This week, we went through facial poses and the fundamental principles of making them look organic rather than robotic. A major takeaway was the importance of asymmetry; while spontaneous emotions might be symmetrical, voluntary expressions benefit from intentional offsets to break the “mirror trap” and enhance appeal. We also explored connectivity, which ensures the face moves as a single unit through chain reactions. For example, a raised corner of the mouth should naturally raise the cheek and squint the lower eyelid. Furthermore, we learned to prioritise graphic shapes over generic symbols, specifically avoiding the “football shape” for eyes and mouths to create more dynamic expressions. Maintaining volume is essential to prevent a character from appearing to collapse; any compression in one area must be offset by a corresponding bulge or displacement elsewhere. Practical tips included treating eyebrows as a fluid line, with the tips always connecting, and being mindful that lid shaping should support eye direction to indicate energy levels. Ultimately, the goal is to keep the designs “simple and stupid” to ensure maximum readability and appeal.
During Friday’s class, we attempted to do Stitch’s tea party, following Ting’s step-by-step constraints. I really enjoyed this demonstration and the follow-along because seeing the entire process in real time made the logic behind each constraint and parent,making it clearer than watching a video. We followed her workflow closely, but she emphasised that animators have their way of constraining and that there isn’t a single “correct” method, which took some pressure off. I successfully achieved Stitch having his tea party and was really pleased with the result as a learning exercise; it felt like a concrete win after struggling with constraints the previous week.
Here’s my Stitch:
For the heavy object planning, I received some feedback. Ting liked the core idea but felt I was overcomplicating it with too many constraints and too much change in the movement, in the sense that I’m sitting down, then standing, then walking… She suggested simplifying the setup by choosing either sitting or standing and building the performance from there, which would give me more room to focus on clarity and weight rather than jiggling staging changes. To move foward, I recorded a new standing reference and started blocking from that.
This is my new reference:
This reference is stronger than the previous one; however, while blocking, I realised I’m still overcomplicating things. The clip is almost 40 secs and around 600 frames, so it is unrealistic to fully block everything at this stage for a 12-second brief. I focused on clocjing the most important key poses across the animation and then began adding in-betweens, but I wasn’t able to finish the blocking pass. This made it clear that I need to be more precise and keep it simpler…
As for facials, we were asked to do 5 facial poses following an animation model sheet. I chose Coco as a reference and tried to capture some of the expressiveness in Miguel’s facial shapes. It was my first time properly working on facials, and although I found it difficult, especially adapting my ideas to the limitations and quirks of the rig, I actually enjoyed the process. I still feel I wasn’t fully able to “play” with the rig to get the results I wanted, but I’m proud of these first attempts and can already see how applying asymmetry, connectivity, and volume will help me push future facial work further.
