Moana

[Quixii]

Has anyone else seen this movie yet? I've been very excited and eagerly anticipating Moana for over a year now, so my family and I went to see it the night it came out.
One of the many reasons I was excited for it is the HAIR!

She's got longish hair, at hip-ish length. It's wavy/wurly. It's beautiful. And it moves like hair! [x] [x] [x] When it gets wet, it looks like wet hair. [x]

But one of the things I was most excited for, that we could tell even from the trailers, is that she puts it in a bun! When she's about to do something that requires her effort and concentration, she makes sure her hair is up and out of the way. It's not elaborately putting her hair into an updo, or suddenly becoming a stern librarian. She just pops it up in true LHC-style timing. I am so excited to see that in a movie! [x] [x]

And while I just talked about Moana's hair a bunch, Maui's hair is also amazing! I love that it was still dark and long (for a mainstream media guy), but it was also different than Moana's. It was a bit curlier, and moved a bit differently. [x] [x]
And, excitingly for me, he also put it up in a bun when he needed it out of the way! [x]

So yeah, I'm very excited about Moana and the hair in Moana.

[Wavelength]

Wow, that's the best animated hair I've seen yet! Love that there's a distinct difference in movement between wet and dry. How does she secure her bun?

[teal]

I wonder whether Disney worked with the Pixar team on the hair at all. Pixar overhauled their hair rendering engine to handle Merida's hair in Brave (and that of Angus the horse, and the bears, too, though those get less attention... look for it next time! )

[reilly0167]

Gotta love the imagin "ears" (Disney term teehee)

[Doom]

The contrast between the realistic hair and the uncanny valley-ish faces is disturbing. If they can model and animate hair that well, why won't they do it with the faces? It should be even easier!
BTW, you know what's lame? In Italy, the title of the movie is "Oceania" and Moana is named Vaiana, because otherwise someone (but is anyone really that dumb?) might believe the movie to be about the late Italian porn actress Moana Pozzi.

[Rebeccalaurenxx]

The contrast between the realistic hair and the uncanny valley-ish faces is disturbing. If they can model and animate hair that well, why won't they do it with the faces? It should be even easier!
BTW, you know what's lame? In Italy, the title of the movie is "Oceania" and Moana is named Vaiana, because otherwise someone (but is anyone really that dumb?) might believe the movie to be about the late Italian porn actress Moana Pozzi.

Thats so weird.


I could not stop thinking about the hair during the movie to be honest. I noticed everything you mentioned, I thought I was weird for paying so much attention to the hair, but I guess TLHC has affected us all.... lol

[Wavelength]

The contrast between the realistic hair and the uncanny valley-ish faces is disturbing. If they can model and animate hair that well, why won't they do it with the faces? It should be even easier!

The faces aren't in Uncanny Valley territory for me at all, but then again I'm used to playing a lot of different video games with different art styles. This art style is pretty similar to others I've seen. Specifically I'm thinking of Civilization VI (check out Cleopatra at around 1:09).

[Cherrys]

The first time I watched the trailer I thought something was "off" about her hair, and now I realize it's just so different from what I'm used to seeing from animated films. I agree with Doom, the faces are incredibly disturbing, they look like something from Wallace & Grommet (sp?), which is super jarring next to the hyper detail of everything else in the world.

[FennFire911]

What are uncanny valley faces?

[Cherrys]

What are uncanny valley faces?

The Uncanny Valley is this idea that if something is like a person but not quite (ventriloquist dummies, puppets, statues) it's in the uncanny valley, i.e. super creepy. Like, how movies sometimes have portraits' eyes moving, because they're almost human, but somehow not.

So, the faces of Moana's characters look just a tad bit "off" (i.e. unrealistic to the true human form) and it's creepy.

Sorry, that was long, but that's how I interpreted the phrase.