This is beautifully animated, but there’s one detail which makes me go a little buggy. Watch the baby’s eyes. They are so real, compared to the rest of the figure, that it edges into the uncanny valley.
This is a problem that crops up in a lot of different forms of world creation, from set design, to animation to straight puppetry. If you have one element that seems totally real, it makes everything else seem strange. But if everything is stylized in the same manner, then you accept that visual vocabulary. For instance, no one complains that they can’t see all the fur on the Beast in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. But if a real dog wandered through the scene, the entire world would look flat and the dog would look strange. It’s uncanny.
You can just rock me to sleep tonight, miss. That. is. CREEPY.
Hi Mary, thanks for sharing the article on the uncanny valley – I found it fascinating.
I’ve been meddling around with a little CG and animation for a while now, and was starting to come to a similar conclusion. Personally, when it comes to depicting human characters I think ‘stylised’ realism seems like a much more effective approach than trying (and failing) to nail perfect realism — because, like you said, it only takes a slight inconsistency to plunge the audience down into ‘the valley’.
But I’m sure there are a lot of applications for this theory. For example, it might explain why exaggerated likenesses depicted in caricatures and cartoons are just as effective and instantly recognisable as ‘photo-realistic’ portraits (sometimes more so). At the other end of the scale, perhaps it also explains why deliberately animating (or filming) humans moving in a very unnatural way produces such a disturbing visual effect (the film ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ has good examples of this).
Well, I can only speculate, but I’m definitely going to read more on the subject. Thanks again for introducing this. 🙂
Kris: Isn’t it though?
Jonathan: I find the article utterly fascinating and I’m glad you also find it of value.
I saw that you added me to your Friends list — thank you! — so I dropped by here to browse.
That is one CREEPY video. Thanks for sharing!