Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
indicate that their intentions were unclear and possibly dangerous too. So, the theory
is based on odd and confusing feelings, which are caused by some sort of uncer-
tainty. There are many contradictory sensations and a person feels trapped. In folk-
lore and popular culture, such experiences are connected with bewitched persons,
the walking dead, humanoid aliens, revived mannequins, or statues.
Despite the uncanny valley primarily described as the human perception of robots,
it can be effectively applied to other media. May be you empirically formulated this
theory while having some weird experience when watching CGI animations, which
utilize realistic portrays of human beings. 3D models are so well crafted that you see
individual pores on the characters' skin and the movements are realistic because
they are provided by accurate motion capture technology, so you notice every tiny
inconsistency. It is hard as authors try to convince the audience that the picture is
equal to live action; this does not work. Moreover, the characters look a little bit re-
pulsive. Many illustrators, animators, and toy designers know about this factor, there-
fore, they always try to rethink human proportions. Recall all of Pixar's characters,
they are all far away from the uncanny valley, even from a small uncanny pit. My
favorite example is Carl Fredricksen from the animated feature Up . This was a very
nontrivial task to make an old person look cute, but they successfully did it, giving it
a big square head, a small body, and short arms, which are not close to real human
anatomy. Apparently, this is why in James Cameron's movie Avatar , a special styl-
ization was used for the Na'vi characters—which were fully CGI and animated us-
ing advanced motion captures—by giving them different proportions such as cat-like
eyes and unusual skin color; the crew defeated the uncanny valley.
Now you know that a realistic proportion is a tricky business. You can use it only if
the quality of the image and animation is almost ideal. In other cases, it is always
better to break the realistic anatomical dimensions and apply hypertrophic charac-
teristics to some features or details. As a rule, protagonists in games are vertically
compressed, have big heads, short torsos, noticeable feet (heavy shoes), and so on.
Besides the artistic expressiveness, there is a practical reason for nonrealistic look
being preferable: a figure with natural proportions is too high to depict fully. You need
to scale it down to fit the game world. So all its tiny details disappear from the scene,
and as results, you get a small and skinny character. This is especially topical for
platformer games, as characters are displayed sideways.
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