SH1648

Cartoon Fundamentals: Creating Facial Expressions

I. Behavior of the Human Face
· Allows for various expressions.
· Derived from the combined action of several muscles and relaxing of the opposite
muscles.
· Can be made to act on different intensity levels for their corresponding level of an
expression (such as smiling, chuckling, or loudly laughing).

II. Primary Emotions

· Emotions where people don’t have enough control on how they originate.
· A kind of emotion that doesn’t have a correct direction.
· Considered as universal and can be expressed regardless of culture, race or age.
· May come on suddenly, such as being a response to a primary stimulus (pain,
surprise, a threat, etc.).
· Can be mixed together to create secondary emotions. For example, to build a sleepy
expression, we took the eyebrows from the happiness expression and mixed with the
almost closed eyes of the sadness.
· Consists of six (6) emotions:
1. Happiness: Mouth curved upwards - higher eyebrows - eyes wide open
2. Anger: Mouth curved downward - eyebrows with the tip slightly lower down - eyes
wide open
3. Scared: Mouth erratically curved down, higher eyebrows with irregularly shaped -
eyes wide open
4. Sadness: Mouth curved downward; eyebrows with the tip slightly up - eyes with
lower eyelids
5. Astonished: Small and semi-open mouth - higher eyebrows with irregular shaped
- eyes wide open
6. Shucks: Mouth erratically curved down, lower eyebrows with the tip down - eyes
closed

III. Family Emotions

· Emotions which build similar emotions by changing only one component of the face,
finding another emotion in the process.
· Altering a single element of the face can create two different expressions.
· Can create tertiary emotions similar to how primary emotions create secondary
emotions.

IV. Physical State Emotions

· Uses a concept very similar to primary emotions but can also assume several,
unpredictable forms.
· Can be enhanced by adding a complementary element (such as perspiration drops,
tears, blood, etc.).
· Can be used to exaggerate expressions that cannot be controlled or expressed
normally in real life.

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V. Intensity and Additional Elements

· Suggests that cartoon facial expressions are not just limited to a specific degree of
intensity.
· Depending on intensity, artists can create very interesting results.
· Additional elements can also be insert to enhance emotions.
· Top-down angles give an inferiority effect while bottom-up angles makes characters a
more threatening atmosphere for the character.
· Can be used in combination with expressions to make characters more expressive.

VI. Changing the Angles

· Used to achieve more impact on expressions.
· Achieved by setting the viewer at an angle he or she is not accustomed to look at.
· The uncomfortable positioning makes scenes and characters more dynamic.

References:
· EnvatoTuts – Cartoon Fundamentals: Create Emotions From Simple Changes in the
Face (n.d.). Retrieved at September 8, 2016 at
http://design.tutsplus.com/articles/cartoon-fundamentals-create-emotions-from-
simple-changes-in-the-face--vector-16278.

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