The Physics Behind the Genie
- CJ Paghasian
- Aug 5, 2018
- 5 min read
Frames You Missed in Aladdin
Throughout Aladdin (directed by Ron Clements and John Musker), the Genie contorts himself into Pinocchio, Jack Nicholson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and a dozen other aged references that went over my head as a kid. Every time the Genie grows, shrinks, or multiplies, the animation not only looks believable, but natural and fluid. Even though the Genie does the impossible, somehow he’s animated in such a way that his actions seem possible. I can’t help but wonder:
How does an all-powerful being look like he obeys the laws of our universe?
Before we start diving into the animation itself, we’ll have to understand the basic laws of our universe in order to understand how the Genie conforms to them.
If you remember anything from high school physics, it’s probably Isaac Newton’s three laws of motion. The First and Third laws are most important to analyzing the Genie’s transformations.
The First Law states that
“An object at rest will stay at rest, and an object in motion will stay in motion until acted upon by another force.”
This phenomenon is also known as inertia. Animators also have a name for this: easing in and easing out. Basically, when a strong force is moving very quickly, it takes a longer time for it to stop. It also takes a long time to get a stationary object to start moving.
The Second Law states:
“Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”
It takes just as much force to move something as it does to stop it. This doesn’t mean that it takes the same amount of time to move and stop an object, though. The same amount of force can be distributed over a long or short time period.
You can break down most of the Genie’s actions into a “pulse.” His entire body expands and contracts. He pushes his limbs out with a fast motion, but then pulls those limbs back with slower, equally strong force. Motions which are dictated by the pushing force are fast and forceful for a short period of time. The reaction to this motion is a pulling force, which takes longer to act upon the limbs. In animation terms, all he’s doing is squashing and stretching, just like a bouncing ball.
There’s a lot of juicy animated scenes in Aladdin, but I’ll have to save many of them for another time. For now, I’m going to look at a few segments of “Friend Like Me,” and show how animators apply this “pulsing body” approach during many of the Genie’s transformations during the song.
At the very end of the Genie’s “hand dance,” he pushes himself into six different shapes (one shape per scat syllable): all simple triangles, rectangles, or zig-zags. There is seemingly no transition between each shape, but somehow they look like they flow from one to another. So, how does this look smooth and fluid?
I broke down the first three shapes frame-by-frame. Notice how the shape of his body always starts out sharp and geometric, then gets softer, smaller, and rounder. He hits each shape, then backs off from it slowly. The pattern is: sharp - soft - softer. This “pulse” serves both to ease out of the initial shape, and to anticipate the next shape.
You can see the Genie’s limbs expand and contract when he moves from one transformation to the next. Let’s look at how he turns from a bunny into a dragon. During the Genie’s later transformation from a bunny into a dragon, he uses the same principles of pushing limbs out from the center, then having them slowly pull back in.
But there’s more behind how the Genie breaks the laws of physics here.
Remember the Law of Conservation, aka First Law of Thermodynamics? Matter cannot be made nor destroyed? Animators call this keeping consistent volume. When an object moves, it can change shape, but it can’t change volume. The volume the bunny gains couldn’t have come from nowhere, but that’s what the viewer has to assume. How can the Genie obviously break this law while still making a believable transformation?
The answer: the Genie kind of follows these rules.
Look at when his first leg turns into a dragon leg. For a single frame, his foot grows in size, while the rest of his body contracts. It’s as if the dragon limbs are “sucking up” the volume from the rest of the body, then pushing it out again.
As the transformation continues, his body expands like a balloon being filled up with air. I drew over this scene, with the yellow arrows indicating the direction of thrust. Note how in the second frame, when the ears inflate, the rest of the body decreases in volume. This new volume then moves down the body. In all of these frames, volume increases towards the direction of thrust, and volume decreases behind it.
Also remember, all of this is animated to a beat.
One of the Genie’s most complicated transformations occurs when he duplicates himself. The “pulsating body” principle is still evidently used here. He pushes his limbs out from the center, hits an extreme (or elongated) pose, then pulls back to center and settles. In the image below, I indicate Genie #1 with orange, Genie #2 with red, Genie #3 with yellow, Genie #4 with green, and overall body movements with blue.
Volume flows from one body part to another as if it were a fluid. Notice how in frame 5 he moves the volume of his chest to his hips, then that volume bounces back. After all, volume always has to come from somewhere.
Eric Goldberg, the lead character designer and animator for the Genie, has another term for this constant expansion and contraction: fluid phrasing. He explains the concept further in his book Character Animation Crashcourse, in which - unlike most other animation guides - Goldberg chooses to spend less time focusing on animation mechanics, but rather how those mechanics can be applied to character performance.
To make any action look fluid, first anticipate the action, hit the “high,” then cushion into a more “stable” position. Just like in the Genie’s movements, Goldberg points out
“... the less time spent at the beginning of the move, and the more toward the end, the better.”
Whenever an animated character moves , you want to ease in and out only at the end of an action. To make it look “snappy,” reduce the anticipation, but lengthen the reaction.
Goldberg’s “fluid phrasing” doesn’t only apply whenever the Genie transforms, but also when he’s talking and acting. You can see the effect in one form or another in many of the best animated performances. Body limbs, jaws, and other body parts extend from the center of the body, then snap back in place.
Look at the motion of Hades’ arms, hand, and fingers in this scene from Disney’s Hercules. They push out and pull in to a much more subtle extent than the Genie, but there’s a similar feeling of squash and stretch. He also “expands” during important accents of his speech, just like the Genie.
Interestingly, Goldberg also notes in the book that even though he designed the Genie to retain many of Robin Williams’ facial features (such as the nose and expressive eyebrows), Goldberg did not take inspiration from Williams’ physical movements in the booth, because “Robin [kept] his arms very close to his body when performing, and he does more with his voice than with his actions…” Instead, he wanted to “use animation’s ability for razor-sharp timing to complement Robin’s… the Genie’s body was completely different [from Williams’]...” Goldberg used fluid phrasing to enhance Williams’ performance.
The goal of character animation is not to copy reality, but create believability. Animated movies can make us convinced that in the world behind the screen, animals can talk, toys can walk, and Robin Williams can turn into whatever he wishes. Animators use reality as a base to make the impossible seem possible.
Written by: CJ Paghasian
Edited by: Peck Trachsel
All gifs were created with Gif Maker and GIF Speed Changer.
Youtube videos used:
"Friend Like Me": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R9eHA6YiP8
Aladdin Meets Genie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI27mX1BHvk
Scene from "Hercules": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7csy_QxPVo&t=68s
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