CHARACTER ESSAY - UNCANNY

In this session, we looked at the uncanny, the uncanny valley, and what animation is good for regarding ways to present things.

The uncanny is the line between something looking 100% real and looking believable enough. It's commonly attributed to things that look slightly off, but gives off a largely uncomfortable feeling. It's especially common when something that isn't supposed to do something... does that thing, in a strange way.

The term was coined in 1835, by Friedrich Shcelling. It's defined as something "strange & unusual".

"The uncanny is apprehension rather than experience, dread rather than terror... the uncanny is built on uncertainty" ~ Reagan

In German, the word for uncanny is unheimlich, a word which when broken down into it's core words, means un-homely (heimlich directly translates to homely). Therefore, the uncanny is something we don't feel "at home" with. It can also mean unconcealed or unsecretive; even Schelling wrote that unheimlich is the name for things that "ought to have stayed secret and hidden".

The uncanny reminds us of what we're not conciously aware of. For example, when an uncanny thing breathes or blinks, we're suddenly made more aware of it, and somewhat more conscious of it.

(Street of Crocodiles - dir. Quay Brothers)

The Uncanny Valley is linked to the uncanny concept. The term comes from a line graph, demonstrating how much a thing looks like a person, vs how familiar we are with them.

(credit: Psychologenie)

As the anthropomorphism / resemblance to humans grows, the familiarity does too. However, between the point just beyond humanoid robot and healthy human, there's a sudden drop; the uncanny valley. This is when human-resembling entities don't look exactly right, and become uncomfortable to look at. Characters coming from video games (designed to look hyper-realistic) and mocap animated films fall into the valley the most often.

(The Polar Express - dir. Robert Zemeckis)

(Mass Effect: Andromeda - developed by BioWare)

It's reached a point where the uncanny valley has transcended the screen, and has entered reality; robots are being made which fall directly into the uncanny valley. An example of this is Hiroshi Ishiguro's "robot twin", dubbed a Geminoid, which he created to understand "what is a human". 

There are five categories of realism: visual, aural, motion, narrative and social. In terms of the uncanny, it relates to realism of motion. Sometimes, you don't need realism in your animated motion; the 20's / 30's rubberhose style shows that unrealistic movement that breaks the laws of physics can still be appealing. Cartoons involving Ub Iwerks utilied this style, including his work with Walt Disney and his own projects. The style has recently made a comeback, with the 2017 game Cuphead spearheading.

(Balloon Land - dir. Ub Iwerks)

(Cuphead - developed by Studio MDHR)

However, Disney's hunger for realism in the 1930's lead to the industry straying away from the rubberhose style.

(Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - dir. Walt Disney)

However, there are some examples of cartoons that fail to integrate more cartoony designs & movements with more realistic ones. An example is Gulliver's Travels from 1939.

(Gulliver's Travels - dir. Dave Fleischer)

The animation mixes the more cartoony Lilliputs with a rotoscoped Gulliver. The two styles don't really meld together very well, and look too different to belong together. Gulliver could be considered as being on the border of the uncanny valley, where the Lilliputs aren't close to it.

Overall, animation tries avoiding the uncanny, by ensuring their animation has verisimilitude. Verisimilitude is giving something the quality of seeming to be true or real. But that doesn't always mean exactly so; it can mean it looks "real enough". 

Walt Disney wanted verisimilitude in his animations, so since Snow White's release, up until the company's final physical animation, they used a machine of their own design, known as the multi-plane camera. Designed for animations with multiple layers which would move at different speeds in reality, each layer can be moved individually to give a more realistic camera movement.

(credit: Walt Disney Studios)

After this session, I considered whether Emmet, my character for the character essay applies to anything to do with the uncanny. In response, I'd say that no, he doesn't. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that Emmet figuratively jumps over the uncanny valley, to the point where people thought he was an actual Lego minifigure. 

In an interview with one of the animation directors on The LEGO Movie, it was brought up that many people online were confused as to whether the film was stop motion or computer animation. Where the answer is simple (it's CGI), the fact that so many people thought it was real speaks volumes. The film successfully achieves a realistic look better than other films, and even reaches the point where people thought actual cameras and minifigures were used. Could this be applied to the essay? Possibly. When talking about visuals, it could link back to my question in the form of "the film accurately portrays the product", or something along those lines.