Example Drift: Uncanny Valley

That's the point. Symbolic rendering is completely out of the loop when the trope is about excess realism.

And this is why it is a YMMV audience reaction, and not a trope.

I can identify with anime characters and feel that only the one with the slightly dull eyes is in the valley, you can feel that the entire medium is in the valley, and both of us are right, in the sense that the trope applies to us. The page serves it's purpose.

edited 16th Mar '11 4:31:16 PM by EternalSeptember

I agree regarding the YMMV-ness. The question is whether animated characters belong in the valley as currently defined at all - I'm not convinced they do. Uncanny Valley as a preexisting term goes beyond simply meaning "character that seems creepy".

edited 16th Mar '11 4:33:54 PM by nrjxll

@Ghilz, I disagree with all you said. I know drawings are not human. The same way, I know a robot is not human and that a clown or a Live Action are not 'human' either (they are fictional characters).

It is about how much you can think of them as 'human'. It doesn't matter how much of a caricature a character is if it can give you the 'feel' of a human. You accept a drawing character as 'human' for several reasons. You feel the character is close to you and can accept it as a representation of 'humanity'. The Uncanny Valley is when this character pass the 'not human' feel at the same time as it pass its 'human' feel. You feel it is close to you, but at same time feel there is something off.

Well said.

Anyway, I am still think a new trope is the best way to set this discussion.

Edit: It is not about "feeling creepy". It is about being so similar yet so distant that it cause the creepy feelings.

edited 16th Mar '11 4:38:58 PM by Heatth

It's not about knowing it's human. It's about whether it looks human but is missing small details.

Animated characters generally do not look like real humans. You know they're human because they're warped representations. Clowns typically are real people, so they look like real people. Robots might or might not; the Uncanny Valley factor comes from whether they look realistically human.

edited 16th Mar '11 4:40:33 PM by Scardoll

You mean anime? Animation is one of the main reason why the Uncanny Valley got known as a media concept, 3D animated movie creators and video game developers are all trying hard to avoid it.

And if video game examples would count, we would have to draw the line at a certain quality of realistic graphics: Rendered cutscenes only? 7th generation gameplay graphics? 6th generation? 5th?

And what about photorealistic 2d drawings, like classical paintings?

It would be a subjective line, and it would only mark the transition from subjectivity to subjectivity.

As opposed to the other ten inch high, glowing 2D shapes on the surface of a rectangle, that happen to use a bit more color shades? The ones that are so obviously human?

edited 16th Mar '11 4:48:40 PM by EternalSeptember

the problem with splitting is that Ghost In Tge Shell and Haruhi specifically refer to the trope and the theory by name and both are Genius Bonus series. I can see a "drawn slightly different to make them seem creepy or different" trope but series that invoke the theory itself should stay under this name.

The Perfect Blue example on that page is a perfect example of what the new trope would be. She is drawn with small eyes spread wide apart... and there is a reason for that.

But as you'll notice, pretty much everyone agrees that those at least strive for realism in character design.

Anime, in general, doesn't.

Then they got the term wrong, unless there are actual physical differences that are only visible for the characters.

edited 16th Mar '11 4:58:57 PM by Scardoll

There's a huge difference between art/CGI that attempts to looks human or realistic (Final Fantasy The Spirit Within, Alex Ross' art) and something that is stylized and does not (Anime, Western Animation) Yes, the trope got popularized BECAUSE of animation, but BECAUSE animators were trying to make more realistic creations.

@Raso these would be In universe examples. Simply solved.

edited 16th Mar '11 4:52:15 PM by Ghilz

Read the page on this... The theory is about robots or constructs our trope expanded it to mean any realistic work as well.

Not always in universe the others would have to have Word of God or other things going for it.

edited 16th Mar '11 4:58:10 PM by Raso

Should I even consider that gross simplification / borderline strawman worthy of a response?

Okay, how about we follow that statement to it's logical end: Cutlist the trope! Coz in the end, everything you "see" is just a specific pattern of neurons firing in the visual cortex! What's the difference!

Word of God cannot control audience reactions.

Also, nice catch: I should have said that the features are only observable for the characters, not the audience, in my earlier post. Sorry about that.

edited 16th Mar '11 5:02:17 PM by Scardoll

@Raso If a character mentions the trope in universe, then it works. If a character remarks that another seems slightly inhuman or creepy, then that's also an example. Word of God is a best a footnote that the author may or may not have tried to inspire the trope.

Going off the in-universe examples for a second. The examples in any other medium this is always a bad thing. However in most of the anime examples it's intended and is seen as a good thing if it worked, since it adds to their character, which is the big difference. Two different uses of the same theory all invoke the same feeling.

edited 16th Mar '11 5:18:37 PM by Raso

No. Here's an example of the trope being used intentionally.◊

Being referenced is not the same thing as being used.

edited 16th Mar '11 5:19:15 PM by Scardoll

I was more talking about vs CG I should of clarified... Still I don't see a reason to block animation from this trope. It's just as intentional as that one. (Which is a failure IMO looks like she had too much fun with the makeup and is peeved) This is YMMV for a reason.

This is convincing me to change my stance in the other direction.

edited 16th Mar '11 5:34:20 PM by Raso

They strive for realism inside the boundaries of their own limits, of being glowing shapes on a flat surface.

In that same way, anime strives to be more realistic, in it's own boundaries of being 2D drawings.

Every visual art tries to be realistic in it's own format, from sculptures to ASCII art.

Drawing a line between "tries to be realistic" and doesn't try to be realistic" is ridiculous. My point with the earlier simplification about the glowing shapes, was that these "realistic" pictures are still only "realistic" if you willingly ignore these huge limitations the film medium has.

Objectively, there is a lot more difference between an actual, flesh and blood human and a film character, than between a film character and an anime character.

Of course it is self-evident that the glowing little figure on your monitor is supposed to symbolize a human, so why is it so hard to grasp that a 2D animated figure can also symbolize a human?

Just visit our Western Animation or Anime and Manga forums. Unless the subject of the discussion is the art style, you won't find people talking about how "the drawn figures did this and that, and moved in front of this and that background, and we saw these animations".

You will see discussions about people doing this and that, at the following places, and even what they were thinking.

The whole idea that animated characters aren't supposed to be realistic at all, and viewers just see them as symbolic drawings, makes no more sense than watching a movie, and thinking of the characters as bunches of pixels:

It's possible that you were born with the disability of seeing things that way, but it's clear from looking at all other viewers, that this is not the normal reaction.

edited 16th Mar '11 5:28:59 PM by EternalSeptember

@Scardoll: That's just generic creepiness. Not this trope. Also character IS human.

It's Uncanny Valley. The image is half an image reflected. Actual human faces aren't perfectly symmetrical like that. It looks incredibly close to real, but there's something identifiably off.

In the film itself, however, she does not fit. She's creepy, yes, but not Uncanny Valley.

Gee, you make me feel better already.

edited 16th Mar '11 5:48:53 PM by Scardoll

Not all mediums strive for realism. Anime for example strives for a stylized version of the universe that doesn't come anywhere close to realism. There are realistic drawing styles, anime chooses not to utilize them. It's a deliberate choice, and it excludes anime from falling into the uncanny valley.

I call BS on that. Look up Cubeism, Orphism, Dadaism & Surrealism. I think this may actually be the single most incorrect statement I've ever heard about art.

As the user who added the X-Wing example, the reason I added it was because it had an almost human structure, but very specific differences; grey instead of in the human range of colours, arms made of rods, (anyone else feel reminded of bones?) holes instead of eyes, etc...

I guess the question here is just HOW similar to a human it has to be to qualify as Uncanny Valley.

edited 16th Mar '11 7:51:38 PM by neoYTPism

You can't use the word realism without using reality as a reference point. That's just absurd. It doesn't particularly matter whether or not the designs were going for realism anyway, only that the design in question is close enough to human, but far enough from perfection to cause disorientation.

That the humans in a work look like the other humans in that work is at best consistency of style and at worst Only Six Faces.

That being said, most anime and cartoon characters probably fall to the left of the Uncanny Valley, around where humanoid robot is on the moving scale, i.e., they'd have to look (way) more realistic to fall in. I say this because most anime and cartoon characters could stand to be more realistic in general without becoming creepy. The only other place that's possible is if they were already in the valley (I hope we can agree that most people won't automatically place all anime or cartoon characters in the valley).

Moving backwards from an established point by making the character look and move less like a human also increases creepiness, but not because of the Uncanny Valley. This is the case with Ryoko; since the base of the character design wasn't close enough to human in the first place, making her less human just moves her further from the valley. This doesn't mean that she's not creepy, however. On the other hand, someone with blank eyes, but looks realistically human otherwise, is creepy due to the Uncanny Valley.

In addition, it should be possible for a creator to invoke the trope, and it should also be possible for the creator to fail in invoking the trope.

As for behavior, I'm not sure. Consider a computer that looks like a computer, but can communicate (almost) like a human. Can you get the feeling of the Uncanny Valley just by talking to an entity?

A google image search of Uncanny Valley gives some really good examples. Way better than Ryoko, anyway.

edited 16th Mar '11 8:37:04 PM by arcbeest

Uncanny Valley requires the differences to be small, but still noticeable. If there's very few similarities in the first place (In the droid's case it's just the general body shape, skeletal structure, and nosebridge), then the character is definitely not in Uncanny Valley.

Also, those are lenses, not holes. You can see a reflection on one of them.

edited 16th Mar '11 8:32:59 PM by Scardoll