Robot Day: Tracing the Lineage of Wall-E's Robot Pals

Geekanerd loves Wall-E! Even me, the resident Pixar cynic. The first third of the movie is a masterpiece, a MASTER. PIECE. Between that and the credit sequence, let's give them the Oscar, why not. I spent most of yesterday evening geeking out about my favorite moments, watching clips on YouTube, pouring over the amazing BuyNLarge viral site, and crying over the mere memory of several scenes.

As a product design nerd, I love that they didn't over-anthropomorphize the "modern" robots, ie all the robots except Wall-E himself. The art designers gave them tons of personality while still making them realistically look they were built for only one service. They're not androids, but true blue mass manufactured robots.

While the Johnny 5/Short Circuit comparisons have already well chewed over, here's our attempt to trace the robo-influences of some of Wall-E's friends...

Until Auto started talking, I thought it actually might be GLaDOS. Still alive indeed, seven hundred years in the future! Red eye against white circle with a black line down the middle...it's all there, people. But as Sarah pointed out, GLaDOS' look is in turn a rif on HAL 9000, and Auto's eye is clearly a DIRECT reference to his iconic red light. Portal only came out a year ago, so there's probably no way Auto could have been influenced by GLaDOS...how about that short before the movie, though, with the magic hat? That was Portal. It just was.

More after the jump....


I wouldn't be at all surprised if the PR-T cosmetic bot was designed with a nod towards the IT-O Interrogator droid from Star Wars. Both are floating orbs with multiple arms, and given that the PR-T droid we meet in the movie is malfunctioning, their functions may not be all that different either.

Eve is harder to pin down, but the resemblance to Apple products in general is pretty clear. I think more than anything she/it reminded me of the Mac Mouse, in it's smooth, seamless white ovaltude. But the face and gun reminded me of something as well; the Robosapein toy robot from Wowee, which me and Albo saw at Digital Life last year.

Anyone else see anything in Wall-E that reminded them of another famous robot?

CG Isn't Sexy: The Uncanny Valley Principal

I was waiting for someone to put this clip online, and here it is. In last week's episode of 30 Rock, Tracey decides his legacy will be to give the world the first great porn video game. Judah Friedlander explains why this is impossible, because of what he dubs (and what will forever be known as) The Uncanny Valley. All CG-happy filmmakers need to watch this clip before the movie-going public has to deal with another freaky, gold version of Angelina Jolie that doesn't have nipples but does have a tail. Uch.

Coincidentally, Sam of Sam and Max: Freelance Police (as channeled through comic genius Steve Purcell) recently had this to say about his computer-generated counterpart currently starring in Telltale's episodic adventure games ;

"We're depicted by patented, computer-generated simulacrums called "sythespians". They act up a storm for just pennies and except for the dead, soulless looks on their pasty, inhuman mugs I actually prefer them to our real selves!"

That is exactly why I can't get into those games, as big a Sam and Max fan as I am. That and I don't own a PC.

Just to drive the point home, some classic examples of the Uncanny Valley in action, after the jump...


Here's that horrible Final Fantasy movie from 2001. I actually saw this in theaters for some reason, and spent the whole time trying to put my finger on what was wrong with the way the characters move. Every gesture and change in facial expression is agonizingly slow, and weirdly fluid. This is back when people thought all you had to do to for realistic motion-capture was to tape a bunch of ping pong balls to a green screen suit. Shudder.

Since his lecture was framed around Star Wars, it seems like Jonah would have wanted to mention the public relations disaster that was Jar-Jar. Maybe they just didn't want to go there. I didn't even want to put a picture up. Cartoonish yet disturbingly bound to selective laws of real world physics, horribly ugly (he's got seg-ment-ed eyes!), and with a loping gait that would have flunked him out of clown college, he is genuinely upsetting to watch. It's upsetting to even talk about him, really. Let's move on.


Just look at this nightmare of soulless devil children and floppy, way-too-slow CG physics. What circuit is Robert Zemeckis missing from his brain that makes him think this is a good way to make a movie?

It's worth noting that the Uncanny Valley principal can be used in a filmmaker's favor when creating a CG character that is meant to be disturbing. Some successes in this vein include General Grevious, Davey Jones from Pirates II and III (and then at least they kept Bill Nighy's actual eyes), and of course the most well regarded CG performance to date, Andy Serkis's turn as Gollum. Gollum was actually TOO uncanny for me to be captivated by, I never believed his shiny skin texture and cartoonishly bulging eyes actually existed in that rough, tactile world of New Zealand, or wherever those books take place. Here's that scene that made people want to give Serkis a hundred Oscars for, but I still find too silly and unrefined to take seriously as any kind of brave-new-world indicator of how CG can blend with acting. But I can't deny, it's creepy as hell.