Crossing over: digital film stars take their place alongside real people in the real world.(Film)

On March 16, in a stark, all-white gallery at the San Francisco Museum of Art, Annlee died, her final resting place a white coffin embellished with a vase of white carnations. Pinned to the wall behind was a document titled, How to Kill Yourself. In a separate part of the "No Ghost Just a Shell" exhibition, groups of museum visitors gathered in front of a television set to watch videos of Annlee starring in seven short animations.

Annlee was created as a shell, a stock Japanese mango character offered for sale by Kworks, a production company in Tokyo. As a generic animated character, she could be licensed for video games, animated films, advertising campaigns, and other commercial purposes. In 1999, artists Phillipe Parreno and Pierre Huyghe bought her copyright and invited other artists to help envision a life for her, to fill her shell. Among the results were the seven animations in the exhibition. In each, Annlee pondered her identity and tire conditions of her existence. She pined in one, "I would like to spend the day lying on the conch, but I can't." In another, she stared at the ocean, ribbons of her hair blowing in the wind, and vowed, "Tomorrow, I am starting a real job." But, instead, she was laid to rest. Push-pinned to the wall across from her coffin the legal document titled Agreement on the Assignment of Author's Rights to Annlee served as her death certificate. Now that Annlee's copyright belonged solely to her, no more new pieces featuring Annlee could be made.

Writes San Francisco Chronicle pop culture critic James Sullivan, "In an age of stem-cell research, digital imaging, advanced robotics, and fabrications that are often more dear to our hearts than real people, at what point do the products of human creativity declare independence from their creators?"

It's a point worth considering this year because digital actors in live-action films have received such a flurry of media attention. Although CG characters first acted in live-action films in 1986 (Young Sherlock Holmes' stained glass man) and starred in live-action films since Casper in 1995, this year they crossed over. Take, for example, the MTV Movie Awards in May.

All the nominees but one for MTV's Movie Award for Best Fight were actors in live action films. And that one, Star Wars: Episode II--Attack of the Clones, won for the fight between Christopher Lee and Yoda. This award answered any lingering questions about whether a digital character could achieve the same status as a live action star. Then, as if to hammer home the notion that digital actors are now considered pretty darn real, picking up the award was ... Yoda, plucked from a galaxy far, far away to appear at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, where he told the audience, "To win, I did not expect."

"He came out," says Industrial Light & Magic lead animator Jamy Wheless, who helped Yoda perform in Episode II and the MTV ceremony. Wheless noted that George Lucas made the decision to let Yoda step out of his Star Wars world. "It was his call."

Yoda wasn't the only digital character to win an MTV award and take a virtual step onto the Shrine Auditorium stage that night. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers' star Gollum won MTV's first Best Virtual Performance Award, which, given the list of nominees, implied best animated performance in a live-action film, an award similar to one offered earlier by the Visual Effects Society--also won by Gollum.