Eight years ago, CGI specialist Liam Kemp uploaded two videos of mundane CGI human characters he hand key-framed, modelled and textured and which amassed a few hundred thousand views thanks to their being lodged deep in the uncanny valley.
Some of the character gestures are staggering, particularly those of the bathroom intruder, who rubs his eye and twitches with unsettling verisimilitude.
Kemp freely admits that technology has considerably moved on since he started work on The Normals, but the video’s hyperrealism is still incredibly creepy – even in 360p.
This week, after six years work on the project, mostly full-time, the animator released a short called The Normals, ‘a kind of snapshot of human awkwardness set in a gent’s toilets.’