Motion Capture and the uncanny valley

Motion Capture and the uncanny valley

Rotoscoping 

An old version of animating the relies on an artist painting over an actors recorded motions. Films that use this technique include Snow White and the seven dwarfs, Gulliver's travels, Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly.

Motion Capture

Early uses of motion capture include Jim Henson's Creature Shop, Sexy Robot commercial, Don't touch me music video, The Lawnmower man.

Some more recent examples of motion capture are The Last of us, Lord of the ring: the two towers, The polar express and Ex Machina. More modern motion capture involves Mo-cap suit and advanced computer graphics.

The Uncanny valley

An example of the uncanny valley used to an intentional effect is in Ex Machina, when the character of Kyoko (played by Sonoya Mizuno) peels off the skin just below her eye ball to reveal that she is an android like Ava (played by Alicia Vikander). This pushes the character of Kyoko from a beautiful Asian woman into a creepy replacement for a human being. This is designed to make the audience uncertain as up until that point we are lead to believe that Kyoko is human, and this scene shows us that she is certainly not.

Sadly this video is the only example I can find of the scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPGwADlqPNI

Skip to 5:30 to find the scene.

British New Wave

Overview

British new wave cinema was started by directors such as Lindsay Anderson, Jack Clayton, Tony Richardson in the late 1950s and continued till the late 1960s. Much like French new wave and Italian neo-realism, British new wave focused mostly on the lives of common people and their plights.

The films were made in black and white, generally featuring unknown actors in most roles. These films were also known was 'Kitchen sink' dramas.

Modern dramas influenced by British new wave

• The full Monty
• Nil by mouth
• Fish tank

Ideas for Assignment 1

Films

• Donnie Darko
• Iron Giant
• The Backwater gospel 
• Waltz Duet
• Avatar 
• Ava's demon videos
• Overwatch cinematics
• The Dark Knight
• Mad Max
• Starcraft 2: Kerrigan's betrayal cinematic
• Annie Mei project

The thief and the cobbler: Richard Williams

The thief and the cobbler: Richard Williams

While I admire Williams for his artistic spirit, I can't help but feel like he set himself and his team up for disaster. The fact he worked on the project for 24 years and still hadn't finished the pre-production stage yet felt that he had the right to waste money and run his crew ragged, tells me he is not the sort of person I would want to work for or be in charge of a project.

In my personal opinion, Williams should have had his pre-production aspects sorted before he looks for funding and staff.

Also I find the comparisons to Disney's Aladdin to be very hostile, unjustly so. All the animators who worked on the Thief and The Cobbler complain about being ripped off, but the matter of the fact is that the Thief and The Cobbler was in production for 24 years and there was clearly some inspiration for other films like Lawrence of Arabia and The Thief of Baghdad in both films. So while the Cobbler and Aladdin are similar, I feel like the team that worked for Richard Williams was a bit sore that Aladdin was produced relatively successfully and a lot quicker than their own work.

I mean, Aladdin is now a Disney classic and the Thief and the cobbler is relatively unknown to a mass audience. Who gets the last laugh I wonder?

Listening to his interview for the prologue make me think he hasn't learned his lesson. He keeps using words like 'Like nothing you have seen before". I think maybe the best thing Richard Williams did was creating the animator survival guide after the flop of "Arabian knight".