Term Paper: Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction

Animators do many things to CGI animations to make things entertaining. Many things that they create are really unrealistic when you take a look at physics. Cartoons and video games are known to have whacky, funny, and crazy things happen, but this is all to entertain the audience. When we do take the laws of physics into consideration, we can see what actually is so unrealistic about scenes.

In the scene of Space Jam when team Looney tunes plays basketball game against the Monstars. One of the players named Stan, is actually a human in this Looney Tunes Land. A few of the obviously large Monstars, (animated monsters) landed on top of Stan. They get up leaving Stan laying there flattened like a pancake. He then is pumped up with air by 2 animated characters, which resulted in him floating up in the air like an balloon filled with helium. The air plug was released and Stan propelled through the stadium like a deflating balloon.

The issue here is with squash and stretch. Realistically, given that Stan is an actual human, he should have died form the large amount of force of impact. He would’ve been squashed like a bug due to the momentum of the Monstars landing on top of himinstead of stretched like pizza dough. No human body can stay together after something like that.

Another issue has to be how he was pumped up with air. First of all, a human cannot be pumped up with air like a balloon and have the effects as if it was helium. Realistically the Stan’s weight should have held him to the ground because air is not a force that will lift him off of a surface. Air resistance would not have lifted him up because his body mass was more powerful. His whole body would not have formed the shape of a circle because the air would have only caused pressure in his lungs. His lungs would’ve bursted in his chest killing him.

The Space Jam film animators did a great job making these situations somewhat believable, but looking at it from a real world stand point, it’s really impossible for these things to actually happen. This movie gives viewers entertainment in a new way, so having cartoonish things happen to humans is actually not looked at as fake in this film, its believable.

Another scenario from a CGI animation that doesn’t make sense in real life is the Skadoosh scene in Kung Fu Panda. Panda and Tiger get into a heated battle, and Panda wins with in an unrealistic way. Tiger lunges at Panda from a long distance after gaining much momentum. Right before they collide, Panda lunges belly first from standing still off of two feet and bumps Tiger so hard that the force sends him sky rocketing straight up into the air.

This scene is not really accurate when it comes to momentum and force. In the real world because there is no way Panda’s feet can create that much force to send an object as big as Tiger flying sky high out of sight. It is believable in an animated since because he did have special super powers, but realistically, those powers wouldn’t have this type of effect. You couldn’t see the apex of Tiger because he was so high in the air, but it did take around 12 seconds for Tiger to come back crashing into the ground.

Once Tiger crashed into the earth’s crust, a hole shaped into a body was imprinted into the ground. The issue here is that in the real world, the body would’ve splattered like an egg. There’s no way the force of gravity will leave an body shaped hole in the ground as deep as portrayed in the clip. Although this scene is not realistic, it is an animation that is believable. No one wants to make a cartoon character actually die like that and actually show the blood and guts flying. It’s catered towards a young audience and makes them laugh.

Here we have a scene from a video game – Grand Theft Auto 5. This CGI animation is actually supposed to be realistic, however there are things that the game allows users to do that is clearly unrealistic. There is a point in the game where the character free-falls in the air. The only problem is the free-fall looks more like a gliding motion. The character propels forward as if he is wearing a jetpack. The sight looks like superman flying, which is humanly impossible with natural force. The angle of the character’s path is way too close to horizontal (0 degrees).

This is an issue with the path of action. In the real world, a person freefalling would obviously drop straight to the ground. This is due to the gravitational pull from the earth, and the object’s mass. Air resistance can give an object the ability to glide as well as other forces going against gravity. In this case, the path of action was not realistic. This does add to the fun of the game, giving the users a sense of what it would be like if people could glide thorough the air like superman.

All of these scenes have things that make them very unrealistic to physics in real life. Animators obviously know what is possible and impossible, but the point is to make the scenes believable in the world of animation. Having an CGI animation with realistic physics takes the fun out of everything.