Extra Credit: Lighting a Scene in Maya

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2 Point

3 Point

TERM PAPER: Special Effects in Animation and Live-Action

In this day and age, we see special effects in almost every film we watch, even ones that don’t seem to require it. With this capability of improving everything we see on the big screen, there are many different techniques that are developed to fit certain styles or moods of each film. A very distinct style of film is stop motion animation and 3D animation. The two require not actors, but animators, who create the scene through their hands and knowledge of form and action. Now one of the key components of creating a style or mood is the film’s lighting. While stop motion animation have total control over their lighting, there are limits in certain situations and while 3D animation can create any lighting situation, there has to be a certain push to make it believable.

Paranorman, a stop motion animation, is about a boy who can see ghosts and is an outcast because of his special abilities. He is ridiculed by students at school and viewed as a problem child by his parents. The town is in danger when zombies are brought to life through a curse that was brought on by a witch they killed who in actuality was an innocent, little girl who didn’t want to do any harm with her powers. The film has a dark theme with the aspect of horror, very Tim Burton-esque. The lighting created in the film makes it feel gloomy much like a horror film and everything feels low key. Now to create this type of lighting, the crew had to assemble all sorts of different lights and arrange them in a way to create these moods that they wanted. They have total control, but limitations. In the film, there are scenes when lighting is being emitted from the body of the young witch and for lighting effects like that, the crew turned to using special effects via CG lighting. The ability to be able to control the lighting through actual lighting tools and having it on a set is beneficial and helps create the exact mood wanted in the film. It compares very much with live action films and helps create that believability despite knowing you are basically watching a puppet. However, when you are watching the film, you don’t question any of it. But when that extra punch is wanted and when the limits want to be pushed, that’s when the benefits of CG lighting come in.

The film, Wreck It Ralph, is a 3D animated film. It is completely done digitally. It displays flawless animation and lighting, everything you could ask for in a 3D animated film. However, how much of that lighting is true. While the believability is there, there is no actual lighting set up, much like a scene in a live action movie or even a stop motion animation, where you have the lighting set up for you to create the mood of the movie. In 3D animation, the light sources are adjusted and processed in a more technical way. Like in an outdoor scene, they don’t create an actual sun but an ambiance light that brightens the whole scene they are capturing. If there is a lamp in the scene, they try to recreate that light as much as possible. It might have worse lighting or better lighting than an actual lamp but it’s all in the hands of the ones controlling it and how they envision how the lighting should be. So while having total control over fictitious lights creates amazing results and unimaginable scenery, the thought process behind it is much more complex than having an actual light to work with. Not only that, but it is much easier to get away with certain lighting situations which explains why so many movies nowadays just use CG lighting to improve their films.

So while stop motion and live action lighting may hold limitations as to how certain things can be lit, that is when CG lighting can step in. And while CG lighting can’t create the exact replica of actual lighting, actual lighting can be used to create the CG lighting as an example. Both types of lightings are successful and unsuccessful but cover the negativities that they exhibit.

Outline of the Third Term Paper

THESIS: Comparing the visual effects of lighting in stop motion and 3D animation.

Stop Motion Example: Paranorman
3D Animation Example: Wreck It Ralph

1. Paranorman used actual lights to create the lighting
1. They could control the lights how they wanted physically
2. However, there are limitations to lighting a scene in stop motion
3. To solve limitations, they used CG which makes lighting in stop motion flawed
2. Wreck It Ralph used CG lighting
1. All possible lighting situations are possible
2. However, most of the lighting is make believe in these films so it's hard to determine what is correct or not
3. Although CG lighting is easier to solve than stop motion lighting, it is easier to make up/trick your audience into thinking it is real meaning you don't follow the actual physics of it

Stop-Motion Character Animation