Character Design | 10 | Expressions

To animate a character, I've gotta have a good idea of what facial expressions he would pull in different situations.

I drew a neutral face on paper, it sounds easy, but i had to make this neutral face look convincing and believe and also not make him look to goofy and silly.
The neutral face (can be seen in the bottom image *click to enlarge*) looks boring, but it will emphasize the more exaggerated expressions he will pull once hes in his imagination.

I wrote down loads of different expressions, and picked out a few which i thought are 'classic' facial expressions. I then took pictures of me pulling these expressions (i really tried to exaggerate my face, so i can pick up on how the cheek looks when smiling, or what the eyebrows look like when angry.

I scaned in the neutral face and stuffed it into photoshop and made duplicates, the neutral face will also be used as the 'master head' so that the size stays the same in all the other expressions.

so, this is my work space, looking at me on one side and encorprating it into malcolm's face on the other.

I also decided to think about colour as well, I don't plan on colouring the animation in, but I still want to know what he would look like in colour. (I saved the swatches I used, so i can go back to them at any time on any computer, plus i named them so i done have to remember!)

One thing that i do, is i tend to play it safe with colour. For example, i wanted to have the nose a different colour to liven his face up a bit, so i chose a really simmaler colour to his skin...but a tiny bit darker. It looked really boring and non adventurouse.

What colours do famouse character have to make them intresting?

Here's ren and stimpy, look at stimpy's nose, its in total contrast to the rest of his colour pallet.

Mines not that extrem, but I pushed myself to choose a colour that is away from the skin colour, i think it works well.

Also, the eye lids are a different colour :)

Here's the finished piece.

Next, Profile Sheet!