Companion Cubes and the Uncanny Valley
Jul. 8th, 2009 07:07 amSo I was reading about the Uncanny Valley. As an artist, I really love to fuck with the Uncanny Valley concept. I used it heavily in a digital painting of Voldemort I did, though I would have liked to have made it more realistic. It's the same basic principle behind making the most scary CGI characters or horror movie freaks. Think the girl from The Ring. She's a moving corpse, basically. She's a normal girl, but somethin' ain't quite right. It's freaky.
This phenomenon has been the main reason why I haven't bonded with my Sims 3 characters. They don't look right. When their eyeballs move about in their heads and they move their heads around, twitch their mouths - it kinda freaks me out. I made a Doctor in it and he looks like a moving Doctor doll. He's close but I don't *like* it. The Sims 2 sims are more like moving comic characters. There's an exaggerated warmth in them that I identify with and I love them so damned much, it's frightening.
Which brings us to Companion Cubes. <-- TV Tropes link! WARNING!
It occurred to me that we all have beloved anthropomorphised inanimate objects in our lives. I have plenty. What are yours? Here's a list of mine:
- Rob the Radio.
- Big Yin, the Main Computer.
- Athena Cortana, my laptop.
- Nina, my casio keyboard of awesomeness.
- Kate, my Rode mic.
- Zebra, my stuffed Zebra toy.
- We loved our old kombi-van like a member of the family. It was just called "The Kombi".
I would say that I bond to inanimate objects far too easily. It's a part of my hoarding problem, I think. I get attached to things and imbue them with a spirit, even though it's all in my head. It's a strange human behaviour, something that's hard-wired into our heads and as much difficulty as it can bring me, it can also bring me a lot of joy, strangely enough. I like having an active imagination!
This phenomenon has been the main reason why I haven't bonded with my Sims 3 characters. They don't look right. When their eyeballs move about in their heads and they move their heads around, twitch their mouths - it kinda freaks me out. I made a Doctor in it and he looks like a moving Doctor doll. He's close but I don't *like* it. The Sims 2 sims are more like moving comic characters. There's an exaggerated warmth in them that I identify with and I love them so damned much, it's frightening.
Which brings us to Companion Cubes. <-- TV Tropes link! WARNING!
It occurred to me that we all have beloved anthropomorphised inanimate objects in our lives. I have plenty. What are yours? Here's a list of mine:
- Rob the Radio.
- Big Yin, the Main Computer.
- Athena Cortana, my laptop.
- Nina, my casio keyboard of awesomeness.
- Kate, my Rode mic.
- Zebra, my stuffed Zebra toy.
- We loved our old kombi-van like a member of the family. It was just called "The Kombi".
I would say that I bond to inanimate objects far too easily. It's a part of my hoarding problem, I think. I get attached to things and imbue them with a spirit, even though it's all in my head. It's a strange human behaviour, something that's hard-wired into our heads and as much difficulty as it can bring me, it can also bring me a lot of joy, strangely enough. I like having an active imagination!