Uncanny Valley

        The Uncanny Valley is a term which refers to a dip in a person's level of comfort when observing a figure with almost, but not quite, natural looking human features. Although originally applied to robotics in the 1970s by Doctor Masahiro Mori, the phrase is increasingly used in 3D computer animation.

        The most uncanny animation is often found where motion capture (or the more detailed Performance Capture, which records subtler human movements and expressions) has been involved, where hyper-realism has been striven for at the expense of creating characters that the audience can empathise with. The artists are literally driven to distraction by what ever advancing technology can achieve. Some oft-cited examples are Robert Zemeckis' films The Polar Express and Beowulf.

The animated counterpart simply doesn't capture the Hanks' expression and vivacity;
he looks dull in comparison.

        The hypothesis is that as the realism of a character increase, so too does audience empathy. Up until a point; beyond this point, empathy drops steeply and can even lead to feelings of revulsion and hostility. Yet it is uncertain at what point on the scale of realism the negative reaction begins. For some, even characters in Pixar favourite Toy Story provoke this reaction.

        Somewhat paradoxically, the detractors of The Polar Express claim the characters are 'doll like', 'awkward' and even 'robotic', although thanks to performance capture they are as human as possible beneath their CGI shells. However, this does support one theory as to why the Uncanny Valley exists. The more immediately apparent it is that a character is nonhuman, the more noticeable their human qualities become, while the more apparently human a character is, the more noticeable their nonhuman, or alien qualities become. Hence the popularity of anthropomorphism, an also perhaps why another motion capture creation, Gollum, escapes much of the uncanny criticism. His emaciated and considerably devolved physical states renders him adequately 'nonhuman'.

A particularly unnerving child from The Polar Express.

        Released in the same year as The Polar Express, Brad Bird's The Incredibles uses similar 3D CGI animation, but without the motion capure, to create more stylized and cartoonish characters. The Parr family correspond more with how we are used to animated characters behaving thanks to years and years of 2D animation, with almost Tex Avery levels of exaggeration in both their physical proportions and movements.

        Even in non comedic and cartoonish genres, animation works best when capturing the essence of natural movement rather than copying it verbatim. Observing recognisable quirks and traits and incorporating those into a character's performance is a more effective method of imbuing them with personality than slaving over their appearance.

        Another by product of feature animations which use performance capture are the bizarre looking characters which manage at the same time to be both highly familiar and extremely alien. Beowulf is a prime example, starring an unnervingly youthful and athletic Ray Winstone (similar to the digital Jeff Bridges in Tron Legacy), dead-behind-the-eyes Angelina Jolie, and a whole host of other famous faces in shiny CG form.The design team even went so far as to use technical trickery to incorporate some of Winstone's facial features onto the dragon his character fathers. Yet I for one can't help feeling that recreating the whole cast as virtual puppets did little to make audiences care or invest in the story. Would there not have been more vivacity in the characters if it had been filmed in live action? Or if the actors' performances and voices had been used as the basis for creating more appealing and stylised characters which were outside the realms of the Uncanny Valley?