Wednesday, January 19, 2005

The Polar Express vs. The Uncanny Valley



Fascinating exploration of what went wrong with the Polar Express, from Ward-O-Matic:

Read This First

Then This (Where he not only shows what went wrong, but actually makes steps to correct it)

In it, he makes reference to a concept called "The Uncanny Valley," which analyzes why people will respond more strongly to, say a cute animal character, than a totally human looking character in a cartoon.

Now You Can Check This Out

Its a really fascinating concept, and one I think that Dreamworks should check out before they make Shrek 3, and totally creep me out again.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dammit. Now I need a new alias.
How could I have known there was an actual "Japanese roboticist Doctor Masahiro Mori" out there somewhere?
I guess I need new business cards now, too.

-SD