Blog Posts

FACIAL EXPRESSION : Beware Botox!

9/1/2019

Good Grief! Bad GRIEF!

The Key Concept: Expressing true grief requires the whole face to contort. Botox freezes the forehead and negates this expression.

Figures 1 & 2. Here are two photos of two persons experiencing grief; they both exhibit tightly stretched lips and active cheeks. Notice the difference in each person's forehead and eyebrow action; Figure 1 (actress Brooke Shields) looks like she's stifling a smile; Figure 2 (police brutality protester, Ikea Coney) shows a genuine look of painful grief and sadness. What's going on?

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FACIAL EXPRESSION : Emoting Animals II

8/1/2019

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No CROWN for "The Lion King"

THE KEY CONCEPT: The hyper-realistic CGI remake of Disney's "The Lion King" is lacking one essential ingredient - highly expressive faces!

Figure 1: A still from the 2019 CGI remake of "The Lion King." Mufasa is definitely King of the Jungle, proud and expressionless, beside his expressionless offspring, Simba.

The freshly-minted, hyper-realist reissue of "The Lion King" is a magnificent piece of CGI artistry. From the sweeping African landscapes, to the herds of fabulous savanna beasts, to the charming bits of business with little bugs, Lion King 2019 is a tableau of mastery. Congratulations to the teams of character designers, animators, riggers, compositors and everyone else whose talent came together to create this visual masterpiece.

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FACIAL EXPRESSIONS : Emoting Animals

7/1/2019

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SAD Doggy? Smart Doggy!

THE KEY CONCEPT : Scientists have discovered a special muscle that makes dogs look sad. It gives animators permission to apply this pattern to far more faces than just canines.

Figure 1. How can you say "No" to those sad doggy eyes? This is a real photo of a charmingly plaintive dog, not a graphic image of a digital dog created in a CGI studio. Science now tells us that dogs are capable of emoting sadness with a specialized eyebrow muscle no other animal has.

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FACIAL EXPRESSIONS : Anxiety

6/1/2019

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Don't get Panicked about ANXIETY

THE KEY CONCEPT : To depict a particular facial expression, it’s all about the specific pattern of the eyes, the mouth and the brows; everything else is window dressing.

Figure 1: An illustration of "Anxiety" for an article on a genetic mental disorder in the NY Times.

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FACIAL EXPRESSIONS : Faces with only Eyes

5/1/2019

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"Only have EYES for You"

THE KEY CONCEPT : When designing characters with only their eyes visible, their most successful range of expressions is limited to Anger and Sadness.

Figures 1, 2 & 3. What do these 3 stylized characters have in common? They are limited to their eyes alone to express their emotional state. The robot’s expression is highly ambiguous; Spiderman’s obliquely-shaped eye opening appears aggressive; Eve’s expression of Joy, missing her mouth, is handicapped without the addition of body language and sound.

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FACIAL EXPRESSIONS | The Expression of Distress

4/1/2019

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Damsels in DISTRESS

THE KEY CONCEPT: When depicting the facial expression of Distress, 90% of the information is contained in 15% of the face - the rest of the face and the body goes along for the ride.

Figures 1 & 2: Actresses Lori Loughlin (left) Felicity Huffman (right), as depicted by the courtroom artist, Mona Shafer Edwards. Note the very different facial expressions of the two defendants; only one looks distressed,

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FACIAL EXPRESSIONS | Stylized Anger

3/1/2019

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Don't be SAD, get MAD!

THE KEY CONCEPT : The deeper the arc of the frown and the more angled the clip of the eye white, the more menacing the facial expression.

Figure 1: (left) NYC protesters display upside-down Amazon logo "smiles" with added dot "eyes" to express their disapproval of the company's plan to expand their operations to Queens; Figure 2 (right) the author has modified the protesters' signs to create angrier, more threatening, Amazon frowns and eyes.

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FACIAL EXPRESSIONS | Extremely Stylized Faces : Emojis

2/1/2019

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EMOJIS 1 : Anger & Surprise

KEY CONCEPT : Why certain emojis succeed and others fail as expressive faces.

Figure 1: A quick clip of emojis on the web show a variety of artistic interpretations of two of the cardinal facial expressions - Anger & Surprise.

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FACIAL EXPRESSIONS | Top Faigin Posts for 2018

1/1/2019

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The BEST of 2018

2018 in REVIEW : Forget the overjoyed World Cup winners, Winston Churchill's scowl, Martha Stewart's sugary smile and the angry Trump balloon. It was my commentary on three digital movie characters that captivated Faigin FACE BLOG readers. Here's the 2018 line-up of winners, in descending order:

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