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The Nexus of Art and Science Modern Disney’s Use of Physics Magic Disney movies are famous and world renowned for many reasons, and rightfully so. Walt and his studio were key pioneers when it came to the close and careful study of how things moved, how weight shifted, and how people’s emotions and personalities could be conveyed in how they used their body. Their first feature-length movie, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves , was the result of all the dedicated study they had put in to how physics could be understood and visually recreated in a way that what the viewer saw on the screen could look believable, and they have been furthering that understanding in every film since then. Especially nowadays with the rise and now established norm of computer generated 3D animation, Disney films are still the shining example of what dedicated study, understanding, and faithful recreation of physics can do to make a truly fantastic story b...
Outline for the Second Term Paper Modern Disney’s Use of Physics Magic I. Introduction a. Introduce Disney and their longtime study of believable movement in animation b. Thesis statement: By observing 3 of Disney’s most recent 3D successes, Tangled, Frozen, and Big Hero 6 , we can observe how they use their understanding of physics to bring wonder and magic to their audience through the careful attention to detail in their most central effects. II. Tangled (2010) – Rapunzel’s hair is a key effect and plot device in the movie, and as such it required a lot of attention and care to make it believable as not only a long trail of human hair, but also as several tools and other forms it ends up taking throughout the film. a. ...
Stop-Motion Character Animation For my stop-motion character animation, I decided to depict a desk lamp interacting with a jack o lantern on a counter top, ala Luxo Jr. I did this through taking a series of 241 still image shots using an HD video camera, touching up some of them through Photoshop, and then sequencing them in order on Premiere Pro. In order to get the glowing eye effect on the jack o lantern (as the glow in the dark paint on the pumpkin itself just wasn't visible enough), I had to take the last 58 frames into Photoshop and apply a single paint layer with an outer glow effect, then copy and paste the layer into every single frame, adjusting slightly so it's position stays relatively consistent in each frame. Once in Premiere I changed the duration of the ordered frames to all run at .02 seconds each, so technically this is running on 2's, which was what I had in mind when I was shooting. The trickiest part was the shooting, in particular having to have the...