Hyper-realism in the Adventures of Tintin

Abstract

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn is an animated feature film that blends graphic stylisation with photorealistic surfaces and motion capture to create digital beings in a hyper-realistic style. As a result, the visual style of The Adventures of Tintin is significantly different to the now dominant cartoon stylisation that continues to develop in studios such as Disney, PIXAR and many others. Disney inspired cartoon stylised films, such as Frozen, continue to engage audiences around the world; receiving relatively little criticism for their visual style. Hyper-realistic animation, however, has struggled to achieve the same widespread acceptance. Many people continue to find hyper-realistic characters less engaging than cartoon characters and at times even find them to be somewhat repulsive. Via close analysis of The Adventures of Tintin, this paper illuminates the significance of establishing visual harmony between the elements of shape, surface and motion to sustain appealing and believable hyper-realistic characters.