SplineDoctors Kahrs interview

Spline Doctor's interview with John Kahrs.

If there are parts of the face that are static and dead, then the audience gets disconnected from the feeling that they are alive. 7 dwarfs have so much S&S in the lower half of the body, and it affects the shapes around the eyes and everything. We have the controls to do it, we just don't always think to put it in.

Like Illusion of Life he says that the characters touching each other really helps add to their believability, when they interact even though it's a pain to animate, we naturally touch each other in life, so just put it in, cuz it adds to the believability.

Puts in eye darts and upper lid change in the blocking. If it goes left to right there's like a 10th of a blink. If the upper lid is sympathetic to what the pupil does it feels really natural.

Sweetland is famous for the drifting spiral settle that comes to the stop. Sweetland's arcs are all like perfect sine waves, so very stylized and clean and stylish, not dirty noise like real life.

mentions that Doug sweetland on Mike wazowski tests would open the eye not all at once. Didn't just slide open, the middle would lead and the sides would follow, so there'd be slight change of shape as it opens, it would feel a little sticky. The audience feels but doesn't see it. Makes sense the bulge of the cornea would affect the shape of the lid as it slides across it, which would affect the 2d shape.

he points out that you can tell a human walk from single point captured in mocap (like the dot on the hips moving in space) or his other example was seeing a flashlight coming towards you in the dark, you know there's a human attached because of how the cone of light moves.