Chick Click CG

I attended a talk today titled the Uncanny Valley of Eeriness. It went a little too fast for me, especially the bit about the mirror neurons. I know what they do, sure, they effectively facilitate the emulation of action in human beings and apes between one another. (I hope I’m not off the mark, that’s what I think they are, grossly simplified. I’m sure they’re effects are far reaching) The talk made me feel optimistic about the application of CG in life, in general. Beyond entertainment. The emerging technologies, especially Microsoft’s touch table, the one you can interact with, download music from and pay your bills with? That is just great. And the holographic display, amazing piece of technology. There were a lot of other technologies that dealt with very tactile experiences as well. It’s technology that’s striving to be intuitive, which is great. Because unless things are intuitive -or at least can be easily learnt- they won’t go very far, I think. I guess what I’m hoping for is that CG will allow us a broader spectrum for communication, one beyond visuals into the other realms of the senses we’re endowed with.

The uncanny valley of eeriness talked a lot about our ability to form a theory of mind, and how we’re very sensitive to faces that look kind of reeal, but not totally real. From what I gather, it’s like, if a face is very abstracted, say like, most cartoon characters, we fill in the detail that is not added in our minds. So we’re okay with that. But if you give us too much detail, but not enough to be real, we don’t like that, because what’s missing becomes really glaring. Whereas in the super abstracted caricature, we are willing to suspend our disbelief knowing that oh, it’s a caricature after all.

There was also this great theory/proposition put forward, that we see the inability to effectively communicate with facial expressions as a disease. It wasn’t quite put that way, but the way she said it was, well, we’re really freaked out when someone of our species gets sick, because we know it can be transfered onto us. But if say, a plant gets ill, we’re not too worried, because we’re so distantly related. So perhaps thats why if a CG character is very abstract and does not have sophisticated facial expressions, we’re okay. But if it’s striving to be relatively realistic, and does not quite cut it, we’re not.

Ah well. Anyway, another party. Time to shower, get an ice cream an GIhardelli’s and walk in the sunshine to the Marriot. Oh sweet.

It’s my first Siggraph, so forgive me if I’m a little bit redundant. It’s been a really lovely 3 days, starting from Saturday afternoon where I attended the Chapters workshop. Great people, cool parties, nice food. The ratio of men to women however is horribly skewed, but like one of the guys also attending the hotel (who presented a paper on ray-tracing on Saturday, no idea why it was on Saturday, and unlisted, but it was) Computer Science is one of those things that just not many women do. And if they do do it, they’re not really your standard kinda girl. It’s like guys doing hairdressing. Nothing wrong with that, my hairdresser is male and Alan Rickman did make a fantastic hairdresser in Blow Up, but you know, girls in the strange world of Computer Science are not too common. There are some very pretty ones however. They’re either really pretty or… not. Then there’s the more ‘art’ side of things, that one has plenty of chicks, but it’s a smaller section of the conference.

Frivolities aside! The talk/course on Ratatouille was  good fun. It really opened up my awareness to justhow much detail goes into making a film look really great. Like really, really great. It’s all the little detail that makes all the difference really. Things I normally wouldn’t think would be important. But the amount of observation required squares when you go from 2D to 3D animation. The amount of reference they had to research and use was just mind-blowing. An interesting fact I remember was how the steam in the kitchen sometimes had special personalities. Hero effects as they call it. So the steam would react differently depending on which chef was cooking. It’s all these little things that give the film a good style, and we don’t (at least I don’t) even notice it. Not consciously anyway.

Thinking back, I used to lament the beautiful, more human qualities that were lost in animated films when they made the move to 3D, but apprently it is not so much a problem, or failing of the medium but rather a lack of familiarity, and a lack of all the little details that make a film, for lack of a better word, warmer. More heartfelt, visually.

I’m headed off to the Electronic theatre now, so no time to be long winded as I usually am. Thanks for reading in

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