Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and Resident Evil: Damnation are two full-length computer-animated films
based on video game series that originated in Japan before becoming popular in among western audiences, and
both notably feature photorealistic computer-generated human characters not directly based on their actors.
The Spirits Within does not share its characters or setting with any of the Final Fantasy games but is instead a
new story set in a post-apocalyptic 2065 Earth with distinct fantasy and science fiction elements. Upon its
release in 2001, it was considered technologically groundbreaking but a critical and commercial failure, and was
criticized for an unwieldy and uninteresting storyline, “bad digital actors”, and the resulting lack of chemistry
between its characters (Park, 2002). Damnation, by contrast, was released direct to video much more quietly in
2012, coming on the heels of a decade of other computer-generated movies, and shares the loosely
scientifically-plausible world of the Resident Evil game series. It was a mild commercial success, and received
fairly well in light of the generally lukewarm expectations most have towards video game movies.
I chose these movies for comparison because of their similar origins and because both do not attempt to add
cartoon or anime elements to its digital humans in order to avoid the uncanny valley but instead try to “jump
the valley”, with varying degrees of success.
The Uncanny Valley is a theory that was originally proposed about robots but later expanded, stating that as a
thing’s likeness to a human being increases, there will be a period in which it looks too human to be an
abstraction but does still not resemble a healthy human being, and the result will look disturbing to most
people. The increase in human-likeness is separable into two components: human-appearance and human
movement (Mori, 1970).
The degree of detail of the human models in both movies is reasonably similar, down to pores and fine facial
hairs. Both appear to use sub-surface scattering to predict how light should interact with the characters’ skin
(Kerlow, 2009) and have fully modelled and animated hair, and both synchronize lip movements with when and
what the characters are saying. The most obvious differences lie primarily within the animation and the use of
motion-blur.
Final Fantasy – Aki has seen several people die
and is about to watch her lover sacrifice himself
in her place to save the world.
Resident Evil – Leon is trying to get up after being
knocked around by a nigh-invulnerable humanoid
monster, which has now cornered him.
Whereas The Spirits Within was the first of its kind, Damnation comes on the heels of a full decade of
advancements in computer animation. To the credit of the earlier movie, the differences are not overwhelming,
but Damnation has learned from the mistakes of its predecessors and, in particular, does a better job of
expressing expressions. The Spirits Within was criticized for its characters lacking the minute, unscripted
expressions—the unchoreographed head-tilts and improvised double-takes—that real actors would make
(Mitchell, 2001), which would lend emotion and chemistry to the characters. Damnation has slight frowns and
grimaces and does a better but not perfect job of getting the characters to blink when they should, but in some
cases they nod a little too much. It is also willing to deform the characters’ faces more deeply, so frowns are
seen in the forehead as well as the brows, and has included expressions such as curling the upper lip into a snarl
or grimace that weren’t seen in The Spirits Within, though smiles lack sincerity; whether or not that can be
blamed on more jaded characters is debatable. However, where The Spirits Within relied on facial expressions
first and foremost to convey emotion (Park, 2002), Damnation relies equally or more on dialogue and the
context already established by the series and even avoids focusing on the characters faces some of the times
when animating their expressions might be difficult; in the above scenes, Aki is seen for several long seconds,
whereas Leon’s expression is captured in the brief moment between when he gets up and gets attacked again.
Damnation also benefits from newer advancements in motion-capture technology; using two hundred cameras
to The Spirits Within’s sixteen (Park, 2002) and smaller and more accurate markers that can more closely capture
both motion and position (Sonoda, 2012), it is capable of more accurate and effective body language through
motion capture alone, whereas The Spirits Within had to hand-key some of its characters’ movements. In
addition, Damnation used facial motion capture with pinhead-sized markers to capture speaking and emotive
facial movements, as opposed to lip-synching by matching phonemes to positions and hand-editing expressions.
Damnation also makes greater use of camera
effects such as motion blur and depth of field, and
tighter framing and blurred objects in the
foreground give computer-generated footage a
similar sense of immediacy and presence to what
filmed footage would create using similar
techniques. The Spirits Within uses more depth
fading, letting objects in the distance fade into some
of the dustier or foggier backgrounds.
Arguably, a limited depth of field might not feel
appropriate in some cases, given the wider scope of
The Spirits Within’ s story.
Fully-rendered human characters also means fully-animated hair, which most animators will tell you is one of
the most difficult parts of character animation due to the number of collisions the thousands of strands will
create, especially when interacting with other objects (Piore, 2010). Twenty percent of the production time of
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within went into creating and rendering Aki’s 60,000 strands of hair (Park, 2002),
which though beautifully has a slightly distracting tendency to flow constantly. The Resident Evil series has long
gotten around hair animation by giving its characters shorter hair or tying back longer hair, but Damnation
features fully-animated heads of varying-length hair that clumps more realistically but still blows in the slightest
breeze. In other words, it behaves like real hair as long as that real hair is baby-fine and freshly-washed.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within – starring Aki’s
hair. Or at least that’s what gets the most
attention in this scene.
Leon may have just escaped being cuffed in a cellar
after getting attacked, but his hair looks like he
just washed it.
In addition to emotions that aren’t quite there and hair that never gets matted or tangled, what sets computergenerated characters apart from live-action actors is how they seem to all come out of their ordeals hardly the
worse for the wear. The male characters come out of fighting for their lives with only a few scratches, smudges,
and rips in their clothing, and the female characters are all but unharmed.
They’re a bit roughed up, but they look more like they took a spill off a bike onto a patch of soft grass than
were repeatedly nearly killed.
The advancements in computer animation have made the possibility of truly believable computer-generated
human characters increasingly plausible. Advancements in modelling have made it so digital characters can be
made to look all but fully human, and animation and motion capture have come far enough to match. Audiences
may not be fooled into thinking the actors are real, but it is easily possible to suspend disbelief and simply watch
the movie. The main flaw remaining in digital people is that they are too flawless: they don’t have little stumbles
when they run, wince slightly when something goes wrong, or get sweaty when they run down the block. They
remain choreographed at all times. However, the inclusion of small nods and gestures to character interaction
and texture variation to characters’ hair shows that animators are aware of this and making efforts to resolve it,
and the increased use and accuracy of motion capture is making the inclusion of unscripted expressions
increasingly plausible and likely.
With the advancements that were made in just eleven years, it will not be long before computer-generated
humans come far enough out of the uncanny valley to fully resonate emotionally with audiences and become a
viable alternative, under the right circumstances, to editing human actors into a computer-generated
environment.
Works Cited:
Kamiya, M. (Director), & Kobayashi, H. (Producer). (2012). Resident Evil: Damnation [Motion picture]. Japan:
Capcom Co. & Digital Frontier.
Kerlow, I. (2009). The Art of 3D Computer Animation and Effects (4th Edition). Canada: John Wiley & Sons
Mitchell, E. (2001, July 11) .“Film Review; She’s Lovely, But Alas, She’s Only Software.” [Electronic version.] New
York Times. pp. E1+.
Mori, M. “The Uncanny Valley.” Energy, 7(4), 33-35. Retrieved November 7, 2012 from
http://www.movingimages.info/digitalmedia/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/MorUnc.pdf
Park, Jane. "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within A Case Study." MEDIA IN TRANSACTION CONFERENCE. Unknown
volume and date.
Piore, A. (2010, October). Fit for a Princess. Scientific American: November 2010 Issue. Retrieved November 6,
2012 from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fit-for-a-princess
Sakaguchi, H., & Sakakibara, M. (Directors), & Aida, J., Lee, C., & Sakai, A. (Producers). (2001). Final Fantasy: The
Spirits Within [Motion picture]. Canada: Chris Lee Productions & Square Company.
Sonoda, S. (Director). (2001). The DNA of Damnation [Documentary feature]. Japan: Capcom Co. & InTouch Inc.
Biohazard: Damnation [date unknown]. The Internet Movie Database. Retrieved November 5, 2012, from
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1753496/
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within [date unknown]. The Internet Movie Database. Retrieved November 5, 2012,
from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0173840/