How To Show Expression With The Mouth!

How to show expression with the mouth!

This was a request and at first I wasn’t sure if I had anything to provide with, but as it turn out it got a little longer than I expected because there were actually things I had to say!! Wow!! 

Anyway, this is some guidelines I follow when I try to make the face expressfull, more specifically the mouth! It is often neglected, since it’s actually pretty hard, I’ll admit. But I’m here to help (hopefully…)! A mouth expression tutorial as per request. Enjoy and hopefully it will help some a little. ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ

Draw the teeth at the right angle. 

This is super important. The upper jaw follows the angle of the head, and the lower jaw will depend on how open it is. Make sure you have a rough estimate of where the teeth are, and how much of them you’re going to see!

The lips will VERY roughly follow the same angle as the teeth. It really depends on the character, but it gives you a sense at least. 

If you DON’T do this, you’re going to lose so much volume and the mouth is going to end up looking unrelatable. I showed this example in this tutorial:

It’s not just the lips! 

The cheeks, chin, and tongue play a role too! 

Try look at your own mouth or references! I have a very pliable and large mouth, so that’s one reason why my characters have it too lmao.

ASYMMETRYYYYY (ง ͠° ͟ل͜ ͡°)ง

I cannot emphasize how important asymmetry is when drawing expressions. It applies not only to the eyebrows to achieve the Dreamwork Face™, but also the mouth. Seriously if you draw a symmetric mouth I will deliver myself to your mailbox and then shout at you until you fix it. 

Look at the difference between these two for example: which one has more “life”? 

I think you get the idea.

Push and squish - give it flow

Here’s an old drawing I have but it illustrates how I think when I squish the mouth, and use folding and wrinkles to my advantage.

Look at your own face and see where skin bundles up, where it creases the most and when bumps appear on your chin. Subtle details makes all the difference! 

One VERY effective detail is illustrated in the first sketch, where I pull upwards on one side, and downwards on the other. That’s a good detail to use when the character is making a skewed expression, or is extremely frustrated. I encourage you to play around with that concept bc it’s ~super effective~!

EXAMPLES:

Happy: Your entire mouth is pushed upwards, not just the corners of your mouth!

I tend to draw a :3 mouth bc I’ve been drawing Lance too much….. You don’t have to but it’s basically imprinted in my motor memory by now. 

Pouting/frowning: corners are pushed down, middle pushed slightly up. Sometimes, there’s a slight dip in the middle too. It can give a sense that the character is biting their lips.

Showing frustration/intimidating/is intimidated: basically showing a lot of teeth. The corners are as open as possible and the middle sorta more squished. An extremely important detail here is showing some of the gums, and open space between the cheeks and teeth. That way it looks like the mouth it open to it’s full potential. Here is also where you basically MUST add folds and bumps, or else it’s not going to look relatable. 

(Here I am again with the pulling upwards on one side and downwards on the other, as illustrated on the last sketch)

And then again, here’s just another doodle showing how important it is to show the gums. It’s the same face twice, but the second one looks slightly more frustrated doesn’t it?

(from my other tutorial on how to draw facial expressions)

As you can see, this last one is very versatile and I draw it a lot. Play around with the basic shape and see how much subtle details makes a lot of difference! 

That’s it! 

I hope that cleared some things up and was somewhat helpful! Enjoy drawing ✨

Ahaha Someone asked me for some tips on how I draw simple muscles. Unfortunately, my inbox glitched on me again and that message was no where to be seen. I apologize to that person who sent me it and, hopefully, I can make it up to you with this.

This is a short and simple tutorial.

I just use basic shapes that goes well together. Mainly, these two shapes, oblong and square, when I draw big characters.

The arm muscles are basically like big curves to me.

Apply this with a line of action and this is what you get.

Your muscles don’t necessarily have to be big. They could be slim, long, round and etc.  This could also work really well if you have the basic anatomy down, but don’t stress about it. Just simplify them as much as you can without stressing over perfect details.

some little notes i wrote out last night regarding shape language and how it informs my design choices. shapes are rad

Tuesday Tip - Wrist Control An expressive hand gesture can be the exclamation point to a nice pose or gesture. We tend to forget how much mobility can be achieved through the wrist. Here’s a reminder of a few different ways the wrist can bend and twist, allowing for even more expressive poses. -norm #tuesdaytips #grizandnorm #norm #wristcontrol

Storyboarding Trick?

In storyboards you can’t animate out everything but for a demo reel or a short motion where you want the movements to ‘flow’ better there is a certain trick you can try on programs on Storyboard Pro or Photoshop. 

Lets start with this:

This is just a rough board snippet of a guy punching air. It feels kind of choppy. It is made up of 8 unique drawings. 

But if you take a drawing of the punching guy and using the select tool you transform skew/translate/rotate/ certain parts of his body you can get this:

And the timeline looks like this: 

But I didnt draw any more unique drawings because I just slightly modified the existing 8 unique drawings. Transform an arm slightly and that is enough to fool the brain into bridging that big gap between two animation frames. Even moving the arm slightly down like in the picture below is enough to get this effect. 

In Photoshop just use the lasso tool and transform the selection but the vector drawings on SB Pro make this a lot easier. 

***For actual production work I would not try this because boards are always scrapped or changed and trying this can lead to frustration down the pipeline during the revision stage.

If you want to try this out just for fun or for your portfolio demo reel I highly suggest trying it out since if done just right they can really make your boards flow better panel to panel. Have fun!

Lineart: Line Weight guide.

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