Thoughts/How real does Aki feel?
From SusoSight
| Number: | 6 |
| Date created: | 2001-07-17 04:56:37 |
| Previous Thought: | The First of many Fantasies |
| Next Thought: | Those god damn ice cream brothers. |
| Voting results: | Yes: 65 |
DISCLAIMER: This may be obvious to you.[However, it should be said.]
Last week there was a review of the movie Final Fantasy on slashdot.org. It wasn't really the review that caught my eye as much as one of the comments below it, where someone had posted a link to a picture of Aki (the main character in the movie) nude. Being a curious Homo Sapien male I clicked on the picture only to be left with an empty feeling. The nude picture of Aki is definately physically realistic, but is it life like? Does she inspire emotions and curiousity from me? I think not.
There is a human quality that real actors and actresses have that Aki does not. Dignity. And they didn't get that dignity automatically through a few keystrokes, it came from the work they have put into their careers and the examples we all have learned in life. It comes from peer pressure, mistakes, lessons learned and the role models that inspire us. All of those qualities make up a real person. When you watch a real person on screen you are almost watching them to see how well they do, to see if they screw up. To find out if they reveal it all or if they look better or worse than those around you. ;-)
When I see a computer generated figure, I don't see any of those qualities that lie within a real person. Psychologically, the lack of those features draws out the fact that all I'm looking at is texture maps on top of millions of polygons and splines. The characters seem to have no substance or inards that could come out at any moment. Nothing waiting to be revealed about themselves. No human qualities.
If computer generated characters are to ever be taken seriously I think that their creators will need to use the metaphor of celebraties to make them have a real life in our minds. After all, real actors and celebraties are but actors in the game of life. Make them live and have lives off stage.