From the course: Learning Character Development and Design

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Facial expressions

Facial expressions

From the course: Learning Character Development and Design

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Facial expressions

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- Similar to anatomy, mapping out basic facial expressions through a variety of resources, will lend expressive possibilities for your characters to emote and express him, her, or itself. Facial expressions clue the viewer in to how the character's feeling at a given moment, and guide us to the emotional content of a scene. Capturing believable, resonant expressions is critical to successful character development. Some illustrators rely on memory to capture expressions and personality. Carter Goodrich maintains that he tries to imagine who or what the character or personality of that character is. Success is more likely if he can conjure up the memory of someone he once knew, who might be an interesting fit. Exploring the face of your character, displaying a variety of emotions in sketch form, helps to define who the character is, and how they react to different situations in a story line. Here are three very different character types explored in this way. The facial expressions of…

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