Good point about the lighting and backgrounds. I heard that Pixar had to 'cartoon' the oceans in Finding Nemo as they looked to real, but now they seem quite happy with super realistic backgrounds eg. Up, Brave and Monster's University.

On the subject of the motion capture people - what about Avatar? I haven't seen the movie myself but it was a huge box office hit. I guess maybe the blue people looked so weird anyway that it didn't freak people out.