Familiarity and Overcoming of Uncanny Valley towards Computer-Generated Imagery Characters in Malaysian Film

Recently, the idea of the uncanny valley has drawn interest in robotics and other scientific circles and popular culture. Several scholars have discussed its implications and reactions towards human-like robots. However, only several previous studies examined overcoming the uncanny valley for realistic looking computer-generated actors in films and animation. This seeks to examine the familiarity of participants with the use of digital characters as actors. This paper explains how computer-generated imagery (CGI) was used to create actors in Malaysian films, the uncanny valley characteristics that may affect the audience’s attention. The researcher has chosen visual stimuli consisting of 1 genuine human character and 1 less humanlike subject. A self-administered survey (n = 127) with sample film footage and photos were delivered online via email and social networks to responders. Surprisingly, based on the data, the human resemblance of the humanlike characters was substantially higher than expected. This research concluded that the artificial CGI characters had higher perceived eeriness if the character was highly familiar to the audience. As a result, the digital actor’s replacement an impression of eeriness and disbelief, which confirms the uncanny valley theory

Survival horror games - an uncanny modality

This study investigates the relationship between the perceived eeriness of a virtual character with the perception of human-likeness for some attributes of motion and sound. 100 participants were asked to rate 13 video clips of 12 different virtual characters and one human. The results indicate that attributes of motion and sound do exaggerate the uncanny phenomenon and how frightening that character is perceived to be. Strong correlations were identified for the perceived eeriness for a character with how human-like a character's voice sounded, how human-like facial expression appeared and the synchronization of the character's sound with lip movement; characters rated as the least synchronized were perceived to be the most frightening. Based on the results of this study, this paper seeks to define an initial set of hypotheses for the fear-evoking aspects of character facial rendering and vocalization in survival horror games that can be used by game designers seeking to increase the fear factor in the genre and that will form the basis of further experiments which, it is hoped, will lead to a conceptual framework for the uncanny

FROM CELLULOID REALITIES TO BINARY DREAMSCAPES: CINEMA AND PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL IMMERSION

Technologies in digital cinema are quickly changing the way contemporary filmmakers create films and how audiences currently perceive them. As we move onward into the digital turn, it becomes ever more apparent that the medium of film has been emancipated from its dependence on the photograph. Directors are no longer required to capture the objectively real as it sits before the photographic lens, but can essentially construct it via groundbreaking advancements in computer-generated imagery, motion capture technology, and digital 3D camera systems and display technologies. Since the origins of film, spectators and filmmakers have assumed an existing relationship between reality and the photographic image. Yet digital film technologies now provide us with hyper-facsimiles of reality that are perceived as photographic, but are often created by way of computer processes. Digital cinema currently allows the viewer to inhabit and interact with cinematic realities in unprecedented ways, and it is this contemporary paradigmatic shift from the analog to the digital that has catalyzed fundamentally new ways of looking at the filmic image. In this paper, I will examine the perceptual complexities of contemporary digital film through the lens of these cinematic technologies by examining their impact on the viewer’s experience

Make-Believing Animated Films Featuring Digital Humans: A Qualitative Inquiry Using Online Sources

A qualitative inquiry of reviews of films featuring digital humanlike characters was performed by sampling user comments from three online reviewer aggregator sites: the Internet Movie Database, Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. The movies chosen for analysis were: Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001), The Polar Express (2004), and Beowulf (2007), all produced using CGI animation, together with A Scanner Darkly (2006a) whose visuals are depicted by rotoscoping using Bob Sabiston’s Rotoshop software. Our analysis identified individual differences in the viewing experience, particularly in relation to the uncertain ontology of the humanlike characters created using CGI (CGI-Humans). We found examples of reviews indicating an inability to distinguish between real and CGI-Human actors, observations of characters transiently exhibiting realism before returning to their artifice, and of characters being viewed as eerie (analogous to the uncanny valley) thus illustrating a complex and dynamic response to this phenomenon. In some situations character uncanniness was related to the presence of an atypical feature such as movement of the eyes. Whilst specifically for Beowulf, perceptions became more problematic when there was familiarity with the actor playing the CGI-Human character, with some reviewers describing difficulties in categorising the character as either real or animated. CGI-Human performances were also characterised by a lack of, or inappropriate social interaction. Online reviewers did not perceive characters depicted using Rotoshop (Rotoshop-Humans) as eerie and rotoscoping was found to preserve, and possibly enhance, the natural social interactions between actors recorded from the live-action film used as the source for the animation. Our inquiry also identified user motivations for viewing these movies and the importance placed by reviewers on the form of display when viewing the CGI films. We situate our interpretation of these findings in relation to Walton’s make-believe theory (Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts, 1990) revealing its application to our understanding of the viewing experience of animated films featuring digital humans

Actors, Avatars and Agents: Potentials and Implications of Natural Face Technology for the Creation of Realistic Visual Presence

We are on the cusp of creating realistic, interactive, fully rendered human faces on computers that transcend the “uncanny valley,” widely known for capturing the phenomenon of “eeriness” in faces that are almost, but not fully realistic. Because humans are hardwired to respond to faces in uniquely positive ways, artificial realistic faces hold great promise for advancing human interaction with machines. For example, realistic avatars will enable presentation of human actors in virtual collaboration settings with new levels of realism; artificial natural faces will allow the embodiment of cognitive agents, such as Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri, putting us on a path to create “artificial human” entities in the near future. In this conceptual paper, we introduce natural face technology (NFT) and its potential for creating realistic visual presence (RVP), a sensation of presence in interaction with a digital actor, as if present with another human. We contribute a forward-looking research agenda to information systems (IS) research, comprising terminology, early conceptual work, concrete ideas for research projects, and a broad range of research questions for engaging with this emerging, transformative technology as it becomes available for application. By doing so, we respond to calls for “blue ocean research” that explores unchartered territory and makes a novel technology accessible to IS early in its application. We outline promising areas of application and foreshadow philosophical, ethical, and conceptual questions for IS research pertaining to the more speculative phenomena of “living with artificial humans.

Whom Do You Want to Be Friends With: An Extroverted or an Introverted Avatar? Impacts of the Uncanny Valley Effect and Conversational Cues

With the rapid growth of social virtual reality platforms, an increasing number of people will be interacting with others as avatars in virtual environments. Therefore, it is essential to develop a better understanding of the factors that could impact initial personality assessments and how they affect the willingness of people to befriend one another. Thin-slice judgment constitutes a quick judgment of a personality based on an avatar, and it could be impacted by the avatar’s appearance, particularly if the avatar elicits an uncanny valley effect that brings negative emotions such as eerieness. However, personality judgments and friendship decisions could also be influenced by social cues, such as conversational style. This experimental study investigated how these factors impact willingness to make friends with others in a virtual world. Drawing upon the uncanny valley effect and thin-slice judgment, this study examined how different levels of realism and conversational cues influence trustworthiness, likeability, and the willingness to be a friend. Furthermore, the current study tried to shed light on the interaction effects of realism and conversational cues to the dependent variables. In other words, this study investigated how this eventually influences one’s willingness to be a friend under the thin-slice judgment when personality judgments result from the negative feeling (i.e., eeriness) of the uncanny valley effect and social cues are conflicted. To this end, a 2 (realism: cartoonish vs. hyper-realistic) x 2 (conversational cues: extroverted vs. introverted) between-subjects online experiment was conducted. The results showed that trustworthiness and likeability significantly impacted the willingness to be a friend. Furthermore, realism and conversational cues marginally affected the willingness to be a friend. Keywords: uncanny valley effect, thin-slice judgment, avatar, personality judgment, willingness to be a frien

Identifying with an avatar: A multidisciplinary perspective

Avatars perform a complex range of inter-related functions. They not only allow us to express a digital identity, they facilitate the expression of physical motility and, through non-verbal expression, help to mediate social interaction in networked environments. When well designed, they can contribute to a sense of “presence” (a sense of being there) and a sense of “co-presence” (a sense of being there with others) in digital space. Because of this complexity, the study of avatars can be enriched by theoretical insights from a range of disciplines. This paper considers avatars from the perspectives of critical theory, visual communication, and art theory (on portraiture) to help elucidate the role of avatars as an expression of identity. It goes on to argue that identification with an avatar is also produced through their expression of motility and discusses the benefits of film theory for explaining this process. Conceding the limits of this approach, the paper draws on philosophies of body image, Human Computer Interaction (HCI) theory on embodied interaction, and fields as diverse as dance to explain the sense of identification, immersion, presence and co-presence that avatars can produce

A study of how the technological advancements in capturing believable facial emotion in Computer Generated (CG) characters in film has facilitated crossing the uncanny valley

A Research Report submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the Degree of Masters of Arts in Digital Animation at the University of the Witwatersrand (School of Digital Arts) Johannesburg, South AfricaIn recent years, the quest for capturing authentic emotion convincingly in computer generated (CG) characters to assist exceedingly complex narrative expressions in modern cinema has intensified. Conveying human emotion in a digital human-like character is widely accepted to be the most challenging and elusive task for even the most skilled animators. Contemporary filmmakers have increasingly looked to complex digital tools that essentially manipulate the visual design of cinema through innovative techniques to reach levels of undetectable integration of CG characters. In trying to assess how modern cinema is pursuing the realistic integration of CG human-like characters in digital film with frenetic interest despite the risk of box office failure associated with the uncanny valley, this report focuses on the progress of the advances in the technique of facial motion capture. The uncanny valley hypothesis, based on a theory by Sigmund Freud, was coined in 1970 by Japanese robotics professor, Masahiro Mori. Mori suggested that people are increasingly comfortable with robots the more human-like they appear, but only up to a point. At that turning point, when the robot becomes too human-like, it arouses feelings of repulsion. When movement is added to this equation, viewers’ sense of the uncanny is heightened when the movement is deemed to be unreal. Motion capture is the technique of mimicking and capturing realistic movement by utilising technology that enables the process of translating a live actor’s performance into a digital performance. By capturing and transferring the data collected from sensors placed on a body suit or tracked from a high definition video, computer artists are able to drive the movement of a corresponding CG character in a 3-Dimensional (3D) programme. The attention of this study is narrowed to the progress of the techniques developed during a prolific decade for facial motion capture in particular. Regardless of the conflicting discourse surrounding the use of motion capture technology, these phenomenal improvements have allowed filmmakers to overcome that aspect of the uncanny valley associated with detecting realistic movement and facial expression. The progress of facial motion capture is investigated through the lens of selected films released during the period of 2001 to 2012. The two case studies, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and Avatar (2009) were chosen for their individual achievement and innovative techniques that introduced new methods of facial capture. Digital images are said to undermine the reality status of cinematic images by challenging the foundation of long held theories of cinematic realist theory. These theories rooted in the indexical basis of photography, have proved to be the origin of contemporary viewers' notion of cinematic realism. However, the relationship between advanced digital effects and modern cinematic realism has created a perceptual complexity that warrants closer scrutiny. In addressing the paradoxical effect that photo-real cinematic realism is having on the basic comprehension of realism in film, the history of the seminal claims made by recognized realist film theorists is briefly examined