Cartoon physics: Encyclopedia - Cartoon physics

Cartoon physics

Cartoon physics is a joking reference to the fact that animation allows regular laws of physics to be ignored in humorous ways. For example, when a cartoon character runs off a cliff, gravity has no effect until the character notices.

The phrase also reflects the fact that many of the most famous American animated cartoons, particularly those from the Warner Brothers and MGM studios, unconsciously developed a relatively consistent set of such "laws" that have become regularly applied in comic animation.

Adherents of evolutionary psychology have suggested that the humorous effect of cartoon physics is due to the interplay of intuitions between physics (objective) and psychology (self-perception). The physics module predicts that the cartoon character will fall over the cliff immediately, while the psychology module is drawn to anthropomorphize the force of gravity and thus see it as vulnerable to deception as long as the actor is self-deceived.

In short, this often leads to the humorous situation where a cartoon's logic can be governed by what "makes sense" (is consistent) rather than what is (natural law).

In the 1949 Looney Tunes short High Diving Hare, Bugs Bunny explains, "I know this defies the law of gravity, but, you see, I haven't studied law!"

The cartoon characters Roger Rabbit and (more explicitly) Bonkers D. Bobcat have their own variations on the theme, explaining that toons are allowed to bend or break natural laws occasionally for the purposes of comedy. Doing this is extremely tricky, so toons have a natural sense of comedic timing, giving them inherently funny properties. Bonkers also warned the loss of this sense can lead to unfunny and even dangerous situations (perhaps explaining why cartoon violence, but not the real variety, is always funny).

Cartoon physics - History

The idea that cartoons behave differently (but not always randomly) than the real world is virtually as old as animation. Walt Disney, for example, spoke of the plausible impossible, deliberately mispronouncing the second word so it rhymed with the first.

Specific reference to cartoon physics extends back at least to June of 1980, when an article "O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion" appeared in Esquire magazine. 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. Dozens of websites exist outlining these laws.

Cartoon physics - Examples

Other commonly cited cartoon physics "laws" include:

• Everything falls faster than an anvil — see below
• No matter what happens to cats, they always return to their default shapes.
• A large amount of explosives, even if detonated close to a character's face, will cause only scorching of the skin. (Prior to the efforts of the American Civil Rights Movement, this would often also result in their taking on the appearance of blackface.)
• When a character who has run off a cliff notices the situation and begins falling, at first only his body below the neck falls, which the neck is stretched for a few seconds before the head follows the rest of his body in the fall.
• If a character falls from a tall building, another character from the same floor will be able to run all the way down to the ground level in order to catch the other character before it hits the ground.
• An explosive device taken by one character will not explode until it is given back to the original character who triggered the device. Also applies to booby traps.
• A boomerang, when thrown, will not only change direction, but will actively hunt out its thrower so that the thrower may catch it, regardless of his or her relation to their starting point.

Cartoon physics - Anvilology

Anvilology is the study of physical principles of anvils, as studied at "Acme Looniversity" in Tiny Toons. Tiny Toons is basically about a new generation of toons being trained by the Looney Tunes, and at that point (the early 1990s) cartoon physics had become a pretty much standardized set of rules. Those related to anvils:

• Everything falls faster than an anvil (so that the evil character can hit the ground first, and then be crushed by the anvil)
• Anvils are readily available
• Anvils have mass, but not much weight, so that they are very hard to push around, but it is possible to jump out of a plane with an anvil instead of a parachute and not notice until you are airborne.
• Anvils can often stay in the air until noticed by a character, such that the anvil falls on the character.
• If a character moves out of the way of a falling (or floating) anvil, the anvil will shift its position over the character, so that it crushes him before falling.

Cartoon physics - Cartoon collision physics

Cartoon collision physics are the laws of collisions as they appear in Looney Tunes-era cartoons (and those drawn in the same style). Note that these refer to 'his'; bad things do not generally happen to women.

• 1. If character C runs into a wall:

• 2. If C runs into something made of metal, he will dent it in the shape of his body.
• 3. If C runs off a cliff, the impact crater he leaves will conform with rule 1b.
• 4. If C has a fragile body:

• 5. If C runs into a wall which has been painted to look like a landscape:

See also

• Anime physics

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Cartoon physics", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki