What do I mean by that?

[kukla_tko]

I'm sure that some of you are familiar with this concept, but here it is anyway.

The Uncanny Valley.

Sounds like a weird Xmen spinoff, huh? Nope, it turns out to be a hypothesis regarding realism in robots, and also in 3D animation.

The idea is that humanoid robots (see I, Robot or Transformers) are cute and cuddly, but there's a point on the graph where their resemblance to humans is close-but-not-quite-perfect, and humans react very negatively to them. For more details, go click the link. It's a short article, it won't take long.

I see that for some people the Ball Jointed Dolls fall into this valley. In fact, I suspect that for people who are doll-phobic, all dolls fall into the Uncanny Valley for them.

Anyway, now that I've encountered this theory, I am careful to only use the word "Uncanny" when I'm referring to this phenomenon, or talking about the X-men. (Which, if you think about it, "uncanny" is an interesting choice of word there, too.)

Comments

[the-ungoth.livejournal.com]

I was having this conversation with alphak10 a few days ago over exactly the subject of whether dolls fall into the valley. The discussion arose out of the awkward VFX work on the young Kevin Flynn in TRON: Legacy. In that case, he absolutely was in the depths of the uncanny valley. But I perceive dolls and doll play quite differently.

Dolls and doll play are all directly controlled by intelligent and very much present humans. The doll is not moving and acting in an autonomous manner. I think a major component of the uncanny valley has to do with the subject being self-motivated or, at least, giving the APPEARANCE of being self-motivated. Digital Kevin Flynn wants us to accept it as a living performance. It is very obviously NOT a living thing that is trying, a bit too hard, to FOOL us into accepting it.

If the BJDs were to start moving and acting without anyone making them do it, I'm gonna start chopping them up with a hatchet because that shit ain't cool.