverse Video Reference of Walking

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The Laws of Physics in an Animation Universe

            For my first Physics of Animation term paper, I chose to analyze the animated film Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs (2009).  The film follows the character of Flint Lockwood, a young inventor who aspires to turn his dull hometown of Swallow Falls into a noticeable location with his inventions.  Eventually, he makes the FLDSMDFR, a machine that can make any food in large quantities with just the touch of the button.  It is successful at first, but eventually is overused and causes problems which Flint and his friends have to conquer.  Part of the reason why I picked this particular film was because upon first seeing the trailer, I thought the movie looked too silly to be good.  When it was released and I noticed that it got overall positive reviews, I decided to eventually check it out.  Not only was it one of the biggest surprises I had seen in terms of expectations for a film, I thought the one thing that stood out for this film compared to other animated films I had seen was that it really pushed the "slapstick" style of humor often past breaking point (physically and emotionally).  In remembering this, I knew for sure that there were probably many things in Cloudy's universe that defied the laws of physics and science.  Although there is much emphasis on science-related information (i.e. Flint Lockwood's inventions), the film ironically breaks the laws of science to fit with its humorous, pushed, and stylized feelings.  The three main points I will discuss include a lack of overlap/settle, character balance, and an apparent lack of gravity in some scenes.

            One of the first factors of the laws of physics in Cloudy's world is that there are a lot of sudden, jerky, and fast movements in the characters.  This gives the movie an added sense of overall goofiness, which is probably what the director was going for.  Very often, the characters in the film will have a Looney-Tune-esque motion to how they move, which includes things like sudden stops and drops.  In using this kind of style, one of the main points in Cloudy is that there is sometimes very small or no overlapping action in characters and objects.

            Overlapping action is described simply as when a moving object stops, anything attached to it will stop behind it.  This means that even when the main part of the body/object comes to a halt, other things attached to it like clothes or hair will "drag" behind and still be in motion.  These parts will not come to a stop until a little bit after.  Also, when objects drag or fall, they normally do not just come to a sudden stop; there is a settle that follows this movement so that it does not just appear to stop stiffly.  Overlapping action and settle make the moving object feel more alive in general, but Cloudy is able to get away with this because of its style of movement.

            In the following images, you can see Flint is being carried at a very fast speed by the FLDSMDFR.  When Flint crashes in to the Stop sign, his arms and legs go in parallel lines and are perfectly straight.  There is no drag on the other parts of his body when his body comes to a stop; they simply go forward and stop suddenly in midair.  Also, when he falls backwards, he falls in the exact same pose as he was when he hit the sign.  There is a tiny bit of drag on his lab coat, but for the most part he falls as if all his body parts where blued together.

            In the next scene, Sam Sparks' feet go plunging down and hit Flint's eyeballs.  As you can see, the main difference in the two poses comes from the expression rather than the knock back force Sam's feet transfers to Flint's head.  Although there is a very small amount of settle when the feet contact with Flint, he does not go falling backwards, so there is no overlapping action with any part of Flint that would have been created by a knock back.  It's almost as if there was a lot of glue on Flint's eyes and Sam's feet simply got stuck in them.  Although there are many scenes in which there is a lack of overlapping action (or drag), the silly aspect of the film makes these sudden stops convincing.

            Another big part of Cloudy is that the character designs in the film are very pushed in terms of their shapes and proportions of body parts.  Again, the way the characters are stylized not only gives them a very cartoonish look, but also allows them to perform certain actions or pose in different ways that would sometimes be impossible to do in reality based off physics laws.  This brings me in to the next hypothesis, which is the balance of the characters.  Balance is something that can be offset just by slightly moving off the center of gravity.  Without some kind of other support, a person would lose balance and most likely fall over.  For example, an easy way to tell whether a person is off balance is to take their nose and drop it down to the floor.  If the line goes over the base of support, they are off balance.

           If you look at the character design of Brent, he is made up of a very small lower-half of the body (legs and feet) with a very large rounded shape for his upper part overall.  This creates opportunities to exaggerate not only the shapes, but also the poses he is in.  In the above shot, Brent is standing in such a way where his center of balance is way off his base support (around the area between his feet.  He is leaning so far forward that in reality he would probably fall over.  However, the design of his character is very pushed already in shapes, I believe this makes pushed poses like this believable, even if they are pushed passed breaking point.

            Sometimes, when characters hold objects, the poses they are in would not suit the laws of physics.  Flint is holding the FLDSMDFR behind his back and is standing quite straight up.  The FLDSMDFR, unless it was very light and hollow (which it isn't because it is a machine), would add extra weight on his back side.  In order for Flint to keep his balance, he would probably have to bend his knees and lean forward a bit more to shift his center of gravity and to stand straight.

            The last main point that Cloudy defies in terms of physical science is that throughout the film, characters and objects appear to overpower the force of gravity.  Gravity is always a constant force that keeps objects rooted to the ground.  Although earth's force of gravity is not entirely strong enough to keep things glued to the ground, there can only be so much a person can jump or lift before eventually having to come back down.  Objects can not fly far into the air far up in the distance unless the force of the propulsion to launch the object is very large.  Cloudy once again adds to its extremely comical style by making characters perform actions that would be impossible to do in real life with such small forces to influence those actions, but people will buy in to it because of what kind of look the film was going for.

            Officer Earl is probably the best example of a character whose mannerism of how he moves ignore the force of gravity completely.  In this particular scene, Earl jumps a very high distance both length and height wise.  Given the starting pose he is in before he launches in the air (a type of handstand), there would not appear to be able to exert enough push force off the ground in order to launch himself so far.  No matter the physical arm strength of a human, even if he pushed their hardest, they would not launch very far up at all.  Arm strength is not as strong as leg strength, and also the force of gravity would prevent Earl from going up so high without the support of something else (like the force of a jet-pack).

            The FLDSMDFR, once shot up in the air, appears to simply float without being affected by gravity's force.  It is not high enough pass earth's atmosphere for it to be in a zero-gravity state like in space.  The only way it could be staying afloat in midair is if it had another chemical inside of it such as helium (which it doesn't since it's a machine made of solid parts).  Even if it did have helium inside of it, it would not simply stay floating without going up.  Objects in the air (unless suspended by another object) either go up because of a kind of chemical or fall down due to gravity.  The FLDSMDFR does not appear to have any balance in terms of gravitational pull or another factor that would keep it going up that would actually have it at rest in the air.  For Cloudy's sake, at this height in the atmosphere there is a space-like gravity to it, meaning no gravity really at all.

            There are many other laws of physics that Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs breaks, but the previous three discussed in this paper were the ones I thought stood out the most in giving the film its unique look.  When I first heard of this film, I honestly did not think it was going to be a good film.  However, after watching it, I was not only entertained but thoroughly impressed with how it turned out.  The overall silliness of the film is one of my favorites in terms of watching a movie to have a good laugh.  The silly style of the film allows it to very often break the laws of science in order to make goofy things possible it visually make the film entertaining.  The film appeared to be going for an extreme slapstick look and feel, and in order to push and emphasize the humorous style the laws of physics were broken, but the audience buys into it because it fits with what the film was trying to achieve visually.  In addition, pushing things (even if it is past breaking point in reality) makes the characters feel more alive and not so stiff, thus helping the film's style look more convincing.  Overall, even though the universe of Cloudy does not match with reality in terms of physics, the professional critics and audiences enjoyed it enough to make it a critical and commercial success.

First Term Paper Outline: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

The Laws of Physics in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

I. Introduction

a. Introduce the film "Cloudy with a Change of Meatballs" (Brief synopsis)

b. Stylized 3D animation

c. Hypothesis: Ironically, although the film's main points are labeled as science, most of points break the laws of physics in distinct ways to create a humorous universe

II. Lack of Overlap and Settle

a. When characters are hit or come to a sudden stop, there is a lack of drag (overlap) of other parts of the body or clothes (12:20),(15:35), (17:45), (58:00)

b. The food items that fall from the sky often land still without breaking apart too much despite the acceleration of speed

III. Character Balance

a. Many objects that characters hold are inbalanced (11:50)

b. The physical structure of many characters, even if they were standing neutrally, would make them fall over

c. To give the film a comical feel, many poses are pushed far beyond what could physically hold them upright (35: 44)

IV. Lack of Gravity

a. Often times characters can jump or be in midair for long distances without taking gravitational pull into account (14:21) (34:24) (36:17)

b. The FLDSMDFR stays in midair without the force affecting it falling (29:03)

c. There is a lack of acceleration/deceleration when things fall (36:17) (36: 23)

V. Competing Hypothesis: Parabolic Arcs

 a. With a good running start, Officer Earl flies in an accurate directional arc forward

 b. The jello room demonstrates a lot of moments when characters jump but fall straight down

c. (1:07) The toast boat goes a very far distance for the amount of jump it had

VI. Conclusion

 a. Other than the three mentioned above, there are many other factors in the film's universe that do   not follow the laws of physics, but I ended up going with ones that seemed to give the film its unique visual look

b. Although the film breaks many laws of physics, it seems to fit with the kind of feel it was going for, thus people buy into it

c. Pushing the animation even beyond physical laws helps it feel more alive