Dec 4

Dec 4 Design Lessons from Movies: The Polar Express

It’s now December and we’re entering “the most wonderful time of the year.” It’s also time for my annual analysis of a Christmas movie. Previously, I’ve explored design elements and lessons in other movies including Elf, Home Alone, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Today I want to share some interesting facts and thoughts about The Polar Express, a story about a boy’s visit to the North Pole and Santa Claus on a magical train to rekindle his belief in Christmas. For each of these details I’ll share a lesson or two I believe we as designers can take from this movie.

The Polar Express is a 2004 computer-animated movie starring Tom Hanks. Hanks plays multiple characters in the movie including the train’s conductor, a hobo, Santa Claus, and a few others minor characters. At the time of filming, Hanks wasn’t new to voice overs; He had already played Woody in the very famous Toy Story movies twice before this one. However, he was new to the method of generating the computer animation – motion capture (or MoCap). This article isn’t specifically about this technology but essentially actors will wear special markers or clothing on their bodies and faces which will be observed and then triangulated by computers to generate the matching motion of computer-generated characters. Many people are familiar with Gollum, in the Lord of the Rings trilogy directed by Peter Jackson, who used the MoCap of actor Andy Serkis to great effect.

Similarly for The Polar Express, Tom Hanks would be recorded wearing special markers and then computers would render the animation and CGI characters. At this time, the world was relatively new to this type of technology - at least for big budget film-making. It was both expensive and complicated. There were attempts earlier, such as in “Sinbad: Beyond the Veil of Mists,” but Sinbad was considered a major failure with a cost of $30 million and only grossing $30 thousand in ticket sales. (Ouch!) Take a look at some YouTube clips and you’ll see why. But I still applaud their courage for trying!

The Polar Express is also a relatively early adopter of MoCap, but it did much better (Cost: $170 million, Box Office: $286 million) and benefited from the failures of the past The director and producer, Robert Zemeckis, stuck with the technology and made additional 3D CGI movies that slowly became better.

Design Lesson 1:

Every advancement in our society was because someone went out on a limb and decided to try something different. In one perspective, the world only progresses when someone is brave enough to say something weird, try something crazy, or go against the grain. Progress in design is also exactly that. Someone needed to, at least, think the idea “what if” that sets off a chain of events leading to a new method, a new product, or a new system. The Polar Express wasn’t the first to try MoCap but they were early in the development and completed a necessary and risky experiment, to the tune of 170 million dollars, that this method is worth pursuing. Today we enjoy entertainment, both movies and games, that build on the foundation of these earlier pioneers (unless you’ve never seen a super-hero movie).

As a designer, you might not be the very first to apply a technique, idea, or method, but you can be a part of that early crucial group that makes a great idea into a realized one. In some ways, that second or third adopter is more important than the first. How can that be? Well, you and I both have ideas that likely never made it outside of ourselves (the first adopter). We each need a least a second adopter. If just one other person believed in us enough to take up our idea, plan, or design, the idea might have made it out of the starting blocks. Perhaps that second person trying out an idea might be even more important than first to make an impact.

Initially, Zemeckis was planning to have Hanks voice and MoCap all the characters. It would have been impressive if this happened but this proved to be too challenging for the lead actor. At a later press conference, Hanks described the cognitive challenge of keeping so many characters straight in his mind. Since there was no substantial time delay needed between the scenes with different characters - after all, everything was done through the MoCap system and could be reset with the click of a button - Hanks couldn’t mentally flip successfully between the roles fast enough. Other multiple-role movies he’s performed in had, at least, time gaps for make-up or background scene changes to mentally separate from the various characters.

Design Lesson 2:

We often take on more than we should or bite off more than we can chew. Designers often love to tackle many or every aspect of the design at the same time and that usually isn’t possible – at least successfully. Focusing on one problem at a time is a surer bet. This doesn’t mean we can’t be progressing on multiple fronts, but our focus should be on one thing per design session. In others words, if you’re waiting for a part to arrive, it doesn’t mean you can’t debug your code or review a physical prototype, but then focus on that code OR that physical prototype and not both currently! Parallelization of effort, and in particular on a large team, for a multi-disciplinary problem will often be needed ore required, BUT parallelization of your attention is not helpful! Far too many of us think we can do it all, all the time. Pace yourself, focus, and let others help you. Tom Hanks was humble enough to say he wasn’t able to do it all. We should be more like Tom in our design efforts.

Although The Polar Express is viewed as a success, making quite a bit of money and furthering the adoption of motion capture, a lot of the negative critiques direct their issues on what’s called the “uncanny valley.” In Toy Story, no one expected the human characters to look completely human. The toys owner, a boy named Andy, is still very much in a cartoon style, even though the toys themselves are a little closer to real-world accuracy. On the other hand, The Polar Express tried to make the human CGI characters look… well, human. The “uncanny valley” describes this weird phenomenon that when something, like a robot or computer generated character, looks relatively close to a living human but still falls short in small ways, it becomes quite unsettling to an average viewer. This “valley” of negative response or repulsion is deepest when the character representation or robot is very close to mimicking a living and moving human. Humans readily accept cartoons and robots when they are a long distance (visually) away from this valley. Industrial robots, Disney cartoons, and robotic teddy bears are nowhere near to this valley causing a weird, mysterious, and eerie encounter with the interaction. But when the characters are close to humanoid, but not quite right, like a young CGI Luke and Leia Skywalker in recent Star Wars movies, people turn to the internet to voice their disgust and become angry. Real angry. They’re responding to their negative reaction in the uncanny valley.

The Polar Express has the same problem. The characters are supposed to be human and life-like, but they look off and it creeps a lot of people out. Furthermore, the uncanny valley is more pronounced with motion so when the characters are walking, turning, or shaking their head, it’s slightly disturbing. Perhaps the biggest culprit are the eyes. Sometimes I feel their eyes are not crossed enough and not focusing on what they’re looking at close by. You’ve probably “zoned out” staring at something far in the distance until a friend calls you out and you bring your eyes back into focus to something closer. That’s the way I feel with some of these characters at many points in the movie. They seem dead inside and I can’t wake them up!

Design Lesson 3

Understandably, the MoCap and follow-on computer rendering technology was still maturing. Someone had to blaze a trail for others to follow. Sometimes that trail is nothing more than sharing the mistakes of wrong turns and pitfalls to avoid for those coming behind. Sometimes it’s descriptions of new terrain along the path. But if we weren’t first to blaze this trail, we should, at least, consult their guidance if available. The Lord of the Rings clearly benefitted from this trail-blazing by staying surely on either the left or right of the uncanny valley. Peter Jackson filmed real humans for the human characters (and the humanoid species), while the various monsters found on the other side of the valley are viewed as acceptable, either as humans in costumes or as computer renders.

The take-away is that we should be aware, or at least try to discover, these uncanny valleys in our own design. They might not be obvious to ourselves or even to other too. When receiving feedback from others, pay attention to when they express phrases like “There’s something that feels weird about X” or “I don’t know what it is but that feature looks out of place” or “I can’t put my finger on it but this won’t work.” Any response that suggests a slight unsettling (in all the variations one can express) it is worth exploring in more detail. Ask follow up questions and present alternatives to try and narrow in on the problem.

This does not mean that you or I will be able to fix it and perhaps we shouldn’t. Familiarity and acceptance can increase over time with new things, and often the change has to happen on the user’s side of the interaction, but we should be confident of that and not simply hoping for it. Steve Jobs was someone who was confident his customers would come around to initially unfamiliar features.

I often chuckle to think that when escalators were first introduced in London, a man with one leg was hired to ride up and down in the public for others to watch and gain some confidence. At another location, a shot of brandy was offered to riders to take the edge off the fear factor. (It seems silly now, but you aren’t 100 percent sure all the engineering in self-driving cars is ready for you either)

Still, just because something in our design is unique and might be difficult to initially accept doesn’t mean we give up or should change it right away. Yes, sometimes we need to! But if we don’t, we still need to be aware of those things and introduce or reveal them in the right sequence and context. Design has a type of “uncanny valley” but our products don’t have to remain at the bottom of it forever.

Despite its flaws, the Polar Express has some neat scenes with a beautiful Christmas message. There are some clever animations with, for its time, eye-pleasing CGI tricks and angles you can’t recreate in real life. Even though the technology used to make The Polar Express is 20 years old, and has been replaced with better and faster systems, it still is amazing what they accomplished in advancing the state of the art. If one wants to build upon the shoulders of giants, there has to be a shoulder to start with…

Finally, without spoiling the ending, a clear taboo in today’s interconnected world, the characters learn some powerful lessons and the main character learns to believe in Christmas again, (which isn’t a spoiler, since almost every Christmas movie has that!).

Design Lesson 4

And that’s my final design lesson: We should believe in the miracle that is design. You are likely reading this on a device that would be viewed as completely miraculous by your grandparents’ generation (when they were younger). Some designer, in fact thousands of designers and engineers, had to believe in their own, and in their team’s, abilities to realize the miracle of the computer, smart phone, and countless other technologies. These products held in your very hands and sit before your very eyes are no longer just in someone’s imagination. True, many past design efforts and pioneering steps have been replaced with cheaper materials, faster CPUs, and advanced features, but at the time each of those designs and iterations were miracles as well. It’s acceptable and even required to have miracles build upon a previous one. I’m excited to see in the coming decades where the miracle of design takes us next. As designers, let’s keep the miracle going to improve the lives of all people many times over!

Merry Christmas!