"Is it just me or...?" Topic

When I am looking at computer generated miniatures (or rendered imagines) I never (or most times??) do not like them. This only seems to be the case with mini's of "living" things like humans, animals or fantasy figures.., not with vehicles, buildings etc…..

I can not tell exactly what I do not like about them, there is just something weird about them. They kind of look like sterile. Or they are like cola without sugar….

So am I just old fashioned and am a (subconscious) rejecting new technologies? Or is it something else?

It's the "Uncanny Valley" effect …

link

That's about it. They just don't look quite 'right' and that unsettles people.

Dear Monash

No It is quite normal. What you are feeling is both revulsion and pathos. You hate the object, but you also pity it because it is soulless. As it has the quality of soullessness it is as if a thing of the dead, of a simulacram. It has the potentiality to do evil without remorse, but at the same time it evokes a pity in us BECAUSE it is soulless and not living for itself but at the behest of others.

If you did not feel like this you would be a psychotic sociopath who can view other entities like itself as merely tools to be used, abused and discarded as the whim dictates. That is what terrifies us that we will be used, abused an d discarded by our fellow beings, and hence part of our condition as mammals.

It is essentially that we know we are all more than the sum of our parts, more than what you see. "We are more than we seem." is the most human quality. We invest objects that logic tells us has no feeling or personality or sentience with exactly that sentience because we are at heart ILLOGICAL animals, EMOTIONAL animals, and creatures with PASSIONS!. A creature that looks very like us but has not these emotions, lack of logic, and passions is not of us. That is, it is a "ghola" a "golem" a "Frankenstein."

Perhaps the strongest part of this is the "Pinnochio" effect. Pinocchio wishes to be a real live boy-- so do we."

I am the same way. I think that crowdfunding organizers are never doing themselves any favors when they show screenshots of perfectly crisp CGI "models."

No It is quite normal. What you are feeling is both revulsion and pathos. You hate the object, but you also pity it because it is soulless.

But Monash doesn't say that he feels this revulsion when looking at little lead figurines. Are we to assume that they _do_ have souls?

"When I am looking at computer generated miniatures (or rendered imagines) I never (or most times??) do not like them. This only seems to be the case with mini's of "living" things like humans, animals or fantasy figures.., not with vehicles, buildings etc….."

Do they remind you of department store mannequins, or mimes? That may be your subconscious fears surfacing…

But Monash doesn't say that he feels this revulsion when looking at little lead figurines. Are we to assume that they _do_ have souls?

Indeed, I do not have this with handsculpted miniatures, no matter what material they are made of.
And no, I do not think that these have souls :-)

I agree that CGI minis lack a little "something." It might indeed be the too precise symmetry (the "uncanny valley" effect mentioned above). But I also expect there is a subconscious recognition that CGI images simply aren't "real." Something about the lighting, the shading, the lack of crispness where crispness should be, or the excess of crispness where crispness should not be, and the unreality of the background, etc. all add up in our minds to a feeling of "that's not real." When you add to that the conscious knowledge that the CGI image is indeed "not real," and therefore does not represent a physically existing object or product, it's no wonder a viewer might be wary.

We are creatures of a material world. Physicality is important to us. We wish to put our hand into the wound, as it were. So the doubt of a thing which can indeed be seen simply to the eye as but an image of a fancy is an innately human response, and potentially even a logical one.

As it has the quality of soullessness it is as if a thing of the dead, of a simulacram. It has the potentiality to do evil without remorse, but at the same time it evokes a pity in us BECAUSE it is soulless and not living for itself but at the behest of others.

Nope, it's a mannequin. It provokes nothing because it ISN'T alive.

Well, so few of them are really designed with the "miniature" part in mind. Most are too detailed/finely scaled to really work at such a small scale.

Do they remind you of department store mannequins, or mimes? That may be your subconscious fears surfacing…

Oh no Zephyr1, it has nothing to do with fear. :-) And no, they do not remind me of department store mannequins or mimes…..I just do not like computer generated miniatures for some reason. Probably the perfect symmetry as mentioned above etc.
It seems to be missing something…and I do not feel that way with hand sculpted miniatures…

I feel the same way – I also feel the same way about computer generated animation in films. Immediate turn off.
It looks like a video game, not reality. Yuck.

LotR trilogy started out fantastic, then descended into CGI dependency. The Hobbit is a horrible set of films this way. Even the movements of those perfectly rendered wood elves do not look natural/real. They defy gravity. I hate watching that kind of crap.

Why would anyone in the miniatures business want to advertise their physical miniatures with faked pictures?…

Honestly, I don't give a damn if it is CGI or hand sculpted as long as it gets the miniatures I want into my hands. And I see no difference worthy of note.

Won't comment on Movies since this is a miniature site, not a movie site.

And while they are pictures, they are hardly "faked pictures."

I have painted printed and metal figures in parallel and there's no difference in appearance. There is no "this is fake" feeling.

Victrix does computer sculpting as does spartan games. Both put out nice figures. I think, like anything, it depends on the schlpter