The Uncanny Valley

Jerry sends this NPR interview about 'The Uncanny Valley' in regards to animation:

Mr. WESCHLER: Which was this notion by a Japanese roboticist named Masahiro Mori. The notion was that if you made a robot that was 50 percent lifelike, that was fantastic. If you made a robot that was 90 percent lifelike, that was fantastic. If you made it 95 percent lifelike, that was the best - oh, that was so great. If you made it 96 percent lifelike, it was a disaster. And the reason, essentially, is because a 95 percent lifelike robot is a robot that's incredibly lifelike. A 96 percent lifelike robot is a human being with something wrong.

YORK: Mori called it the uncanny valley, a play on Sigmund Freud's idea of the uncanny, something familiar and yet foreign at the same time. The makers of "Shrek," having learned their lesson, re-imagined Princess Fiona as a slightly more cartoony-looking love interest, thus avoiding the valley.

But "Final Fantasy," a $135 million digital adventure, which opened the same year as "Shrek," was fully animated with characters that were realistic in an unprecedented way and yet not real enough. Audiences reported feeling unsettled and the film bombed. The studio that made it later folded. On the other hand, "Avatar..."

...YORK: Avoids the uncanny valley because the aliens are distinctly alien - blue, stretched and unreal. The faces of the Na'vi don't trigger our uncanny reflexes because they're simply not human. Faces, despite 10 years of refinement in computer rendering, animators still can't accurately create them. So many muscles attached to each other moving in tandem, so many complex and inimitable plays of light.

...YORK: There are a number of theories as to why we're afraid when we gaze at nearly real faces. One suggestion is that it's existential because we see the potential for being replaced by nearly-perfect computers. Theologians argue that we're seeing human imitators that lack a soul. But the most convincing explanation for the fear may be evolutionary. We see in uncanny faces something unhealthy or unappealing and our instinct is to recoil. Maybe they're contagious. Maybe they're not suitable mates.