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Jun. 20th, 2005 03:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccastareyesRelating to my previous entry and a recent post to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fanthropology...
Basically the post to Fanthropology disucsses something called the Uncanny Valley. Basically, a Japanese scientist studying robots wanted to measure people's reactions to robots compared to the robot's humanness in motion and appearance. What he expected to happen was the more human the robot got, the more people would respond favorably to it. And that worked, for most cases. But, as the robots got more and more human looking/moving, there was a plateau and a dip -- right past 'apathetic' into 'creepy' -- then a rise out of the dip as the robots approached fully-human-looking. The scientist called this the 'Uncanny Valley' -- basically there got to be a point where people started seeing the thing as a flawed model of human movement/looks, rather than a obvious non-human thing trying to cutely mimic humans. You can see it a bit in CGI -- most CGI movies are about non-humans or cartoony humans, because it takes a lot to make a realistic human on CGI that real humans don't find creepy. We're very good at picking out the 1% wrong on a human face, rather than, say, a tree.
The OP mentioned it in reference to fanfic (basically wanting to know if the idea of 'so close, but off' worked to describe why some badfic merits strogner reactions than others), but I think it's interesting in writing/drawing SF/fantasy. A writer in the genre has to think about where his/her nonhumans should fall. I'm also wondering if this falls in behavior as well.
ETA: Also makes me think about shapeshifting characters who didn't start out human(oid) (like Odo from DS9 and any of the mazoku from Slayers). They probably had to practice a lot, as they wouldn't be sensitive to this (we're not that sensitive to, say, CGI cat movement, or the ways trees sway in the breeze). Could explain why Odo never bothered to keep trying to a face closer to a Bajoran one -- any change he made just made it more obvious he was an outsider mimicing the Bajoran form, so he just quit bothering long before we met him on screen. Also could explain why Gourry spotted Xellos -- Gourry is usually portrayed as someone who pays attention a lot to movement, and, if Xellos was still slightly off in movement even after several thousand years, Gourry might notice and add it to 'pieces of evidence that make Xellos suspiscious'. It also makes me wonder how Xellos/Phibrizzo/Kanzel/Mazenda/etc. got so good at mimicing humans -- perhaps some of the lower-ranked ones learned it from their superiors, but it most likely meant some mazoku in the beginning of the word had to learn how to construct a human form that didn't creep people out.
fanthropology...Basically the post to Fanthropology disucsses something called the Uncanny Valley. Basically, a Japanese scientist studying robots wanted to measure people's reactions to robots compared to the robot's humanness in motion and appearance. What he expected to happen was the more human the robot got, the more people would respond favorably to it. And that worked, for most cases. But, as the robots got more and more human looking/moving, there was a plateau and a dip -- right past 'apathetic' into 'creepy' -- then a rise out of the dip as the robots approached fully-human-looking. The scientist called this the 'Uncanny Valley' -- basically there got to be a point where people started seeing the thing as a flawed model of human movement/looks, rather than a obvious non-human thing trying to cutely mimic humans. You can see it a bit in CGI -- most CGI movies are about non-humans or cartoony humans, because it takes a lot to make a realistic human on CGI that real humans don't find creepy. We're very good at picking out the 1% wrong on a human face, rather than, say, a tree.
The OP mentioned it in reference to fanfic (basically wanting to know if the idea of 'so close, but off' worked to describe why some badfic merits strogner reactions than others), but I think it's interesting in writing/drawing SF/fantasy. A writer in the genre has to think about where his/her nonhumans should fall. I'm also wondering if this falls in behavior as well.
ETA: Also makes me think about shapeshifting characters who didn't start out human(oid) (like Odo from DS9 and any of the mazoku from Slayers). They probably had to practice a lot, as they wouldn't be sensitive to this (we're not that sensitive to, say, CGI cat movement, or the ways trees sway in the breeze). Could explain why Odo never bothered to keep trying to a face closer to a Bajoran one -- any change he made just made it more obvious he was an outsider mimicing the Bajoran form, so he just quit bothering long before we met him on screen. Also could explain why Gourry spotted Xellos -- Gourry is usually portrayed as someone who pays attention a lot to movement, and, if Xellos was still slightly off in movement even after several thousand years, Gourry might notice and add it to 'pieces of evidence that make Xellos suspiscious'. It also makes me wonder how Xellos/Phibrizzo/Kanzel/Mazenda/etc. got so good at mimicing humans -- perhaps some of the lower-ranked ones learned it from their superiors, but it most likely meant some mazoku in the beginning of the word had to learn how to construct a human form that didn't creep people out.
