You've been there before. Face to face with a friend. You ask her how she's doing. She says "fine." But you know she's lying.
How is this relevant to creating animations? It's extraordinarily relevant!
The reason you know she's lying, despite her words directing you to the contrary conclusion, is that her facial expression is telling you. Sure, words can speak the truth, but they are also the most easily manipulated form of communication people rely on. Facial expressions, on the other hand, rarely lie. Even the most practiced people in the art of deception have difficulty getting away with false expressions forever.
As you begin to animate, you'll need to be able to draw convincing expressions on the faces you're drawing. Characters brought to life require human qualities to be mentally and emotionally resonant with your audience. Many people are quick to identify a disconnect between the story you're trying to tell and the visuals they're actually seeing. That disconnect can be a huge burden on you, especially if you've worked so hard to get everything else right. Below, we'll go over some critical tips designed to help you create animations with authentic expressions of emotion. Technique at this stage is less crucial than the need to convey the correct emotion or feeling.
Step 1: Find a place to draw where you can easily erase parts of your work and refill the missing spaces. A pad of paper and a pencil with an eraser can work, but is less than ideal, as eraser marks can become problematic with relentless erasing. A dry erase marker board is the most useful tool, as it's easy to wipe away mistakes, so you can quickly correct a facial expression you've drawn that isn't quite perfect.
Step 2: Attempt to draw three of the most basic emotions portrayed on human face. Start with 'happiness,' then move on to 'anger' and 'sadness.' This part of the process can be a bit tedious, but keep drawing faces with these emotions, over and over again. What you're doing is building up versatility. After you've drawn two hundred angry faces, you'll have drawn enough variations of them to always be able to pull the 'right' angry face out of your pocket and use it in an animation.
Step 3: Now that's you've gotten the basics of the three major emotions down, attempt to transition from one to the other. Being able to accurately portray a transformation from a happy face to a sad one can help you convey deeper emotions underlying your overarching story. Moving from happy to sad can be poignant, and this can help set your animation apart.
Step 4: Expand. Move on past the basic three emotional expressions, and draw everything from an insane face to a depressed face. The minute details here, such as the small variation between a sad face and a depressed face, can help you capture in your art even the most detailed facial expressions. Limiting yourself to sad, angry, and happy won't get you very far in the end.
If you're looking for a visual guide to help you draw your first basic facial expressions, this guide to 50 facial expressions can help. Looking for a drawing space where you can easily erase your mistakes, as recommended in Step 1? Try picking up a dry erase board, though you can always fall back to pencil and paper if you have to.
No comments:
Post a Comment