What Is The Uncanny Valley? | Mashable Explains

The "uncanny valley" is the creep factor you feel when robots and animated characters look ALMOST human. Mashable Explains this phenomenon.

Mashable is the leading independent news site for all things tech, social media, and internet culture.

[qwertyb]

Man, I thought the Polar Express looked FANTASTIC when it first came out, just a little strange for the first few minutes, but I was mostly intimidated by Tom Hank's character.

[americangirlgirl]

I have a problem with the robotic ones that look almost human. I don't mind cgi, I'm used to it because I grew up watching movies like shrek and playing video games.

[nesssss]

I've never gotten creeped by CGI. But Japanese androids and shit I never wish to cross paths with.

[victor]

It's like when look your self in the mirror in a dark or poor lit room. Its basic common sense that in the mirror is a person, even more so that it's you. Yet you still find yourself creepy

[shaiaheyesc]

I experience this in people with plastic surgeries, like the Kardashians m.m.

[payampartow]

I think the most Challenging part that still remains is animating eyes, since its tiny and super detailed and the changes in movement are very complex yet small so I think they remain one of the toughest parts to get right

[staticbuilds]

I think the problem with uncanny valley is when you get 1 thing correct but not the others. Movement, appearance. muscle movement, hair, expressions. These may seem similar but are a bit different. If a character looks human but acts wrong it is scarier than a robot acting robotic. If a character looks, sounds and acts human but its skin and muscles are not moving we will notice is it and get weirded out. The same applies if the skin is 1 colour and has no colour gradients. To get all this right would be a challenge and require more than 600, 000 tris. The brain is more perceptive than people give it credit for but once you understand how it notices these things it is a lot of fun to scare people with it.

[larrygreen]

I never heard of people being creeped out by any level of cgi. I thought this only applied to real life objects like dolls

[IMissedChurchForThis]

1:34 (His eyes start wandering into the uncanny valley...)

[t.w.]

I remember being scared shitless from tellytubbies when i was 3-4 years old.

[meowsneck]

1:41 how is this creepy freaking loved the style of the movie

[lord_dr_riz]

This video is ahead of its time.. It was released 8yrs ago, but now suddenly Uncanny Valley is mainstream, due to obvious reasons ofcourse..

[VOLightPortal]

The kids cried watching the bird exploding in Shrek...

[cavaliothorson]

The Polar Express was light-hearted to the point where no one was thinking of uncanny valley.

[jbmiller]

Very informative. I have heard that phrase quite a bit after the finale to Mandalorian Season 2, but I did not know the origin.

[venomnbk]

The Final Fantasy film bombed  because it was terrible, not because of the Uncanny Valley.

[SnotRockets]

I think people who grew up playing a lot of video games and/or watching a lot of horror and/or seeing a lot of CGI have less of a problem with the Uncanny Valley thing. It takes more to genuinely skeeve us out when it comes to stuff like video game graphics and robotics. 

[alexandercoelho]

The Polar Express is average?! That movie is a freaking classic!

[sourlemon]

I noticed this feeling when looking at reconstructions of other species of human (like Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo naledi, etc) I wonder if this sense appeared to help us distinguish other animals that aren’t us. It could also be that statues of animals just look off already and the other humans in life would look more normal.

[Delusional_flwr]

I remember when I was around five years old I had a very severe fear of animatronics and especially ones that resembled humans, every night I’d always have nightmares, i remember having this fear for years, recently I noticed I still sometimes I have slight triggers of that same fear.