Perhaps the most important aspect of being human is a primal urge to communicate. In both individual and species development from early on our cognition has developed around recognizing, assessing, and interpreting the minds of others. One primary instrument to perform that task is our visual system attracted to the face of our interest.. Our presence in a social world requires this like a ticket of entry.

Our minds operate in a world of symbols also. Though faces are found painted on dolls, after short fashion we learn to exclude these from the attention that living faces merit. Yet the face painted on a doll is unquestionably a "face;" why, any child can tell you that! So for that matter is a cartoon face as simple as :-) (Not that I'd want to spend all day talking with either.) Virtual reality has a long way to go before effectively confusing doll faces with people faces. Not that it might not get there, just that so far we're nowhere close.

As computers continually improve at delivering virtual faces, our perceptions are tasked to grade this wider range of input into those worth attending and those less so. Frankly I'm surprised that as our digital animation skills progressed our discrimination system seemed to "run ahead." My sense of narrative rarely jumps out of the system during (what we might call) classical animation. The attempt was never made to compete with Mother Nature regarding human form and particularly faces.

Somehow the whole thing's related to Godzilla's feet. Our skills are more adept at discriminating fake buildings than rejecting the ridiculous giant lizard monster. Godzilla's head may be symbolically fiery in the clouds, but his feet trample only among a JOOTS reality of cardboard boxes. There's an effect here akin to the suspension of disbelief encountered in, oh, say episodic Science Fiction television wherein I inevitably enjoy sound characters amid shaky backgrounds compared with vice versa.

I characterize this as the "Face Effect." The Face Effect is that proclivity of our thinker to instinctively evaluate any given face to quickly estimate its ability to maintain interesting communication. The more that face is a symbol, the more readily we grant it access. The more that face intends itself as real, the harder our sense sort for discrepancy. The Face Effect: a cartoon without much detail is easily assimilated. Too close and criticism harshly contrasts it with reality. It's paradoxical, in a way: to render something easily and comfortably recognizable, a simpler job is often better.