(Leslie Crill) PHYS 123: Stop Motion Animation of Falling

The real Fruit Ninja

(yes, I like to think I'm funny :/ )

Looking back, I probably should have done something a bit simpler. It took forever to deal with all the "moving parts" in 3D space (as opposed to setting something up on a desk with a downshooting camera...). I ran out of time over the weekend, and had to do it all a bit last minute. But I went back and fixed a lot of things, and actually learned a lot!

First I planned out my staging. I set up a white background and wore black, because I knew i would be photoshopping later. I had to decide where I would stand, and where the apple was coming from. I got out my sword and figured exactly where I wanted to make the cut. I took some reference videos of throwing the apple to that spot, for timing and arcs.
I had to calculate 3 parabolic arcs—the whole apple, and two pieces after the cut—which I did by measuring the 3d space in which they would be traveling, and deciding how many frames before each section hit the ground. I hung strings from the ceiling, cut to the height, per frame, the apple would be on the arc. That took the longest time: planning the arc and hanging the string to mark it. Anyway, then I stuck the apple on a stick. My sisters helped me out my holding the apple exactly where I put the string markers, while I acted out the cut. I also had them turn the poles to make the "thrown" apple more realistic with spinning.
Then I had to photoshop the poles and strings out, so I ended up just getting rid of the background entirely. I used photoshop to stabilize the images, replaced the background, and exported layers to images (about 50 frames). Then I used the Time Lapse Assembler program to make all the images into a movie.

Here's a couple of tests along the way:

Video made from the original photos, before any editing happened.

After I took the background out, but before image stabilization and new background.