A Peak Inside Cartoon Coach’s Sketchbook – 004
Facial Expressions
From sketchbook to colour, it is super important to practice drawing facial expressions. It becomes obsessively fascinating to learn about facial anatomy like the muscles that control the eyebrows and how they affect all the other muscles and skin surrounding the eyes, when you smile, your cheeks push upwards and invade the area below the eye or the marionette lines around your mouth and how they cradle the chin.
Personally, my favourite part of the “CARTOON” face is playing with spacial displacement in the cheeks and jaw. My knowledge of how much I can stretch and squash that area allows me to apply some fairly exaggerated expressions on my characters’ faces. I love to use the jaw’s hinge so can swing the jaw forward and back, as if it were inspired by a pendulum.
Great animators and Comic Book artists are also good actors. It is important be able to perform the facial expression yourself in order to truly understand the relationship between the different parts of your face when you emote. Taking acting and/or improv classes can be a huge step in the right direction for designing more expressive characters.
Facial expressions on the go!
On the left: a work-in-progress shot of a project I am working on at the moment. On the right: Practical application of strong facial expression development supported by dynamic posing.
I hope you feel inspired to draw every day!
Jay
Head Coach
Cartoon Coach
Derek Laufman
Cartoon Coach