Cartoon physics
Encyclopedia
Cartoon physics is a jocular system of laws of physics
that supersedes the normal laws, used in animation
for humorous
effect. Normal physical laws are referential (i.e., objective, invariant), but cartoon physics are preferential (i.e., subjective, varying).
Many of the most famous American
animated films
, particularly those from Warner Bros.
and MGM
studios, unconsciously developed a relatively consistent set of such "laws" that have become regularly applied in comic animation. For example, when a cartoon character runs off a cliff, gravity
has no effect until the character notices and reacts.
In words attributed to Art Babbitt
, an animator with the Walt Disney Studios: "Animation follows the laws of physics — unless it is funnier otherwise."
. A version printed in 1994 by the IEEE
in a journal for engineers
helped spread the word among the technical crowd, which has expanded and refined the idea. These laws are outlined on dozens of websites.
O'Donnell's examples include:
, for example, spoke of the "plausible impossible" (see The Plausible Impossible
, 1956).
More recently, it has been explicitly described by some cartoon characters, including Roger Rabbit, Bonkers D. Bobcat
, and Yakko, Wakko, and Dot
, who say that toons are allowed to bend or break natural laws for the purposes of comedy. Doing this is extremely tricky, so toons have a natural sense of comedic timing, giving them inherently funny properties.
In Who Framed Roger Rabbit
, for example, Roger is unable to escape handcuffs for most of a sequence, doing so only at the last moment. When Eddie Valiant asks, exasperated, "Do you mean to tell me you could've taken your hand out of that cuff at any time?!" Roger responds: "Not at any time! Only when it was funny!" Several aspects of cartoon physics were discussed in the film's dialogue, and the concept was a minor plot theme.
In 1993, Stephen R. Gould, then a financial training consultant, writing in New Scientist
, said that "... these seemingly nonsensical, phenomena can be described by logical laws similar to those in our world. Nonsensical events are by no means limited to the Looniverse. Laws that govern our own Universe often seem contrary to common sense." This theme is described by Dr. Alan Cholodenko in his article, "The Nutty Universe of Animation."
In a Garfield
animated short entitled "Secrets of the Animated Cartoon" the characters Orson and Wade give demonstrations of different laws of the cartoons and show humorous examples of them.
rather than physics. Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome
is another non-cartoon example. Also, live-action shows can also be subject to the laws of cartoon physics, explaining why, for example, The Three Stooges did not go blind from all the eye-poking.
Printed cartoons
have their own family of cartoon physics "laws" and conventions.
Physical law
A physical law or scientific law is "a theoretical principle deduced from particular facts, applicable to a defined group or class of phenomena, and expressible by the statement that a particular phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions be present." Physical laws are typically conclusions...
that supersedes the normal laws, used in animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
for humorous
Humour
Humour or humor is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement...
effect. Normal physical laws are referential (i.e., objective, invariant), but cartoon physics are preferential (i.e., subjective, varying).
Many of the most famous American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
animated films
Animated cartoon
An animated cartoon is a short, hand-drawn film for the cinema, television or computer screen, featuring some kind of story or plot...
, particularly those from Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
and MGM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
studios, unconsciously developed a relatively consistent set of such "laws" that have become regularly applied in comic animation. For example, when a cartoon character runs off a cliff, gravity
Gravitation
Gravitation, or gravity, is a natural phenomenon by which physical bodies attract with a force proportional to their mass. Gravitation is most familiar as the agent that gives weight to objects with mass and causes them to fall to the ground when dropped...
has no effect until the character notices and reacts.
In words attributed to Art Babbitt
Art Babbitt
Arthur Harold Babitsky , better known as Art Babbitt, was an American animator, best known for his work at The Walt Disney Company. He received over 80 awards as animation director and animator, but is most famous for creating Goofy...
, an animator with the Walt Disney Studios: "Animation follows the laws of physics — unless it is funnier otherwise."
Examples
Specific reference to cartoon physics extends back at least to June 1980, when an article "O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion" appeared in EsquireEsquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
. A version printed in 1994 by the IEEE
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is a non-profit professional association headquartered in New York City that is dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence...
in a journal for engineers
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
helped spread the word among the technical crowd, which has expanded and refined the idea. These laws are outlined on dozens of websites.
O'Donnell's examples include:
- Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation. Then the regular laws of gravity take over. (The character walks off the edge of a cliff, remains suspended in midair, and doesn't fall until he looks down.)
- Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation conforming to its perimeter (the "silhouette of passage").
- Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble tunnel entrances; others cannot. (Corollary: Portable holes work.)
- All principles of gravity are negated by fear. (i.e., scaring someone causes him to jump impossibly high in the air.)
- Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent. (In other words, cats heal fast and/or have an infinite number of lives.) Corollary: Cats can fit into unusually small spaces.
- Everything falls faster than an anvilAnvilAn anvil is a basic tool, a block with a hard surface on which another object is struck. The inertia of the anvil allows the energy of the striking tool to be transferred to the work piece. In most cases the anvil is used as a forging tool...
. (A falling anvil will always land directly upon the character's head, squashing him flat or driving him into the ground, regardless of the time gap between the body's and the anvil's respective drops.) - A body will contort and stay contorted to any hole or container that is smaller than it. (Cat goes in mouse hole and comes out as a long semicircle or person is crammed into guitar case and remains in the shape of a guitar when he comes out.)
- Any vehicle on a path of travel is at a state of indeterminacy until an object enters a location which is in the path of travel. (Wolf walks into road and gets run over by a bus.)
History of the idea
The idea that cartoons behave differently from the real world, but not randomly, is virtually as old as animation. Walt DisneyWalt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
, for example, spoke of the "plausible impossible" (see The Plausible Impossible
The Plausible Impossible
"The Plausible Impossible" is an episode of the Disneyland television program. Originally aired in 1956, it shows Walt Disney explaining how drawings and animation have things that are impossible seem plausible, as evidenced in ancient history and various cartoons with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck...
, 1956).
More recently, it has been explicitly described by some cartoon characters, including Roger Rabbit, Bonkers D. Bobcat
Bonkers (TV series)
Bonkers is an animated American television series that aired from September 4, 1993 to February 23, 1994 in first-run syndication . The syndicated run was available both separately, and as part of The Disney Afternoon...
, and Yakko, Wakko, and Dot
Yakko, Wakko, and Dot
Yakko, Wakko and Dot Warner, also known as "The Warner Brothers " or "The Warner Siblings", or just simply "The Warners", are the three titular cartoon characters featured on the animated series Animaniacs. The trio of red-nosed Warner siblings were considered to be the stars of the ensemble of...
, who say that toons are allowed to bend or break natural laws for the purposes of comedy. Doing this is extremely tricky, so toons have a natural sense of comedic timing, giving them inherently funny properties.
In Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a 1988 American fantasy-comedy-noir film directed by Robert Zemeckis and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film combines live action and animation, and is based on Gary K. Wolf's novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which depicts a world in which cartoon characters...
, for example, Roger is unable to escape handcuffs for most of a sequence, doing so only at the last moment. When Eddie Valiant asks, exasperated, "Do you mean to tell me you could've taken your hand out of that cuff at any time?!" Roger responds: "Not at any time! Only when it was funny!" Several aspects of cartoon physics were discussed in the film's dialogue, and the concept was a minor plot theme.
In 1993, Stephen R. Gould, then a financial training consultant, writing in New Scientist
New Scientist
New Scientist is a weekly non-peer-reviewed English-language international science magazine, which since 1996 has also run a website, covering recent developments in science and technology for a general audience. Founded in 1956, it is published by Reed Business Information Ltd, a subsidiary of...
, said that "... these seemingly nonsensical, phenomena can be described by logical laws similar to those in our world. Nonsensical events are by no means limited to the Looniverse. Laws that govern our own Universe often seem contrary to common sense." This theme is described by Dr. Alan Cholodenko in his article, "The Nutty Universe of Animation."
In a Garfield
Garfield
Garfield is a comic strip created by Jim Davis. Published since June 19, 1978, it chronicles the life of the title character, the cat Garfield ; his owner, Jon Arbuckle; and Arbuckle's dog, Odie...
animated short entitled "Secrets of the Animated Cartoon" the characters Orson and Wade give demonstrations of different laws of the cartoons and show humorous examples of them.
Non-exclusivity
Cartoon physics is not limited to either cartoons or physics. For example, a person recovering remarkably quickly from a serious injury would classify as biologyBiology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
rather than physics. Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome
Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome
Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome is a term used to describe the practice of accelerating the age of a television character in conflict with the timeline of a series and/or the real-world progression of time. Characters unseen on screen for a time might reappear portrayed by an actor several years...
is another non-cartoon example. Also, live-action shows can also be subject to the laws of cartoon physics, explaining why, for example, The Three Stooges did not go blind from all the eye-poking.
Printed cartoons
The Lexicon of Comicana
The Lexicon of Comicana is a book that was written in 1980 by American cartoonist Mort Walker. It was intended as a tongue-in-cheek look at the devices cartoonists utilize in their craft. In it, Walker invented an international set of symbols called Symbolia after researching cartoons around the...
have their own family of cartoon physics "laws" and conventions.
See also
- SlapstickSlapstickSlapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated violence and activities which may exceed the boundaries of common sense.- Origins :The phrase comes from the batacchio or bataccio — called the 'slap stick' in English — a club-like object composed of two wooden slats used in Commedia dell'arte...
- Magic satchelMagic satchelMagic satchel is a term often used in reference to computer role-playing games. It refers to the use of a character's inventory in the game, which can often contain more items than is physically possible for the character to carry without any visible means to hold or transport them.A similar...
- Acme CorporationAcme CorporationThe Acme Corporation is a fictional corporation that features prominently in the Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons as a running gag featuring outlandish products that fail catastrophically at the worst possible times...
- 12 basic principles of animation12 basic principles of animationThe Twelve Basic Principles of Animation is a set of principles of animation introduced by the Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in their 1981 book The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation. Johnston and Thomas in turn based their book on the work of the leading Disney animators from...
- Toon (role-playing game)Toon (role-playing game)Toon is a role-playing game in which the players take the roles of cartoon characters.It is subtitled The Cartoon Roleplaying Game.-Development:...
External links
- Cartoon Laws of Physics
- Laws of Cartoon Thermodynamics from Roger EbertRoger EbertRoger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
's website. - Acceleration Due to Gravity: Super Mario Brothers - a physicist's determination of the value of gStandard gravityStandard gravity, or standard acceleration due to free fall, usually denoted by g0 or gn, is the nominal acceleration of an object in a vacuum near the surface of the Earth. It is defined as precisely , or about...
used in Super Mario Bros.Super Mario Bros.is a 1985 platform video game developed by Nintendo, published for the Nintendo Entertainment System as a sequel to the 1983 game Mario Bros. In Super Mario Bros., the player controls Mario as he travels through the Mushroom Kingdom in order to rescue Princess Toadstool from the antagonist...
Anime
Other
- Kent PitmanKent PitmanKent M. Pitman is the President of and has been involved for many years in the design, implementation and use of Lisp and Scheme systems. He is often better known by his initials KMP.Kent Pitman is the author of the Common Lisp Condition System...
's Theory of RelativeTV (Soap Opera Physics)