Are there formal statements from pixar explaining a decision to stay away from these semi-realistic features / the "uncanny valley" or could they theoretically come out with a new film where the faces were more similar to something like Polar Express? I think they both serve a different crowd and one is obviously easier, but especially in regards to the clip from avatar, I think that there are definitely awesome benefits from having realistic facial rendering (didn't Avatar win Best Visual Effects?)
Kent
Here is a great article that talks about the uncanny valley, including its origins and implications for the modern CG movie industry: https://www.livescience.com/16600-cgi-humans-creepy-scientists.html.
The Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori first described the uncanny valley in terms of graph of human empathy against the anthropomorphism of robots. Since then the concept has been extended to various domains, including computer graphics. According to the article, Karl MacDorman, a professor in the Computer-Human Interaction Program at Indiana University, is leading a research team that is investigating why, psychologically, the uncanny valley exists. In summary, MacDorman postulates that the uncanny effect happens "when creating realistic traits lead us to expect all other traits to be realistic as well; we feel disturbed and repulsed when our expectation are then violated." Examples of this include characters with realistic skin but cartoon eyes, human faces with normal proportions but little detail and detailed faces that are high disproportionate. In short, characters need to be consistently real or cartoonish in order to not be creepy! Interestingly, this effect only really applies to human characters - we can see this in Avatar, whose Na'vi were rendered using highly realistic CG but did not enter into the uncanny valley due to their blue skin and non-human features. As for why this effect exists, there are various explanations, many of which harken back to evolutionary tendencies, such as human's propensity to be disturbed by things that differ from social norms. Whatever the cause, the uncanny valley has such a profound effect on viewers that bad CG can cause movies to fail - such as The Polar Express shown on the slide (it really does look creepy doesn't it!). To answer your question, companies like Pixar try to stay away from the valley as much as possible in order to avoid creeping out their viewers and failing dramatically!
Are there formal statements from pixar explaining a decision to stay away from these semi-realistic features / the "uncanny valley" or could they theoretically come out with a new film where the faces were more similar to something like Polar Express? I think they both serve a different crowd and one is obviously easier, but especially in regards to the clip from avatar, I think that there are definitely awesome benefits from having realistic facial rendering (didn't Avatar win Best Visual Effects?)
Here is a great article that talks about the uncanny valley, including its origins and implications for the modern CG movie industry: https://www.livescience.com/16600-cgi-humans-creepy-scientists.html.
The Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori first described the uncanny valley in terms of graph of human empathy against the anthropomorphism of robots. Since then the concept has been extended to various domains, including computer graphics. According to the article, Karl MacDorman, a professor in the Computer-Human Interaction Program at Indiana University, is leading a research team that is investigating why, psychologically, the uncanny valley exists. In summary, MacDorman postulates that the uncanny effect happens "when creating realistic traits lead us to expect all other traits to be realistic as well; we feel disturbed and repulsed when our expectation are then violated." Examples of this include characters with realistic skin but cartoon eyes, human faces with normal proportions but little detail and detailed faces that are high disproportionate. In short, characters need to be consistently real or cartoonish in order to not be creepy! Interestingly, this effect only really applies to human characters - we can see this in Avatar, whose Na'vi were rendered using highly realistic CG but did not enter into the uncanny valley due to their blue skin and non-human features. As for why this effect exists, there are various explanations, many of which harken back to evolutionary tendencies, such as human's propensity to be disturbed by things that differ from social norms. Whatever the cause, the uncanny valley has such a profound effect on viewers that bad CG can cause movies to fail - such as The Polar Express shown on the slide (it really does look creepy doesn't it!). To answer your question, companies like Pixar try to stay away from the valley as much as possible in order to avoid creeping out their viewers and failing dramatically!
If anyone wants to read, here are some fun articles about facial animation in Mass Effect: Andromeda which were continuously made fun of online and the response from an animator: https://www.polygon.com/2017/3/16/14944840/mass-effect-andromeda-animations-final
https://www.polygon.com/2017/3/23/15039926/mass-effect-andromeda-animation-what-happened-former-animator-speaks-out
Uncanny valley example in new FB VR avatars:
https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-oculus-codec-avatars-vr/?mbid=social_twitter&utm_brand=wired&utm_campaign=wired&utm_medium=social&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=twitter
A tech for Computer facial animation (Facial Action Coding System (FACS)): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_Action_Coding_System#cite_note-7