http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/movies/03cane.html?ex=1128484800&en=a1e44fc8ec035356&ei=5083&partner=Rotten%20TomatoesFROM the marble carvers of ancient Athens to the painters of Renaissance Florence to the students in the nearest life-study class, artists have always struggled to render the human form with its subtleties intact. The pliant weight of flesh. The warm luminosity of skin and hair. The liquid brilliance of eyes. And, above all, the unending variability of expression inherent in a raised eyebrow, a curved finger, a tilted head.
For artists working in animated film, these challenges are multiplied many times over. They must capture all the nuances that make us human, and then put them in motion. And mostly, they've failed to do so. Even the great Disney animators couldn't make Snow White as compelling as her dwarfs, who have a blobby believability that she is entirely lacking. Cinderella is never quite as lovable as her mice, and not one of the human characters in the world of animation has the poignant humanity of Dumbo or the lively spark of Bugs Bunny. If to err is human, to animate humans is to err almost every time. In fact, human animation is so vexing a problem that the makers of "The Polar Express," the Robert Zemeckis movie opening on Nov. 11, have chosen to people their painted backdrops with live performances captured digitally. Based on Chris Van Allsburg's popular children's book, it uses a live performer - Tom Hanks, say, who plays five roles - to act each scene on a mock set. Steve Starkey, the movie's postproduction producer, says that the actor wears hundreds of digital sensors that transfer the movements rippling through his body and his face to the computer-generated character he's playing.
For a long time Pixar, the phenomenally successful pioneer of 3-D, computer-animated feature films, simply avoided the issue. Toys, dolls, insects, monsters and fish have been the heroes of Pixar's unbroken series of hits. When people do appear in "Toy Story," "A Bug's Life," "Toy Story 2," "Monsters Inc." or "Finding Nemo," they are mere supporting players - the dentist in "Finding Nemo," the children in "Toy Story." The emotional weight of these films rests with their nonhuman characters. And it's a good thing: although they manage to look persuasively three-dimensional, computer-generated animated figures tend toward a cold, metallic sheen that works well enough for fish, toys or insects but defeats any resemblance to living, breathing people. On screen, computer-generated humans have often seemed stiff and plastic - one animator described it as "a marionette-made-out-of-glass" quality.
But now Pixar is gambling for the first time on a film anchored by humans. When the newest Pixar animation, "The Incredibles," opens on Nov. 5, Bob Parr and his family will be front and center. Reluctant superheroes trying to live incognito in a quiet suburban neighborhood, the Parrs will have to blow their cover to save the world. "There's no getting around it," said Brad Bird, the film's writer-director. "They're the main deal." With no monsters or animals to distract from the human characters, Mr. Bird knew he would need to lift the 3-D animation of people to unseen levels of sophistication and expressiveness. Bob, the once and future Mr. Incredible, and his family and friends, would have to look better and move more convincingly than any of their computer-generated forebears; most important, they would have to convey emotion believably.
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