: Re: How to creep the reader out with what seems like a normal person? The person in question, though this is yet unknown, is not actually a person. Instead, they are some form of eldritch being

@Carla500

Vote Up Vote Down

What you're describing is basically Uncanny Valley, which is a fairly active area of research.

As leftaroundabout says in his answer, this has clear implications for CGI. If you want your CGI to model a monster of some kind, we don't have a mental map of how that should work; but for humans we do, and mismatches are jarring on an instinctual level. Even with CGI, it may appear statically correct and may even articulate correctly, but some other factor makes it behave incorrectly. Even in 2019 when we're used to film-quality CGI with fully CGI creatures and humans, the current state of the art for CGI is still unable to correctly model a flying creature landing which looks realistic to anyone who's ever looked closely at a bird.

This has implications beyond CGI though as people start thinking about androids, or about telepresence in android bodies. CGI is a good start, but it doesn't necessarily follow through to a physical body you're close to. Hiroshi Ishiguro has done some particularly interesting work here.

As for how to describe it, all the literature on Uncanny Valley gives you many ways in which appearance can be "off" and ways to describe its effect.

(0)

Login to post a comment!