Overview
In this lesson, we have learned the role and importance of emoticons in animation and how to add emoticons to animated characters. Then we chose a theme to create our own character expressions.
Theory
1. How to make facial acting
Creating natural and credible emotions is necessary to create believable animation. Facial expressions can add a great deal of drama to the scene and create an interest in the people watching the animated film.
Make Character Facial Expressions in Animation More Expressive
It is important to create eye and head movement preparations before creating the body movement itself. The eyes should move first because they are responsible for the upcoming body movement and are the window to the character’s soul, thoughts, and emotions. But that doesn’t mean we draw the expression first, we still have to sort out the body language of an animated character first.
Next is the head movement. If this animation principle is not implemented and the body moves in front of the head and eyes, the action will not appear to be initiated by the character, but by some other force, contrary to the character’s original idea.
2. Seven Universal Emotions in Facial Expressions
They are: Happiness, Anger, Fear, Sadness, Surprise, Pain and Disgust.
- 1. Happiness: Mouth curved upwards – higher eyebrows – eyes wide open;
- 2. Anger: Mouth curved downward – eyebrows with the tip slightly lower down – eyes wide open;
- 3. Fear: Mouth erratically curved down, higher eyebrows with irregularly shaped – eyes wide open;
- 4. Sadness: Mouth curved downward; eyebrows with the tip slightly up – eyes with lower eyelids;
- 5. Surprise: Small and semi-open mouth – higher eyebrows with irregularly shape – eyes wide open;
- 6. Pain: Slightly opened mouth in an uneven shape and the eyebrows are drawn together with the inner ends up and the outer ends down.
- 7. Disgust: Eyebrows pulled down, nose wrinkled, upper lip pulled up, lips loose.
My Exercise
In this exercise, I took the reference of myself first and made some thumbnails, which can make sure the silhouette of my keyframe looks great.
Before starting to draw expressions, accurate body animation is the basis of this exercise. After that, using what I learned in class, I thought carefully about what different expressions should look like in different emotions, the angle and height of the eyebrows and the opening and closing of the eyes are all things that need to be taken into account.
When the whole animation was almost done, I added some body bouncing and a section of blinking as appropriate. This can make my animation more vivid.
Reflection
Good facial expression is the soul of a character, and there is no doubt about its place in animation. But the correct body language is an important prerequisite for making character expressions. Therefore, when we make animation, we need to combine both of them, and should not only focus on one hand.