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CG Idols - Human Not Required
greymond sent in a blurb about computer-generated celebrities in Japan. I'm sure a fair number of you have read Idoru... The Final Fantasy movie didn't do well, but I think it's safe to predict that eventually, computer-generated celebrities will be as numerous as live ones. There are so many advantages for the purveyors of pop culture, ranging from "never gets arrested for drunk driving" to "never demands salary increases", that I think it's inevitable.
When I saw Final Fantasy, I thought the graphics were great. However, that feeling went away after 10 minutes, and the characters seemed to be robotic and void of depth. I'm sure this will get better in the future, but we shouldn't say that it will be inevitable that they will be as numerous as real actors.
We've already seen the start of this... anyone remember Max Headroom from the '80s... Started off on a Coke commercial and got his own show...
-- Ed Bugg --You have freedom of choice, but not of consequences.--
I'd say either PacMan or Mario was first. Pacman had a couple of TV series, a cereal, and a dance(do the PacMan!). Mario had his own feature film and Capt Lou Albano did a pretty good job portraying him on the TV show.
D
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Not a troll but a real question... Does the porn industry already have established digital characters like this? They always seem to lead the way in these areas... no CG person would balk at anything asked of them.
And if they do make real digital celebrities, how long until grey/black market pornographic representations get loose?
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
The one thing of particular note from my relatively short 23 years so far, is that nothing is inevitable. Things as trivial as this are certainly not inevitable, because things as complex as people with termial diseases do not inevitably die. Some few fortunate souls have had HIV for 25+ years with out ever suffering negative consequences. A guy out in my area several years fell off of the 10th floor of a construction project, and was impaled from his leg through the top of his skull, even through his heart by a lengthy bolt. They removed it and he is having a perfectly normal life, with a few good scars to show for it. People's parachutes fail to open and they walk away from it.
Are computer animated celebrities inevitable? No, I hardly think so. Likely perhaps but not inevitable.
/tangent off
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
...but I don't think anyone would assume Buzz is real...
You've never asked my 2yr old son then *grin*...
-- Ed Bugg --You have freedom of choice, but not of consequences.--
When you look at how disconnected celebrities are from the reality that their fans' live ... CG characters may be the ultimate in understanding. It's quite possible that CG characters may more down to earth than their hollywood counterparts, as the people creating them and animating them will live lives substantially closer to our own than Julia Roberts ever has.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Are you kidding? You think the artists, let alone the software and hardware manufacturers are going to just stand aside when it starts raining money?
324006
Salaries. Now, in order to load a film full of stars and make it a high profile deal, one no longer has to fork out obscene amounts of cash to attract big names to take a role in the film.
Versatility. Whereas there are some people we wish we could change, we can't. Pixels on a screen, however, are amazingly easy to change: Directors will be able to create the exact effect they wish, as long as they have the correct software and capable technicians at their disposal. "One Role" actors are definately going to take a hit: when faced with characters who can act whatever their director wishes, they will invariably get the short end of the deal.
While I am definately going to get a lot of people disagreeing with my optimism(?) I think that these actors, in the hands of a good director and staff, will become a cheap and amazingly powerful tool which will produce far better films. However, we'll still see human actors for a very long time, because there's no mistaking that human effect....
What's in a Sig?
At Hammerhead, we have been approached to do a character like this as well, call her Desiree [name changed to protect, well, me :)]. This group of producers wanted to create a pop star that didn't have all of the baggage that real people have; they could then choose the actual voice behind the character strictly on the basis of singing ability. As with these Japanese characters, Desiree would have a biography, would appear on radio interview shows, would endorse products, etc. With the recent advances in skin rendering, one could make a far more compelling image than the plastic-like characters to date.
The producers wanted the character to be 'racy' and 'revealing', like Britney -- something that I consider a tragic mistake. Perhaps as her career evolved over ten years or so I would think that she shoul d go that way, but I feel that flashy but modest clothes would be far more appealing over time than the same old skin. Clothes are adornment, not just censorship.
Personally, I don't see this as very different than Britney Spears. Britney is almost as synthetic as Desiree -- and at least Desiree would lip-synch competently.
This project drifted along for a while and finally died, as do 95% of all proposed projects. Still, it will definitely happen, the economics work. Desiree need only 'live' a few dozen minutes a year; and those appearances could be funded at a pretty reasonable rate.
This contrasts to what the poster above commented about porn stars. He commented that this would be an obvious venue, as you could build perfect bodies that would do anything. It seems to me that porn stars already have next-to-perfect bodies, and from what I can tell, there is very little that they won't do. More importantly, they are cheap. The most expensive full-length porn movies don't cost nearly as much as a synthetic music video would cost, say, $500,000. From what I've read, porn stars make most of their money outside of the films by performing live -- they treat the films as advertising for the live shows. Needless to say, this is beyond the capabilities of synthetic characters to this point.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
In 1984 they had computers producing the plots to pornographic books. I guess in the 21st century we'll have computers pumping out committee generated characters.
Actually Disney is doing this already...
1. Handsome and athletic young male leading character who doesn't resemble his ethnic character.
2. Beautiful, skinny young female love interest who doesn't resemble her ethnic character.
3. Wacky, sarcastic animal sidekick.
4. Ugly and mindless evil antagonist who does resemble his/her ethnic character.
How crappy can tv/movies get before people turn it off? The lower limit seems to be unbounded.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
...but how will it play out for a virtual "Badboy" character, who *NEEDS* to get arrested, to have run-ins with the law, etc., to help create and maintain the image?
Or will it all be one big pandering charade like professional wrestling is?
Unless you want all future CG characters to sound like Steven Hawking's voice synthesizer, you're going to have to hire voice talent.
Look how all the latest CG movies work - they hire
big name actors to do the voices for the animated characters.
CG has come a long long way (the fur in Monsters Inc. is incredible) but voice synthesis hasn't improved at all, and I suspect it's a far more difficult challenge..
It is a quick way to try to rip of someone the glamour of a well known star.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
god help us.
There are so many advantages for the purveyors of pop culture
Maybe-JUST MAYBE, we could collectively grow up a little and realize that our PRESENT 'pop-stars' may as well be CG. They live scripted, Public-Relations-hyped lives - dating, divorcing, fucking, drinking, clubbing, working, whatever - who cares? Why do I care what Kristina Applegate eats for supper?
The fact that "we" have a pop-culture phenomenon at all is proof of a greater illness in our culture... I am not sure exactly what would cause people to replace a 'real' relationship/knowledge with a real person (family/friend/neighbour) with the 'virtual-reward' of having 'virtual relationships' is mind-numbing.
The 'purveyors of pop culture' are meddling with the human-psyche in a uncontrolled and viscous manner. They purposely seek to build memes and use their vitality for profit, at the expense of the real health of the public, strangers. Like corporate propagandists (marketers and advertisers) these people seek to meddle in your mind, to take advantage of your desires and needs and to give them 'virtual satisfaction' by overwhelming you with a 'reality they create'... this realty is then exploited to create wealth for them. These plutocrats and oligarchies are out of control - I see no difference between the RIAA and Washington in terms of the genuine self-less-ness that would be expected of those who occupy positions of such power.
What does this have to do with CG pop stars? Well, think, what does it mean when people are willing to accept stories - told as fact - about virtual people. What does it say about the overall conditioning of modern people? about their ability to be influenced, as a group, from afar, with motivations completely unknown??? Why would we view a CG 'pop star character' as anything more than a playfull curiosity - why would the scripted existence of such a thing not illicit ire and a sense of being insulted. I can understand small children being mis-lead and accepting the concept of such a thing, but grown people, I believe should be a little more apprehensive to accept a 'CG person-product' in their lives.
Just to follow up on your points... I figure Yuki Terai is about as "real" to most people as any Hollywood actor or actress. Most people haven't gotten to know too many movie stars personally. The cast of "Friends" is generated by really advanced rendering algorithms as far as I know, since I don't "hang" with that crowd. Pop icon idolotry of any sort (be it flesh-and-blood, anime, cg, a certain penguin, etc...) is where the real split from reality exists.
_-_-_
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and most animated shitti things done in america have been idolized and, i should say, form the real base of the american cultura (and americans are proud about it, go figure)...
As for the japs, they have taken this idea way farther with their anime stuff (much much better than anything made in the US), so I think they have already had virtual stars.
The computer generated part is simply a different medium to create a virtual star.
On the other hand, Final Fantasy is a piece of crap and most of the anime ive seen is hand drawn and it beats the hell out of it.
Alex
NO SIG
Interestingly, we (in North America) tend to take a dimmer view of sex-oriented situations than violent ones. It's okay to own guns in some States probably before you can drink a beer legally. It's okay to go to the latest Schwarzenegger film with attendant blood-on-the-walls high-deathcount activity, but softcore porn is verboten.
CG is interesting in that it opens up possibilities for stunts that humans could not attempt due to ludicrous risks. It opens up vistas on scales that can't be done well otherwise. It opens up new realities.
Interestingly, we can write in text about many very nasty things, but if we put them on the screen or on the Internet, all of a sudden they get banned. The difference between images of something or movies of same and a book describing them? Your imagination.
Somehow public standards are offended by taboo images more than taboo text. Interestingly, the CG actors and actresses could be made do things humans wouldn't or that they could be (for instance) slaughtered in stacks without the huge SFX budget that a violent movie requires (and of course, they might get away with a bit more violence because everyone knows it isn't real).
It'd be nice if societies had some sort of consistent and sane ethic. But views differ. Many folk seem to think a naked breast is the work of Lucifer, whereas having 14 year olds with firearms makes sense. Others don't want anyone carrying guns, but seem to think that adults and young teenagers making whoopee is acceptable. CG just serves to once again focus our attention on the differing values of different parts of the world. Some of the things done in a lot of Japanese Manga/Hentai just isn't allowed over-the-counter uncut here in North America.
I don't realy have a conclusion (wish I did), but it is surely one of the interesting questions about these discussions: Does it matter if the person in an image (or story, if it is text) is real or not as to how what happens to them is judged? Is virtual porn better, worse, or just the same as virtual porn? Is virtual violence better or worse or the same as real violence? Most people would probalby say real violence is worse than virtual violence. But many would probably say virtual porn is as bad as real porn.
If it all made sense, it wouldn't be half so interesting....
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."