A reference to the Uncanny Valley was made in a recent Kong thread and that raised a question: Does the function for emotional response relative to anthropomorphism extend past 100% human? That is, is there a super-empathic response to superhumanly idealized angelic beauty? I would say as a guess “yes”. At least for artwork there are clearly conventions of stylization that result in a super-beautiful (or at least super-sexy) human form. Although this is hard to measure against real life precisely because they are stylizations. A better example might be attempts at ultra-realistic airbrush art such as done by fantasy illustrators; but even the best art is usually not going to be mistaken for a photograph of a real person. I was simply surprised that the discussions of the Uncanny Valley I’ve read haven’t touched on this before.
The “uncanny valley” comes from a study about emotional response to robotic design, and touched on both appearance and movement.
People casually relate this animation.
I think the important thing is putting the design in real space and imagining it moving around. I think Druuna is a good example of fantasy art that would fall into the uncanny valley if she were “realized.” Possibly NSFW pic of Drunna maquette here. Druuna’s hyper-female form looks pretty good as a fantasy drawing, but if she were in the room with you, and walking around, it’s freaky enough to be disturbing-- and if her movement were somehow unnatural, like a ventriloquist’s dummy, or something – seriously freaky.
Stylized drawings don’t have the potential to oog you out anywhere near like something that is more proximate to life (and especially existing in the same space with you) does.