Eyes WIDE OPEN :
Demented vs. Cute
Demented vs. Cute
KEY CONCEPT : Stylized faces resemble their human counterparts, but the rules that we use to analyze them are very different.
 Figure 1. |  Figure 2. |
Figures 1 and 2: In this mug shot of a convicted mass murderer, the Hyper-Alert Eye is disturbing and demented-looking; hardly cute and appealing like the matching expression on the face of Tweety, a beloved stylized character. The essential elements are the same in both faces: hyper-alert eyes (upper lid raised above the iris), slight smile with pursed lips, raised eyebrows and eyes slightly out of alignment (staring off into the distance). But our emotional response couldn’t be more different.
In the case of the mug shot, our very negative response is a survival instinct; the guy looks crazy! We’ve developed extremely sensitive criteria for sorting out faces we consider “normal” from faces belonging to someone we judge to be disturbed. This skill gives us an advantage with strangers: one stranger is approachable; the other should be avoided at all costs (like the guy in the photo). The famous Uncanny Valley effect is directly tied to this aversion response. If an animator, or robotics engineer, creates a realistic human face, but displays a facial configuration which departs, even in tiny ways, from the norm, we get creeped out precisely because we’re hard-wired to respond that way.
We don’t worry about getting mugged or murdered by Tweety. Hyper-Alert Eyes, which in human faces indicate a heightened state of mental activity (possibly pathologically heightened), with stylized characters are seen as eager or extra-aware; an expression of their personality, rather than a special, transitory state. Tweety strikes us not just as friendly (slight smile, raised eyebrows in greeting or attention), but as energetically friendly.
Unlike Tweety, the mass murderer’s slight smile doesn’t seem like a smile at all – the facial details that express a truly happy slight smile, like the angle of the arc or the position of the mouth corners, are not correct. But with Tweety and other stylized characters, our smile detection criteria are extremely forgiving: there is a huge library of arc shapes or open mouth shapes that get the message across (a subject for a future blog post).
In fact, many expressions that work well on a stylized character look terrifying, or absurd, on a human face. Animators are fortunate that we have such relaxed standards when it comes to stylized expressions, as their job would be nearly impossible if they had to satisfy the same strict criteria we apply to real humans with similar, but demented, expressions.
We don’t worry about getting mugged or murdered by Tweety. Hyper-Alert Eyes, which in human faces indicate a heightened state of mental activity (possibly pathologically heightened), with stylized characters are seen as eager or extra-aware; an expression of their personality, rather than a special, transitory state. Tweety strikes us not just as friendly (slight smile, raised eyebrows in greeting or attention), but as energetically friendly.
Unlike Tweety, the mass murderer’s slight smile doesn’t seem like a smile at all – the facial details that express a truly happy slight smile, like the angle of the arc or the position of the mouth corners, are not correct. But with Tweety and other stylized characters, our smile detection criteria are extremely forgiving: there is a huge library of arc shapes or open mouth shapes that get the message across (a subject for a future blog post).
In fact, many expressions that work well on a stylized character look terrifying, or absurd, on a human face. Animators are fortunate that we have such relaxed standards when it comes to stylized expressions, as their job would be nearly impossible if they had to satisfy the same strict criteria we apply to real humans with similar, but demented, expressions.
Credits: (top left) Mug shot of James Holmes, dubbed the “Batman Killer,” who was found guilty of 12 deaths in a shooting rampage in a cinema in Denver, CO. in 2012; (top right) Tweety, the animated fictional yellow canary in the Warner Bros. “Looney Tunes” and “Merrie Melodies. “
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