To make an incredible video game sometimes you need to do a lot of research
A pigeon fighting a plastic soldier sounds ridiculous, until you see it with your own eyes…
High speed. Precision. A weight of 250 Gr (9 ounces or 0.6 pounds). After watching this video, you don’t have to use much of your imagination to know that a pigeon would be a fierce warrior against a 2 inches lightweight Plastic Soldier.
Newton’s second law of motion states that F = ma, or net force is equal to mass times acceleration. A larger net force acting on an object causes a larger acceleration, and objects with larger mass require more force to accelerate. Therefore, the weight added to the high speed would be a tremendous force hitting a plastic soldier.
But of course, the resistance of the plastic would cause the soldier to simply fly away. The same with his beak (experienced directly with my finger in the video) bites a little hard for a human, and can even damage living tissue. But for a plastic soldier it would only cause some deep scratches or marks.
Animal combat investigation
A Cockroach can run at such high speed that it could appear to you so suddenly that it would surely cause you a jump scare, even if you hear his crackling sounds. But, even with its large size compared to a Cockroach, you would never hear a Cat until it is too late.
Like each of the Bravo Company Commandos or the members of Team Assault, each animal has a set of characteristics that makes it part of a diverse variety of formidable opponents. Anyway, this is the limit of our imagination and theoretical knowledge. Which is why we had to go out and look for real information.
The dove that could not live naturally…
When it comes to translating reality into the digital realm, such as animating a pigeon and providing the NPC with, although incredible, realistic characteristics, we have to go outside and look for these components of the Real World and observe them carefully, always thinking from the perspective of a plastic soldier.
On this occasion we were lucky enough to meet a healthy, 100% functional pigeon, which was domesticated by people who then abandoned it in a bird shelter. The first time we saw her, she allowed herself to be petted and stayed quite still, which allowed us to take photographs and measure her to make the 3D model. She had just arrived at the shelter where she was disconnected from all human relationships, staying to live alone with other pigeons, away from humans who only go to the shelter to leave them food and change their water supply. When we returned, months later, her taming level had already begun to disappear. It was at that moment that we took this video.
What is the problem with domesticating a wild animal? The problem is that it makes them useless when it comes to living in their wild environments. A domesticated bird will surely die because of its ignorance, lack of knowledge or because of its “brainwashing”. She will not know how to look for food and will be eaten by a predator or hit by a vehicle, deaths from which she will not flee because she will not even know what they mean. She will not run from a human because she will not known it’s dangerous… dying by slingshot.
Now she was not as comfortable with humans and although she did not escape with the terror of a normal pigeon, she no longer liked being petted, which indicates that her treatment to live in the wild was going well.
She had already chosen a partner, a Messenger (or Racing) Pigeon that was also abandoned, bigger, adult and more beautiful than her, whose wing fracture left him on the ground, never to be able to fly at a height that would allow him to have a normal wild life. With her he had already had 2 chicks, which when they became adults, the caregivers took them out of the shelter to release them and never see them again.
Maybe this story was too long, and away from what we were talking about, right?. Well, I went extended on purpose to prove my next point…
And it’s like that that by accident…
…nothing happened to the pigeon. She is still undergoing treatment with a possible early release. But anyway, all this that we learned accidently and unexpectedly led us not only to realize the real possibilities of a plastic soldier fighting a pigeon, but also the stories that an uninformed person does not even imagine are behind an animal which is considered a “rodent of the air”. Bapulated, ignored, despised and mass murdered, she also tells us (unintentionally) about human nature and his lack of responsibility with the other life forms that make his ecosystem. The difficulties animals must go through to survive, which we do not see, are worthy of admiration.
We humans tend to downplay everything that is small, but on the other hand we are fascinated and concerned about animals such as cats, dogs, lions, elephants, etc. Larger animals that we consider exotic because they are rare and we are not surrounded by them all the time. Therefore, from the Army Men plastic soldier’s perspective, a simple pigeon would be considered an impressive and exotic animal, from a world very different from their own: uncommon. On the other hand, the pigeon would ignore it due to its smaller size, not considering it a threat like if they were insects (unless the Army Men shoot her). It is for all these reasons that we assumed that they would protect a pigeon as much as we would protect an elephant.
Therefore, not only did we learn to admire an animal that we had never even thought of before, but it also opened the doors to an immensity of narrative possibilities for our story. That’s why the title “Animal Warriors” doesn’t just have the simple meaning you thought before reading all this.