I was leaning the 3D facial expression in my 3D techniques class, we leand how to animation the facial expression, which is including aniamte eyes, mouth, nose, and head angle, then I realised that I am not good at it and I don’t even have enough knowledges with facial expression. So, I try to decide to write this animation performance with faical poses.
I want to focuses on facial performance in 3D animation. It studies how facial features communicate subtext in character performance. Mentioning the subtext is the hidden emotion of a character. It is not directly spoken. It is shown through small visual details. In animation, facial performance plays a key role in this process. Maybe I can stick on specific parts of the face. These include the eyes, eyelids, gaze direction, and blinking. It also looks at the eyebrows and mouth. These elements work together to show emotion.
Among these features, the eyes are especially important. Small changes in eye movement can strongly affect how the audience reads emotion. This suggests that facial animation is not only technical, but also a designed performance system, and analyse how these facial elements are used in 3D animation. It will focus on how subtext is communicated through controlled facial performance.
When I was doing the literature review, I wrote some knowledge about the topic: In the book ‘Animation Character Design‘ by Tom Bancroft, Chapter 2 talks about how the face works : for men, women, and everyone else. It explains how to push a character’s facial expressions and why it’s important to understand the face parts for both humans and animals.
For example, a male human character and an animal character like a dog can share similar features. That’s what anthropomorphic characters are.
- Eyes – When an actor is in a close-up shot, the first thing we look at is their eyes. Then we look at the mouth for emotional clues.
- Eyebrows – If eyes are the windows, eyebrows are the curtains.
- Mouth – It also helps define the expression you want to show.
- Neck – The tilt of the head can say a lot.
- Some animals use their ears to show feelings. Ears up means happy or curious. Ears down means sad or thoughtful.
The eye is surrounded by skin and muscles, so those muscles can give each character a unique eye shape. A lot of the time, we only see less than one-third of the eyeball’s surface. There’s more going on behind it. When the pupil moves along the round eyeball, its shape helps show where the character is looking, then there’s the “zombie eye” which is a blank, lifeless look. Characters rarely use that expression.