It's been a while since I did a bit of educational content.
Drawing faces is a fun and frustrating experience, because of how the human brain is wired to understand facial expressions.
I've touched upon the Uncanny Valley in my other post about "choosing the appropriate level of detail". The facial area is especially vulnerable to "uncanniness" and is therefore usually subject to a lot of simplifications, which in turn gives rise to a myriad of available "styles". A "style" of artwork is essentially an answer to the question "how have you chosen to simplify reality to a visual medium?"
A piece of stylized work is oftentimes more impactful on the viewer, because the brain will easily infer what reality the drawing is trying to depict.
E.g. the official art of Kim Possible is heavily stylized, but you could easily imagine meeting (and recognizing) the girl that the drawing of Kim Possible represents in real life.
Now, imagine that you are drawing something that does not exist in real life. Say you are drawing a human/cat hybrid, intended to be sexually attractive. How would the uncanny valley work then? I believe that the mind still infers a "real life equivalent", but approaching this imagined reality is a nigh impossible undertaking, because when the drawing starts looking "weird", you don't know if it's because
1. You're approaching the desired reality correctly and hitting the Uncanny Valley
2. You fucked up and went in the wrong direction
When I started drawing cats, I wanted to invent something that could exist in real life. I went at it like a caveman with a hammer.
One approach had me thinking that "approaching human proportions sufficiently defeats the uncanny valley", so I tried simply duplicating them. The result was as depicted top right
Another approach had me looking at the most attractive felines and adding human expressiveness (eyebrow, lips, and hair) to them. Result is as depicted bottom right.
Both could feasibly be used as a baseline for a live action movie. Both have existing examples in pop culture (Thundercats, Skyrim).
But neither left me satisfied. Maybe my standards for defeating the Uncanny Valley are higher than usual. Or maybe there was a secret third option.
The process landed me on a middle-ground to the left. I like to think this could exist in real life, leaving almost no Uncanny Valley. But then, style is of course subjective. I was succesful for myself, at least.
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11 months ago
04 Jan 2024 15:07 CET
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