The Edges OF Reality

(Hyper-Realistic Characters From The Movie Tekken: Blood Vengeance)

Seeing the new Namco Bandai's Tekken: Blood Vengeance (Yoichi Mori, 2011) movie and the high level of realism employed in the character's looks and performance, it brought home again the sheer amount of work that must go into creating that quality of work. And perhaps by extension the debate between hyper-realistic animated characters of Japanese animations and the more cartoon-like characters of  Pixar and DreamWorks Studios. However, it is not my aim to make this a comparison between Japanese and American animation, but instead to reflect on the unexplored notions of the uncanny valley that almost always arises in academic circles when the topic of hyper-realism in animation is visited.

It is no longer news that high levels of realism can be achieved in animation. With the use of motion capture data technology becoming main stay in most of the major studios, almost life-like performances can be captured from live actors and retargeted to CG characters. The higher processing power and memory available in computers mean that high level facial and muscle detail can be scultped and rendered quickly. The first attempts at realism are found in the Disney animated features, one notable one being Bambi (James Algar and Samuel Armstrong, 1942). In Jurassic park (Steven Spielberg, 1993), the first use of photo-realistic characters for CG were seen. Motion capture data was first used on the Gollum character for the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Peter Jackson, 2002) movie while The Polar Express (Robert Zemeckis, 2004) took the technology one step further by using motion capture for all the character performances in the movie.

Most of the debate over realism have always concluded that realism was against the very purpose of animation which was to not be 'real'. In Siegfried Kracauer’s Theory of Film  he posited that “achievements within a particular medium are all the more satisfying aesthetically if they build from the specific properties of that medium.” and in this quote:

What holds true of the photographic film does of course not apply to animated cartoons. Unlike the former, they are called upon to picture the unreal – that which never happens. In the light of this assumption, Walt Disney’s increasing attempts to express fantasy in realistic terms are aesthetically questionable precisely because they comply with the cinematic approach… There is a growing tendency toward camera-reality in his later full length films. Peopled with the counterparts of real landscapes and real human beings, they are not so much “drawings brought to life” as life reproduced in drawings… In these cartoons false devotion to the cinematic approach inexorably stifles the draftsman’s imagination.[1]

However, in the paper titled Life Reproduced in Drawings: Realism in Animation (Steve Rowley, 2005) claims this analysis avoids the complicated relationships underpinning audience's notions of realism or the ways in which one form of reality might be prioritised over another, or one type of realism might serve to reinforce another. An attempt to breakup the levels of animation possible is made and it is divided into 5 kinds of realism. They are:

• Visual Realism: The extent to which the animated environment and characters are understood by the audience as looking like environments and characters from the actual physical world.

• Aural Realism: The extent to which the sounds of animated environment and characters are understood by the audience as resembling the sounds of environments and characters from the actual physical world.

• Realism of Motion: The extent to which characters move in a fashion that is understood by the audience as resembling the way characters move in the actual physical world.

• Narrative and Character Realism: The extent to which the fictitious events and characters of the animated film are constructed to make the audience believe they are viewing events and characters that actually exist.

• Social Realism: The extent to which the animated film is constructed to make the audience believe that the fictitious world in which the events take place is as complex and varied as the real world.

Pixar's animation  which makes use of cartoon-like characters has always been made to appear better than the hyper-realistic look and feel of Japanese animated features like Final Fantasy and Tekken. This is mainly because they don't have the clearly formed narrative arc of more American animated features. But with this deconstruction of realism, it is easier to see why if the intent is to achieve audience interest and identification in the character’s personality and situation (narrative and character realism), having the character move and behave realistically (realism of motion) is more important than having the character look real (visual realism) which is what one might associate with Pixar's animated feature. While if the intent is to accentuate technological brilliance in a production, Visual realism becomes more important than Narrative and Character Realism or Social Realism which would be the case in a movie like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Realism in one of its forms will always be the point to attain because it is such a difficult feat to achieve.

In conclusion, it is not the form of realism that creates the uncanny valley effect but the fact that the 'realistic' aim of the animated feature is not communicated through out the piece so that audiences can follow. This is a topic that requires much more in-dept research and I hope to delve deeper into how the notions of reality affect our perceptions of animation and how audiences might receive work that I do.

References

Tekken: Blood Vengeance, 2011. [Animated Film]. Directed by Yoichi Mori. USA: Digital Frontier

Bambi ,1942. [Animted Film]. Directed by James Algar and Samuel Armstrong. USA: Walt Disney Productions 

Jurassic park, 1993. [Film]. Directed by Steven Spielberg. USA: Universal Pictures

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, 2001. [Film]. Directed by Peter Jackson. USA: New Line Cinema

The Polar Express, 2004. [Animated Film]. Directed by Robert Zemeckis. USA: Castle Rock Entertainment

[1] Kracauer, 89-90. A similar discussion of animation in the realist context can be found in Armes R. 1974, Film and Reality, Harmondsworth: Penguin, chapters 16 and 25.

Steve Rowley, 2005. Life Reproduced in Drawings: Realism in Animation. Animation Journal, Volume 13, Available at:< http://www.sterow.com/?p=797 > [Accessed 24 December 2011].