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Science
Dec 19, 2013 19:27:15 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by seafoamonster on Dec 19, 2013 19:27:15 GMT -5
I'm thinking of making a site mainly about the science of Randall, including anatomy, invisibility, and mentality, etc. Any ideas/questions/comments?
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Science
Dec 19, 2013 23:01:31 GMT -5
Post by pitbulllady on Dec 19, 2013 23:01:31 GMT -5
I'm gonna give you the same advice I give to fanfic writers: DON'T go into it unless you REALLY know your stuff and are willing to do your homework ahead of time, i.e. RESEARCH RESEARCH RESEARCH! NOTHING "kills" a story-or a website-for me quicker than starting into it and realizing that the person had absolutely NO clue what they were doing. I KNOW it is about a fictional character, but "fictional" should not have to equal "ridiculous". Case in point: there is a fanfic currently on FF.net which follows the typical scenario of "Injured Randall is found and rescued by teenage girl; he acts like a douche-bag towards her at first but eventually he's won over because she is so perfect and patient and they become friends, then some threat shows up and puts both at risk". In this story, Randall somehow, maybe through another wormhole-it's not explained-winds up in KANSAS immediately after being severely beaten by a woman with a shovel in LOUISIANA. He's found by a girl who is into horses and lives on a ranch, and she patches him up, yada yada yada. At some point, some bad guy shows up to threaten them and winds up shooting Randall, at point-blank range...with an "elephant gun". Randall SURVIVES, although injured, and once more the teen patches him up. Now, folks, I know a thing or two about guns. I'm an avid shooter myself. "Elephant gun" is a term applied to any caliber of weapon capable of bringing down the large land animal on Earth. Guns of that caliber have to be fired using a tripod or other support, due to the massive recoil. You don't just walk around carrying one of these things. If a creature the size of Randall was shot at ANY distance with something like this, he is NOT going to survive. If he was shot at point-blank range, there would be NOTHING LEFT OF HIM, period! He'd just disintegrate! I have not bothered to read any further into that story after that.
My point of all this rambling is, go for it...but BE SURE that you do your research! The science part I can definitely help with, and in spite of some folks saying that everyone should be able to believe whatever they want about Randall from that perspective, again...just because he's a fictional character does not mean that there should not be a basis in truth and reality! Pixar takes time to research lots of animals as models for their monster characters, and while Randall has some superficially reptile-like characteristics, he CANNOT be a reptile, not by our scientific definition of that word, anyway. THAT would be a good place to start, right there. His skeletal system is very mammalian, for example, right down to how his teeth are arranged in his jawbones. He's running around at the Scare Games sign-ups in MU wearing nothing but a sweater, even though there is ICE on the trees and it is cold outside, something no ectothermic creature could do, and he seems quite comfortable(physically, anyway-emotionally is a whole different ballgame), even though one of his new frat-mates who shall remain unnamed is wearing two layers of clothing over FUR and will later be seen wearing THREE layers of clothing, despite obviously being a mammal himself! But do some research, and don't expect things to be as cut-and-dry as most people think. For instance, the source of the genes for Randall's color-change ability probably would NOT be a chameleon, but a cephlopod, since no chameleon can even come close to sorta half-way matching Randall's ability...but an octopus sure can! Pixar did not even originally base Randall's design on a chameleon, but on an iguana! His movement isn't based on any reptile's, but on that of a big cat, a puma or leopard especially. Take your time and do plenty of research first!
pitbulllady
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Science
Dec 20, 2013 0:10:15 GMT -5
Post by seafoamonster on Dec 20, 2013 0:10:15 GMT -5
Definitely! That's great advice. I will totally take my time. I really don't want to mess up something like this! Is an Elephant gun like a bazooka?
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Science
Dec 20, 2013 10:36:53 GMT -5
Post by number-1-scarer on Dec 20, 2013 10:36:53 GMT -5
i honestly don't think it matters that much as long as its fun and you enjoy it and others enjoy it then go for it. You could make up your own theories and junk people always find things like that interesting.
Not everyone likes mass researched detail sometimes it can kinda suck the fun out of things. I mean he's a mix of monster and human so how scientifically correct can you really be.I think its a great idea and i would definitely like to see it when its done Good luck x
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Science
Dec 20, 2013 13:37:33 GMT -5
Post by pitbulllady on Dec 20, 2013 13:37:33 GMT -5
i honestly don't think it matters that much as long as its fun and you enjoy it and others enjoy it then go for it. You could make up your own theories and junk people always find things like that interesting. Not everyone likes mass researched detail sometimes it can kinda suck the fun out of things. I mean he's a mix of monster and human so how scientifically correct can you really be.I think its a great idea and i would definitely like to see it when its done Good luck x He's still a biological being, so biology itself is limiting, AND like you said, Randall IS part human, descended from humans as much as from any other animal. Physics is limiting, too. Just because something is fictional doesn't mean it has to be nonsense or that some basic rules of logic shouldn't apply. Pixar writers and artists themselves go to some extreme lengths to bring a considerable amount of reality to their fictional worlds and characters. We have seen clips of them animating Sulley, for instance, in his "dance" sequence at the ROR party, and saw how they had to consider things like how Sulley's underlying skeletal structure, his emotional state at the time, and his center of gravity would affect how he moved, with the animators going back and forth animating several different versions until they found one that was right. Pixar didn't take that "anything goes" route at all. Their jobs would be so much easier if they just tossed logic and reason to the wind and said, "anything goes", wouldn't they? But they don't. The reason their movies ARE so popular is because they connect with people, with the Real World, and the further they were to deviate from that the more implausible and distant their movies would become. Failure to do that research and apply logic before embarking on such a project smacks of either laziness or lack of attention to detail, or both. pitbulllady
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Science
Dec 20, 2013 13:51:34 GMT -5
Post by pitbulllady on Dec 20, 2013 13:51:34 GMT -5
Definitely! That's great advice. I will totally take my time. I really don't want to mess up something like this! Is an Elephant gun like a bazooka? No, an "elephant gun" is a rifle chambered in a very large caliber, like .585 or .50 BMG, capable of killing a very large animal. Many of those rounds WERE originally developed for military use, though, as anti-armor ammunition, capable of penetrating the body of a tank. Such a large gun required a gun stand or tripod mount to shoot from, due to its weight and recoil. These are very large rifles, NOT something that someone is just going to be walking around carrying, and DEFINITELY not something that you'd discharge inside a building(as takes place in the fanfic I mentioned), since the percussive power of the blast within a closed space would likely result in serious injury to the shooter, as well! Randall weighs 220 pounds, well within the size/weight/mass of a human male, so if he were to be shot at close range with a caliber of ammunition designed to penetrate a tank on the battlefield or kill the largest land animal in existence, there would simply be nothing left of him. It would be-disturbingly-like those battlefield Civil War reports of soldiers at Gettysburg being hit with mortar rounds fired from a cannon, where the reporters described the person simply disintegrating into a "red mist". pitbulllady
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Science
Dec 20, 2013 16:04:37 GMT -5
Post by pitvipersnake on Dec 20, 2013 16:04:37 GMT -5
I think this is a really good idea and has the potential to be really interesting. I agree with Pitbulllady though if it's a 'science of...' page it needs to have real science in it otherwise whats the point? (Sorry if that sounds harsh but I like real science in my science fiction.) I'll be glad to help out with any biology related things (I have a BSc and MSc in ecology related subjects so I should know what I'm talking about). It would be quite good, I think, if you allowed on your site articles related to other aspects of the monster world. They must have some really interesting flora and funa there for instance. And theres lots to say about how a human sub-species varies so much in appearance to us and each other. Anyway you probably don't want my ideas, you probably have your own.
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Science
Dec 20, 2013 22:48:36 GMT -5
Post by pitbulllady on Dec 20, 2013 22:48:36 GMT -5
I think this is a really good idea and has the potential to be really interesting. I agree with Pitbulllady though if it's a 'science of...' page it needs to have real science in it otherwise whats the point? (Sorry if that sounds harsh but I like real science in my science fiction.) I'll be glad to help out with any biology related things (I have a BSc and MSc in ecology related subjects so I should know what I'm talking about). It would be quite good, I think, if you allowed on your site articles related to other aspects of the monster world. They must have some really interesting flora and funa there for instance. And theres lots to say about how a human sub-species varies so much in appearance to us and each other. Anyway you probably don't want my ideas, you probably have your own. "I like real science in my science fiction"... now THAT is one of the best quotes I've seen a long time if you don't mind me saying so! Can I get an AMEN? Even when the subject matter is something like aliens or monsters, I still want FACTS and logic, thank you. I can suspend belief to a certain extent, but that suspension can only go so far before my brain simply says, "WHOA, get me OUTA here!" Take the whole Monster World, for instance; there is a TON of scientific theories to support the existence of parallel universes, complete with alt. version of Earth, as well as the probability of "wormholes" that could potentially allow for travel between these "multi-verses". None other than Albert Einstein was a leading proponent of these theories. Science can be used, in our terms, to explain a lot of the Monster World, while making sure it makes sense. Science itself, to me, IS fun, IS interesting, so there's no need to just throw logic to the wind and start making random WAG's in order to make something fun and interesting. Somewhere on this board, for instance, I have a thread that I started years ago when Animal Planet aired their "mockumentary" about dragons, in which a real geneticist explained how a simple gene mutation on a particular real gene sequence could produce an extra set of functional limbs in a vertebrate. Even though that, too, was fiction, they got real scientists to weigh in with facts that made sense and had real examples to support it. When it comes to science, reality is often more intriguing than the crazy illogical fantasies some people love to dream up because they don't know enough about science! I have a Biology degree, and half a century with first-hand experience with many, many kinds of animals. I also know vertebrate anatomy really well and have a good working knowledge of genetics. I've kept, bred and studied reptiles in particular since I was in elementary school, which is why everything about Randall-his anatomy, his metabolism, his movement, etc.-just SCREAMS out, "I AM NOT A REPTILE" to me! It's like comparing apples to oranges. I also have a background in Psychology, a requirement to teach the kids that were in my classroom, and a lot of experience with people, their behavior, what makes them "tick", and having to see both sides of the coin so many times. Life is interesting. Science is interesting. You don't have to step outside of logic and toss facts to the wind to make things interesting. There is also the potential of such a site that Seafoam is planning to actually TEACH people about things other than Randall, by contrasting him with a real reptile, for instance, to teach people about reptiles, something of which people in general are profoundly ignorant. Like I said, when I come across something that indicates the author had no clue and should have just left that out completely, it's a major "turn off" for me, and I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who feels that way. pitbulllady
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Science
Dec 24, 2013 23:19:26 GMT -5
Post by pitbulllady on Dec 24, 2013 23:19:26 GMT -5
I'm gonna give you the same advice I give to fanfic writers: DON'T go into it unless you REALLY know your stuff and are willing to do your homework ahead of time, i.e. RESEARCH RESEARCH RESEARCH! NOTHING "kills" a story-or a website-for me quicker than starting into it and realizing that the person had absolutely NO clue what they were doing. I KNOW it is about a fictional character, but "fictional" should not have to equal "ridiculous". Case in point: there is a fanfic currently on FF.net which follows the typical scenario of "Injured Randall is found and rescued by teenage girl; he acts like a douche-bag towards her at first but eventually he's won over because she is so perfect and patient and they become friends, then some threat shows up and puts both at risk". In this story, Randall somehow, maybe through another wormhole-it's not explained-winds up in KANSAS immediately after being severely beaten by a woman with a shovel in LOUISIANA. He's found by a girl who is into horses and lives on a ranch, and she patches him up, yada yada yada. At some point, some bad guy shows up to threaten them and winds up shooting Randall, at point-blank range...with an "elephant gun". Randall SURVIVES, although injured, and once more the teen patches him up. Now, folks, I know a thing or two about guns. I'm an avid shooter myself. "Elephant gun" is a term applied to any caliber of weapon capable of bringing down the large land animal on Earth. Guns of that caliber have to be fired using a tripod or other support, due to the massive recoil. You don't just walk around carrying one of these things. If a creature the size of Randall was shot at ANY distance with something like this, he is NOT going to survive. If he was shot at point-blank range, there would be NOTHING LEFT OF HIM, period! He'd just disintegrate! I have not bothered to read any further into that story after that. My point of all this rambling is, go for it...but BE SURE that you do your research! The science part I can definitely help with, and in spite of some folks saying that everyone should be able to believe whatever they want about Randall from that perspective, again...just because he's a fictional character does not mean that there should not be a basis in truth and reality! Pixar takes time to research lots of animals as models for their monster characters, and while Randall has some superficially reptile-like characteristics, he CANNOT be a reptile, not by our scientific definition of that word, anyway. THAT would be a good place to start, right there. His skeletal system is very mammalian, for example, right down to how his teeth are arranged in his jawbones. He's running around at the Scare Games sign-ups in MU wearing nothing but a sweater, even though there is ICE on the trees and it is cold outside, something no ectothermic creature could do, and he seems quite comfortable(physically, anyway-emotionally is a whole different ballgame), even though one of his new frat-mates who shall remain unnamed is wearing two layers of clothing over FUR and will later be seen wearing THREE layers of clothing, despite obviously being a mammal himself! But do some research, and don't expect things to be as cut-and-dry as most people think. For instance, the source of the genes for Randall's color-change ability probably would NOT be a chameleon, but a cephlopod, since no chameleon can even come close to sorta half-way matching Randall's ability...but an octopus sure can! Pixar did not even originally base Randall's design on a chameleon, but on an iguana! His movement isn't based on any reptile's, but on that of a big cat, a puma or leopard especially. Take your time and do plenty of research first! pitbulllady Lol fanfic never ceases to amuse me. There are always some ridiculous stories. Like the one where the teenage girl who rescues animals adopts Randall from an animal shelter and he pretends to be a dumb animal(a'la Stitch's performance in Lilo and Stitch), while plotting to harm her and her family, but starts to empathize with her because of the bullying she experiences from the girl clique she refers to as her "friends"(again, the L&S homage), then it turns out that Randall CAN understand animals, like dogs, and he falls in love with the girl's pet Saluki dog, then a threat comes along and Randall has to save everyone, revealing to the girl that he can talk in the meantime, though everyone else still thinks he's just some big strange mutant pet lizard. He mates with the dog and they produce a litter of "lizog" puppies(lizard dogs), and everyone on FF.net thought that was Soooooo kawaii! Then they all become, like super-heroes fighting evil forces or something, I kid you not. I don't know what's worse, that, or the "evil Randall returns to get revenge on Mike, Sulley and Boo and kidnaps adult Boo/her kid", never mind again that Randall wouldn't even recognize her nor would she remember him, and he sure wouldn't know her kid from Adam's house cat! Another typical occurrence in the "perfect teenage girl finds injured Randall and nurses him back to health and eventually they become friends" storyline is that the girl in question, although a minor, lives alone and supports herself...with no job. Said girl is ALWAYS an animal lover who cares for and rescues abused and mistreated critters, and is always super-strong. For instance, she ALWAYS is able to physically pick up Randall and carry him back to her house, never mind that Randall weighs 220 pounds! Even though girl is still in high school, with no job to speak of(unless it's working part time at a pet shop), she has all these drugs lying around the house and an extensive knowledge of medicine that would make Dr. House feel inferior. Bad thing is, I had hoped that MU would have inspired some really great new stories, but sadly, that does not seem to be the case. There are only a handful that are worth reading and most of those got started before MU came out. Just do some simply research, people, and as Madea said, "if you don't know, yo' a$$ better ask somebody!" There are plenty of reliable sources to answer your questions. Stuff like Randall's weight is readily available, for instance. pitbulllady
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Science
Jan 4, 2014 20:20:36 GMT -5
Post by seafoamonster on Jan 4, 2014 20:20:36 GMT -5
Okay. The idea of teaching people seems really successful to me. I have noticed that Randall moves quite a bit more like a cat than a lizard. Correct me if I'm wrong. Could he walk on on just his bottom two legs if he wished?
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Science
Jan 4, 2014 20:24:06 GMT -5
Post by seafoamonster on Jan 4, 2014 20:24:06 GMT -5
I think this is a really good idea and has the potential to be really interesting. I agree with Pitbulllady though if it's a 'science of...' page it needs to have real science in it otherwise whats the point? (Sorry if that sounds harsh but I like real science in my science fiction.) I'll be glad to help out with any biology related things (I have a BSc and MSc in ecology related subjects so I should know what I'm talking about). It would be quite good, I think, if you allowed on your site articles related to other aspects of the monster world. They must have some really interesting flora and funa there for instance. And theres lots to say about how a human sub-species varies so much in appearance to us and each other. Anyway you probably don't want my ideas, you probably have your own. Of course I want your ideas! That's one of the main reasons I created this thread. Diving into the Monster world is something I've been thinking about.
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Science
Jan 4, 2014 21:20:23 GMT -5
Post by pitbulllady on Jan 4, 2014 21:20:23 GMT -5
Okay. The idea of teaching people seems really successful to me. I have noticed that Randall moves quite a bit more like a cat than a lizard. Correct me if I'm wrong. Could he walk on on just his bottom two legs if he wished? For a very limited time, yes, Randall could probably stand and walk his rear-most pair of legs. The key word here is "LIMITED". He would be supporting his entire 220 pounds and roughly six feet of height on two legs that are maybe two feet long. Randall is supposedly 12 1/2 feet in total length from the end of his snout to the tip of his tail, slightly under five feet standing on all fours(not sure if that counts his fronds or not, though) and a bit over six feet standing on his rear two legs. Randall does move much more like a cat than a lizard, though, so you're spot-on about that observation. In fact, one of his animators, according to the guy's blog(no longer up, sadly)spent many hours at the zoo observing various animals moving around for inspiration on the gaits of both Randall and Sulley(see, remember what I said about the important of RESEARCH?). Initially, he looked to reptiles, lizards and crocodilians, for inspiration on Randall, but found that their movement lacked what he was looking for, so he began to observe the big cats, like leopards and cougars, instead. THAT is where he found his inspiration for Randall's movements, except when he's running/scurrying. You can really see that feline touch right after the Scream Extractor goes "dead" while Randall is at the control panel, and he just sort of "flows" over the panel to follow the electrical wiring. You can really see that well in MU, when he's climbing into the seat in class, with how he climbs up head-first and then curls up around himself, wrapping his tail around him, just like a cat climbing into a chair. Even thought Randall's tail is thin, it probably does offer a bit of warmth conservation and insulation, plus that is a likely psychological gesture, too, indicating his fear and insecurity. pitbulllady
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Science
Jan 4, 2014 21:36:43 GMT -5
Post by seafoamonster on Jan 4, 2014 21:36:43 GMT -5
I just love how he moves.
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Jan 4, 2014 21:51:47 GMT -5
Post by pitbulllady on Jan 4, 2014 21:51:47 GMT -5
I just love how he moves. Me, too; I know it's cliche'd, but the phrase "poetry in motion" seems tailor made to describe Randall's movement! That's one of the things I find attractive about both him and Johnny, who, in spite of his bulk and muscle, moves very gracefully, with that lovely predatory stealth, when he needs to. pitbulllady
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Science
Jan 7, 2014 12:02:23 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by seafoamonster on Jan 7, 2014 12:02:23 GMT -5
Ahh. Amen!
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