So let's have a close-up look at the expression
tests I created for the character Rain.
This will be less of a tutorial and more of a
walk-through or guide on how to achieve these
expressions in a believable and appealing way.
We already went over the smile, but I also created a mild version before that with
less mouth movement and upwards movement on
the brows instead of them kind of contracting inwards.
This upwards movement is coming from the frontalis
muscle that is covering most of the forehead.
This way we have just the lower eyelid pushing up.
Overall, this smile looks much more relaxed and can be held for much longer.
For the open smile, it's mostly the same as the one we did in the previous video.
The obvious difference is that the lips won't touch.
Here again, it becomes very important that
the upper lip is pretty much a straight line.
This is due to the levator muscle, which is pulling on the lips as well.
The teeth can rest against the lower lip so that there isn't
much of an opening or they can at least be close to the teeth.
The open mouth also comes a bit from the jaw rotation, so make sure to use the shape
key you created before to open the mouth slightly.
Blending the shape keys together to create
new expressions is going to be very helpful.
Another thing to keep in mind when closing the eyes
a bit is that the apex of the eyelid stays the same.
The apex is essentially the turning point of the arc on any of the two eyelids.
It's definitely important to keep the lower eyelid from becoming a convex line.
At most, the lower eyelid is becoming straight
with two additional small corners to push it further upwards.
The laugh expression is definitely more tricky
because it's a very aggressive version of an open smile.
This sort of expression definitely works better as an animation instead of a still
image, since the expression is inherently kind of painful.
This is the sort of expression that will make
your face hurt if you keep it up too long.
The muscle movement of the zygomaticus really gets pushed
to the limit, so the mouth corners move pretty far.
The lips roll in even more because of the
tension and upwards movement and the distance
from the upper lip to the nose becomes even smaller.
The muscles around the eyes, like the orbicularis
oculi, are also pushed further and the eyes
become way more close than before, really contracted.
With all that flash from the cheeks moved upwards, the lower eyelids are moving up
quite a bit but are still at most flat with two corners that point downwards.
The combined downwards movement of the brows
and upwards movement of the cheeks and the
nose sneer cause one crease or more to form on the nose bridge with added volume.
The same happens in the space between the eyes and ears.
Make sure to bulge them a little bit with the inflate
brush to get that increase in volume in there.
There's also the depressor supercili or supercili
and corrugator or in short we're just going to reference it as the corrugator that
moves the center of the brows more downwards and inwards.
This muscle is generally responsible for the downwards movement of the brows.
It's also important that it will always move
on both sides of the face at the same time
so it's naturally very hard to raise one eyebrow while pushing the center down.
So a tip is to always see both eyebrows as a single connected line.
There should be no visible break between them where one eyebrow is really moving
up at the center and the other one is really moving down
because it will look like the muscles got ripped apart.
Just try it yourself in front of a mirror to raise
one eyebrow while pushing down the other one.
No matter how crazy you move them you can't really disconnect them.
The brows moving inwards and downwards creates a
crease that forms around the corner of the eyebrows.
The jaw rotates probably even further which shows more of the inner mouth.
Just make sure that the brows and jaw stay relatively consistent in their shape
with only a little bit of removed or added volume.
Especially on the brows it can be very easy to accidentally create a neanderthal
version of your character or accidentally push in the
bone structure which makes the face look super elastic.
If we look at the reference photos again we can see the
difference between a regular open smile and a full on laugh.
The muscles get generally pushed further and the creases deepen.
What can also happen is that the upper lip gets pushed
even higher to reveal more gums instead of just the teeth.
For the angry expression it's not too different since some similar muscles are used.
So let's dissect the individual aspects of the angry look in the reference.
The most important thing is of course the eyebrows.
The corrugator again moves the middle section of the eyebrows down and inwards
which creates the slight V-shape to the eyebrows.
Don't overdo the V-shape though since you might end up with very Jack Nicholson
looking eyebrows where the outer parts are being pushed upwards.
Move the entire eyebrows down with an emphasis on the section between both of them.
With that downwards movement there is a bunching up of flesh between the eyes
which gets even stronger due to the sneer by the LL-SEN.
This sneer is also pulling up the nose wings and
the lips again which is very visible this time.
The cheeks also get pushed up a little bit
which is pronouncing the crease below the lower eyelids.
Overall there is a lot of compression happening around the eyes
which is also increasing the amount of volume in the area.
The sneer and chin upwards movement by the LL-SEN
and mentalis are really pushing up the lips.
When this is also pulling on the skin around the jaw and cheek
and with the strong pulling by the mentalis on
the chin we get these noticeable dots forming.
This is because the muscle is directly connected to the skin
around the chin and is pulling on it to push up the area.
When looking at the mouth from the side view
it's also noticeable how the lower lip gets
pushed forward slightly overlapping the upper lip.
Since the upper lips get pushed up so much
it creates an increase in volume so the upper lip bulges outwards a bit more.
Looking at Rainn's angry expression we can see a lot of the same movement.
Notable differences are that I pushed up the
lower eyelids to make them straight lines again.
I also pulled on the so called risorius muscle to exaggerate the frowning more.
So the lips are being pushed up in the centre by the mentalis
and the corners are pulled to the side and downwards by the risorius.
Looking at Rainn's lips from the side
we can see that clear forwards push by the lower lip.
I also rolled the lips inwards a little bit more
to exaggerate the motion and make the lips thinner.
To exaggerate this even more you could rotate the jaw
a little bit inwards to make her bite down even harder
and compress the entire lower area of the face.
Just don't overdo it though
since you don't want to make it look like the
teeth are breaking or they're too elastic.
It's bones clashing on bones after all.
Another interesting tip is to communicate the angry eyebrows well.
Make the middle section of the eyebrows overlap the eyes themselves slightly.
So you can see here that the eyelids are closing in to make the eyes narrower.
But the eyebrows are moving down so much that they overlap the eyes too.
Moving on to the angry shout from here.
It's basically a similar evolution as with the smile to the laughing expression.
A lot of the muscles, especially around the eyes, get pushed to their limit.
Notable differences are the open mouth by the jaw
rotation but also the increased pull on the risorius
to get even more of that frown in the mouth.
On the reference we can see the effect that the muscle can have on the neck as well.
It's essentially pulling not on the mouth corner.
but from slightly more in the middle which causes the wide arc on the lower lip.
This muscle goes all the way to the neck
which causes these pulled out lines and extra creases that moves towards the neck.
You can also vary how much teeth you want to show.
The more teeth, the more aggressive.
For Rain I decided to show a lot of upper teeth but not so far as to show the gums.
The lower teeth I hid almost completely behind
the lower lip which is pushing against them a lot.
If there's one thing I'd like to change afterwards
is that I was pulling much more on the mouth corner
than the lower lip with the risorius which is causing this strange corner to happen.
Remember to also pull on the ears
whenever you get that strong muscle movement from the zygomaticus, for example.
There are some muscles that weren't mentioned or used much so far.
This is why testing the full range of expressions
or at least most of them, is so important.
With the worried expression we get to use the frontalis
much more which is the big muscle along the forehead.
This muscle is essentially two muscles on each
side of the face that can be pulled independently.
This gives us more freedom to move our eyebrows in a variety of ways.
So you are always able to either move the middle section on both sides, upwards
or the outer section on either side independently or all together.
For this expression we just need the middle part of the muscle.
We can couple this with the inwards and downwards movement
by the corrugator which hinders the upwards movement a bit
but causes some creases to form in the middle.
The frontalis can't do this by itself
since it is pulling slightly sideways in the opposite direction.
You can really feel that tension in your forehead
when using both these muscles at the same time.
In the reference there is also more going on at the forehead.
There is actually a muscle that wraps all around the scalp
that is being used to push the hair forward and backward.
To open the mouth we can simply rotate the jaw a bit
but it also helps to pull a tiny bit on the risorius
to get some more frowning from the mouth corner.
You can also add a little bit of a sneer with the LL-SEN
depending on how much you want to exaggerate the expression.
On Rain's expression I did move the upper lip
upwards a bit which is in hindsight incorrect.
but I do recommend to keep the lower lip relatively
straight and have the upper lip as an arc.
In this expression it also becomes pretty obvious
why I split the eyebrows into three sections.
Each section is generally connected to specific muscle movements
and it's generally pretty appealing to have that division visible.
We can start creating variations from the worried expression.
The first branch of expressions that we can do
is a sad and maybe even a crying expression.
For the sad expression you essentially keep the motion around the eyes
but you increase the sneer and up movement on the cheeks.
Remember to keep the lower eyelid as a straight line
with two additional corners on the sides if you need to push it up even more.
Pushing these areas around the eyes also increases the,
well, creases and as always when pushing up the cheeks.
make sure that the volumes stay consistent while they shift around.
One big difference from the previous expression is the mouth movement.
Also I definitely over-exaggerated the expression a bit.
It doesn't really seem genuine here
but the mentalis is once again pushing up the lips
and if you want to purse the lips a little bit you can add that too.
This is basically caused by a muscle called the orbicularis aureus
which is going around the lips and kind of contracts them together
in the same way the orbicularis oculi does around the eyes.
This muscle is mainly used when doing for example a kiss mouth
and remember that these two muscles are
essentially like pulling the cords on a hoodie.
That's at least a nice way of remembering it.
On Rain's expression you can see the same pursing of the lips
by the orbicularis aureus and upwards pushing by the mentalis.
This usually also causes the lips to roll a bit inwards.
I can also recommend to pull on the risorius again
to get that exaggerated frown in there as well.
For a crying expression it's basically the same step
as with going from the open smile to laughing.
You push the same muscles to the limit
and make the expression look more painful and more emotional.
Adding extra objects for tears can also be a very nice indicator to add
which I did do for the expression tests on the Spring open movie.