Realistic Unicorns

What is a realistic unicorn? On the surface, it seems like a contradiction, after all, unicorns are not real, and can therefore never be realistic, but in the world of animation unicorns can still be depicted in a realistic way. How?

Well, let's go back a little and look at how animation allows things to NOT be realistic. The most obvious way is through anthropomorphic depictions of animals. Take, for example, Netflix's Bojack Horseman.

Bojack is a horse, except, he's not a horse. In-universe, he behaves as a human does, though with some minor horse-like actions. In the Bojack universe, as well as in Mickey Mouse or Winnie The Pooh, animalhood is more of a ethnic identification than one of species. Mickey Mouse speaks in a high-pitched voice, Pooh Bear loves honey, Bojack's rival, a dog named Mr. Peanutbutter, hoards tennis balls and chases the mailman, but otherwise lives the life of any Hollywood has-been.

These characters, despite being animals, are realistic as humans. Perhaps, Disney's notion of the fantastic applies here, and the characters are made as fantastic humans with animal heads. Mr. Peanutbutter is certainly a caricature of a golden retriever, but his human-like tendencies are clearly based in the reality of a human.

So what if we want to animate a unicorn? We can't rotoscope a real unicorn, because there are no real unicorns. So what do we do? We rotoscope horses.  Suddenly, we have a creature that runs the way our mind wants unicorns to run. Then the audience gets to praise our film for it's realistic unicorns.