Digital Humans on the Big Screen

Artificial images have been around almost as long as movies. As computing power has grown and digital photography has become commonplace, special effects have increasingly been created digitally, and have become much more realistic as a result. ACM's Turing Award for 2019 to Patrick M. Hanrahan and Edwin E. Catmull reflected in part their contributions to computer-generated imagery (CGI), notably at the pioneering animation company Pixar. CGI is best known in science fiction or other fantastic settings, where audiences presumably already have suspended their disbelief. Similarly, exotic creatures can be compelling when they display even primitive human facial expressions.