Stephanie DeGiovanni
The Laws of Physics in
the Animation Universe
Term Paper
Physics of Animation
in the Paranorman Universe
In 2012 Laika
animation studios, released Paranorman, a 3d stop motion animated feature,
about a young boy who had to save his town from zombies rising from the grave.
This movie was very different from those before it from its original story line
to its advanced stop motion techniques. Like many stop motion films before it
took years to complete the pose to pose animation, with the detailed puppets.
Paranorman takes on many challenges that are even more difficult than 2d
animation, with intense action scenes and characters moving through the air.
These difficult sequences are successful and make the audience believe what
they are seeing is believable in the world they are watching. It is however,
with a closer look that we see these actions in the world as we know it are not
possible, due to the laws of physics of the real world. Animation traditionally
has bent and broken many laws of physics, but they are broken to allow for more
entertaining yet still believable animation. When it comes to things like anticipation,
balanced and unbalanced forces and gravity, Paranorman has created its own laws
of physics for the sake of a better story and interesting animation.
Anticipation in
animation is used to allow the audience to see and understand what the
character is going to do, or what the movement is going to be. There are more
frames added before the action happens, instead of the action starting before
the audience can understand what is going to happen. Not only is anticipation
used for clarity but for comedic or dramatic timing of an action. In Paranmorman
there is a scene early on where Norman starts to see visions of the dead rising
from the grave. He is located on a stage but is scared and ends up running off
the edge of the stage. In the air at the start of his fall there is a bit of
hang time before he ends up crashing down to the ground. There is anticipation
before Norman makes his fall as he starts to accelerate, however it is the
added hang time in the air that does not follow the real world physics.
Another
scene with comedic anticipation and timing is when Norman has to retrieve a
book from the clutches of his dead uncle’s body. The dead character is a large
and very stiff body which Norman ends up wrestling, the body ends up on its
feet and rocks back and forth staying up until it lands on top of Norman at
just the right time. This added hang time and slow out to a fall is exaggerated
compared how a real body would act in fall. It is moments with such timing and
anticipation that give Paranorman a cartoony feel at times.
There is a lot of
great subtle animation going on as well which is a great accomplishment for
stop motion, but it is the comedic cartoony moments that stand tend to stand
out. Such as the scene where Norman runs into the bully Alvin with his bike,
who the proceeds to fall to the ground spinning, something that would not be a
reaction in the real world. This spinning choice in movement shows the audience
that the character has fallen in an interesting way and makes them perceive
Norman riding much faster than he actually is.
When a movie is
about zombies coming to life and attacking a town, it is expected that this
world will have to make up its own rules of how it works. There are no zombies
to research from, they need to work is completely made up, yet these rules
still need to be consistent throughout the story and rest of the world. There
are times in the film that the zombies rotting body parts are very weak and just
fall off or dangle in places, yet in times of action they seem to have
superhuman strength and can break through wooden doors and vehicle ceilings.
These inconsistencies are noticeable, but still accepted because they are
creatures that wouldn’t exist in the real world. The fictional zombie
characters super human strength that is plausible due to magical elements,
however there are rules that are still broken dealing with force with
non-paranormal entities.
The high speed chase between the kids in the van and
the police women on the scooter break real world rules. Again for comedic
purposes, the police women rams herself up against the large van trying to get
the van to stop, but instead causes the van to almost tip over its side, even
though the van is going faster and is much heavier.
There is then another scene
with a large women who is so frightened by a zombie, that she runs away fast
enough to go through her wooden fence and leave a hole in the shape of her
body.
With the exaggerated actions and
anticipation, it is also the rules of gravity that are bent and reinvented for
this fictional world. In the van chase scene the van ends up tipping over and
rolling down a hill at a high speed; it makes many rolls and bounces down the
hills side. The characters and items in the van seem to act correctly at times
in the falls, yet at the end of such a dramatic crash and may rolls, the van
lands upright in one piece and all the characters walk away completely unharmed.
It is actually until much later for the timing of joke that the van falls in
into a bunch of pieces after the crash. Another unrealistic fall is when Norman
climbs the tower of the town hall to try and confront the witch. He ends up
getting struck by lightning and starts to fall but he is then found to have
somehow fallen back inside of the building, not fallowing the path of action or
arc of such a fall. There is a magical element that propels the story that
changes the normal laws of gravity that even Norman is not used to. At the
climatic confrontation of the witch, Norman ends up having to get to the witch
by floating and jumping on flying pieces of ground that crumble around him without
falling. These pieces of the ground just float and rotate in space as if there
were no gravity.
In animation, and
stop motion in particular it is important to not just tell entertaining
stories, but to use the medium to its full advantage and tell stories in a
visually interesting way. A lot of the time this is done by making up entirely
new worlds that have their own rules and laws of physics. This is the advantage
of animation, to be able to push and exaggerate what already exists, to break
rules that are otherwise impossible. The paranormal powers such as zombies and
ghosts have their own laws of physics that have to be made up yet still
believable to the audience. It is its use of anticipation, unbalanced forces
and skewed rules of gravity, that allow Paranorman to be a fun and entertaining
animated film.
