The Laws of Physics in an Animation Universe

     Wreck-It-Ralph is a 2012 Walt Disney Animation feature film directed by Rich Moore, and written by Jennifer Lee and Phil Johnston. The story is about Ralph, a 30 year old video game villain, who is tired of being viewed as the bad guy by his fellow video game colleagues. In his rage, Ralph travels through a myriad of video game worlds in order to find a medal that he can bring back to his game so that everyone will acknowledge him as a hero, rather than a villain. Although Wreck-It-Ralph is a film that takes place on Earth, I believe that there are distinct sets of physics for each of the video game worlds that vastly differs from reality in order to create a clear distinction between the real world and the video games. In these video game worlds, the physics are often pushed to the extremes, with an impossible sense of gravity and highly exaggerated actions, in order to create a humorous and entertaining experience for the viewer.

     In Wreck-It-Ralph, much of the animation is silky smooth, as one would expect from a modern day 3D feature film. However, there are many instances in which I believe the graph editor for the animations appear to be in stepped form rather than in smooth curves. For instance, in the world of Fix-It-Felix Jr, the game that Ralph and Felix live in, the town is populated by many munchkin sized citizens known as Nicelanders. However, unlike Ralph and Felix, these characters have choppy and poppy animation, which is a nod to the old choppy animations of the 2D sprites from the early era of video games where things were not nearly as nicely animated as they are today. However, after re-watching the film, there were a few instances where even the Nicelanders had smooth animations, but they were mostly reserved for their facial expressions. In contrast to these vintage video game characters, Wreck-It-Ralph also features nods to the more recent era of video games with games such as Hero's Duty. When Ralph visits the world of Hero's Duty, all of the animation returns to being smooth to help differentiate the advance in technology between the new video games and the vintage ones.

Example of Felix and the Nicelanders Dancing

     The characters in Wreck-It-Ralph seem to have their own set of physics depending on their size. As one would expect, Ralph has huge, lumbering movements, whereas the significantly smaller Vanellope has sprightly and abnormally lofty movements. These are really common types of movement styles for these particular character archetypes and we expect them to move in these ways, however there are instances where Ralph seems to weigh a lot less than he appears to weigh. When Ralph visits the Sugar Rush video game, he is able to support his entire body weight with one hand, while hanging from a candy cane without it breaking. However, this can also be attributed to the video game not allowing the candy cane to break, which brings us to another idea that each video game has a set of very specific rules on what is possible and what is not within that world. In addition, it seems that gravity can be overridden by story-telling, as the Nicelanders of Fix-It-Felix Jr. are able to lift Ralph, a character many times their size, over their heads and toss him off a building with ease. Furthermore, King Candy is also able to bend the law of gravity just by the pure force of his giddiness. When King Candy tell a jokes, he can suspend himself in the air just by fluttering his limbs, an action that is clearly not possible to do in real life. Prior to re-watching the film, I hypothesized that the human characters in the real world would not be subject to the outlandish physics of the video game worlds, and I was correct in that there were no instances in the film where the real life characters were subject to exaggerated physics. All of the real life characters were located in the arcade, and they mostly just walked around the venue like one would expect in real life. Despite being characters in an animated film, they are firmly grounded in reality.

King Candy briefly floating in the air due to giddiness.

     Lastly, this film is full of highly exaggerated and impossible actions. For instance, Vanellope is able to warp in and out of existence due to her nature as a glitch, which she herself jokingly refers to as "Pixlexia." This is a clear violation of physics, since matter cannot simply just disappear and reappear on a whim. Vanellope uses this ability numerous times in the film to avoid danger, or simply to speed past her fellow racers in order to gain her place in Sugar Rush's daily playable roster. Ralph's final descent upon Diet Cola Mountain is also highly impossible. At the climax of the movie, Ralph takes a dive from the clutches of Turbo and into the Mentos covered roof of Diet Cola Mountain in order to create a beacon for the Cy-Bugs to rally to. However, to fall from that height and not break some bones, let alone survive, is impossible for a normal human being, but we buy into it, because this is an animated film. Felix also breaks the boundaries of physics numerous times, however most notably, Felix ricochets off the walls like a super ball when he is dodging Calhoun's gunfire.

Vanellope using her glitch abilities to phase out of her unwanted attire.

     As one would expect from an animated feature film, the physics have been pushed to limit and the laws we experience in the real world are broken on many occasions. However, in Wreck-It-Ralph case, it served not only for entertainment, but as a way to differentiate the numerous worlds in the story, whether it was reality or a video game, old or new. The usage of different types of animation, the abnormal gravity, and the exaggerated actions all come together to form a fun filled film, and refreshing entertainment experience that people have come to expect from Disney over the years. The culmination of all these factors makes the beauty of animation apparent. It is an amazing medium where the creators are able to do things that cannot be done with live action actors. Animation makes creating these fantastic worlds a possibility and it can help the viewer escape from their mundane reality, even if only for an hour or two.

Term Paper Outline : Wreck-It-Ralph

Introduction:

A) Introduce Wreck-It-Ralph
B) Thesis: Although Wreck-It-Ralph takes place on Earth, there are distinct physics for each of the video game worlds that vastly differs from reality in order to create a clear distinction from the real world and video games. In these video game worlds the physics are pushed to the extremes in order to create an entertaining feature.

Body Paragraph:

1) Usage of Different Types of Animation:

In Wreck-It-Ralph, much of the animation is smooth as one would expect from a modern day 3D feature film. However, there are instances where the curves graph editor of the animations appear to be in steps rather than smooth curves.

• Characters from the old video games move in stepped animation to emulate retro video games.
• The characters in Fix-It-Felix's game are all animated in stepped curves and often spring about the screen.
• However, not all of these characters animations were choppy, there were some minor animations that were animated smoothly.
• Characters from the modern video games are animated smoothly.
• Characters from Sugar Rush, and Hero's Duty have been animated smoothly to differentiate them from the older games.

2) Abnormal & Regular Gravity:

The characters have their own set of physics depending on their size.

• Ralph has mostly grounded and heavy lumbering movements.
• Vanellope moves in a very sprightly and abnormally lofty way.
• King Candy is able to suspend himself in mid-air just by fluttering his limbs.
• Also exhibits no gravity when King Candy is altering Sugar Rush's code.
• Real world characters seem to act under normal circumstances, or there were no instances where abnormal gravity was exhibited.
• The weight of objects seems to not matter in the game worlds.
• The townspeople of Fix-it-Felix can lift Ralph with ease, despite being many times smaller.

3) Exaggerated/Impossible Actions:

• Vanellope can phase out of existence and reappear somewhere else while she is glitching.
• Ralph's final descent into Diet Cola Mountain would most likely have killed or caused severe bodily damage, but he is left unscathed. 
• Felix ricochets off the walls of Hero's Duty in order to avoid Calhoun's gunfire.

Conclusion:

Physics can be stretched and pushed to the limit in a 3D feature film in order to create an entertaining experience for the audience. . If a film is too grounded in reality, then it may appear boring to the audience. The deviation from actual physics can be a refreshing experience, as long as they are not so outrageous that they take the viewer out of the experience (unless that effect is intentional)

Video Analysis of Path of Action

                             

Tracker Video Analysis of Falling