Race Oswald's Physics of Animation Blog: March 2013

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children

For my Physics of animation term paper I have chosen to take a closer look at Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, a futuristic Sci-Fi world where Cloud Strife fights not only against his own regret for being unable to save a loved one from being murdered, but also against a madman hell-bent on destroying the world. This was a feature length film that was directed by Tetsuya Nomura, character designer for the original PlayStation videogame. Advent Children originally released in 2005, it has since then been re-released in different regions with a number of different cuts all the way up until 2009. I chose this movie because I enjoyed the original videogame and I thought they did a good job of expanding upon the universe, while still keeping within the pre-existing guidelines that had been established in the videogame. Taking place in a world that follows many of the same laws as our own, these laws are seemingly cast aside by the protagonists and antagonists to create a more interesting animation.

Cloud Strife From Original Game Wielding Buster Sword

Cloud in Advent Children, Wielding Buster Sword

Superhuman strength and ability’s are a commonplace for our Hero’s. Possibly one of the most notable things that stands out at first glance, besides Cloud’s hairs ability to withstand the forces of EVERYTHING is the fact that he carries a 5 foot by 1 foot long steel sword with him and wields it effortlessly with one hand. Assuming that the sword is solid, it would weight around 150-200 Pounds and be completely impossible to wield. As it stands, having a 200 pound weight should have him toppling over. Throughout this movie Cloud is seen not only wielding it, but he doesn't compensate for the weight by contorting his body in any noticeable way to shift his center of gravity over the base of support.

Other aspects of Cloud are superhuman such as his reflexes. During one scene Cloud is seen riding his motorcycle towards the city and has his first encounter with the Silver Haired Men. They are his “younger brothers” and they want to know what he did with “Mother” the creature from space that was used to enhance all of them. During this fight scene, not only were various laws of physics broken that had to do with momentum, clouds face was able to deflect a bullet shot from point blank range with little damage being inflicted to his being. I could dismiss this as “just how people were in this universe” but later on in the movie, after the final fight, Cloud is shot by Yazoo, the same character that shot him earlier from father away in the chest, and the shot had a devastating effect on cloud. He dropped to the ground, and for an instant you thought that he might be done for.

Head Wound - Not a problem

Should Wound - Almost fatal

Coupled with his super strength and toughness comes human reflexes that are unable to be preformed by mere mortals. Throughout the entire movie Cloud is able to reflect bullets with his sword. According to my research, a bullet smaller cartridge travels at around 600 feet per second, and most traveling at anywhere between 1,200 to 3,000 feet per second. After seeing how a human reaction time is somewhere around 300 milliseconds, he would be unable to recognize where the bullet was going to be and act quickly enough to deflect it with his surfboard of a sword.

Although these scenes pertain to a single character, you better believe that all the main characters have these superhuman abilities. In the fight scene shown below: Tifa, Clouds love interest and childhood friend is able to dish out and withstand a flurry of fists and remain unaffected much like her male counterpart. She also retains an electrical current that she had received from being punched by her opponent that dissipates from her finger tips even though she has been grounded for a while. Finally; the amount of time that it takes her to travel to the apex of her arc on her "Finishing blow" to Loz at the end of the clip is significantly shorter on the upstroke then how long it takes for her to finally land again. We know that time is related to the height of the jump, and that the parabolic arc will be the same on both ends.

During the last Fight Cloud and Sepheroth are seen fighting atop the old Shinra building, a corporation that use to torment the city. Each slash of their swords becomes more outrageous then the last, and their actions build up to an impossible, yet flashy climax!

At times during the movie the characters follow normal arcs when they are either jumping or thrown back, but when they attack, arcs can be ignored and their directions can change drastically. During this fight both cloud and Sepheroth have the ability to lunge at will and defy gravity. They are able to sore great distances without losing momentum. At 2:26 in the above clip, both Sepheroth and Cloud are able to somehow maintain contact with the platforms they are each on, and even sidestep, even though they are both horizontal. The only explanation is that the force that they are both exerting on each-other by clashing swords is pushing them both against their respective platform, but even then I would think the pressure would have to be constant for this sort of thing to work. In the end, Sepheroth grows a Giant wing and is able to truly levitate/fly. In this universe, as long as you have something that represents flight, you can fly.

Materia

Aside from the fantastic physical acts these characters are able to achieve, Magic exists in their world. "Materia" is crystalised energy that has been harvested from the earth. Originally these gemstones were socketed into a characters equipment and it imbued them with magical ability's such as casting fire, or summoning a monster to help fight. In this movie, it would seem that these gemstones can now be absorbed into a character in order to become usable. Seeing as Materia was never used by any of the characters in the traditional way from the past, I am only left to assume that the new villian have some sort of special ability which allows for this absorption The game made use of a "Mana" system in order to cast the spells. If you didn't have enough Mana, you were unable to cast the desired magic. In this movie, it's hard to tell if this law is being followed or not as there is no physical indications of how much Mana a person has left. Regardless the characters are able to manipulate matter and create various elements, and even create supernatural beings such as Shadow Fiends and Bahamute, a giant dragon which descends from the heavens and ravages the city.

Bahamute

The fact that this dragons wight is enough to smash buildings and crush the ground as he walks on it leads me to believe that flight would be incredibly unlikely/impossible using wings such as those. From the look of them, they are no where near the shape of an airfoil and wouldn't even come close to generating enough low air pressure on top, and high air pressure on the bottom to facilitate lift. This also helps support the "Symbols of flight, cause flight." theory as stated from before.

After all is considered, the world feels fairly realistic and as long as you can suspend your disbelief for the more action packed sequences you'll be able to get sucked into their world and enjoy the experience. The liberties that were taken in this movie are minute in my eyes and successfully compliments the feeling of the movie as a whole.

Race Oswald's Physics of Animation Blog

Monday, March 18, 2013

Reverse Video Reference of Walking

Saturday, March 9, 2013

The Laws of Physics in an Animated Universe - Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children

Monday, March 4, 2013

Outline Paper 1

About Me