Before Tilly Norwood, Aki Ross Was Hollywood’s First Digital Actress

Aki Ross was the computer-generated heroine of the 2001 film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and was widely considered at the time to be the first photoreal digital actress, a precursor to the current debate around A.I. avatars such as Tilly Norwood. Roy Sato, the film’s lead animator, said facial capture was nonexistent then, so he painstakingly animated Aki’s expressions using Ming-Na Wen’s voice as inspiration and motion-capture reference for the body.

Sato recalled that creating Aki felt “very handcrafted” and warned that if a character were “completely generated by computers, I think it would be pretty cold. The human element would be gone.” The film’s creators, including Hironobu Sakaguchi, had hoped Aki could star in sequels, spinoffs or advertisements, Andy Jones, the animation director, said, but those plans never came to fruition.

Aki did appear on magazine covers and was ranked No. 87 on Maxim’s Hot 100 in 2001; Entertainment Weekly called her an “It Girl.” Critics, however, were not won over: Elvis Mitchell wrote of missing “the unpredictable physical chemistry of actors that computer science hasn’t mastered.” Financially, the movie underperformed.

Producer Chris Lee said much of the film’s inflated cost came from building an entire studio in Hawaii, and The Spirits Within grossed $85.1 million worldwide on a budget of $137 million. Industry veterans say Aki’s production helped build the pipeline for later advances.

aki ross, tilly norwood, final fantasy: the spirits within, hironobu sakaguchi, roy sato, ming-na wen, andy jones, chris lee, square pictures, particle6, eline van der velden, photoreal digital actress, computer-generated heroine, facial capture, motion capture reference, motion capture actor, visual effects pipeline, virtual star concept, maxim hot 100, entertainment weekly, box office performance, studio in hawaii, computer graphics actress, ai avatars debate, digital actress legacy