Hello, my name is Extreme Natto.

Today I will be explaining how to add facial animation, mainly from a directing perspective.

How to draw the head itself

About the base head

Now, the main focus of this TIPS is on directing, but it's a good idea to have a proper understanding of the head, which you'll be putting expressions on, in 3D.

You can use Clip Studio Paint's 3D head model, but if you draw it by hand, you can understand it more accurately as an object, which means it will be easier to animate, so we'll take this opportunity to also show you how to draw it.

There are various ways to draw a head, but I like to use this method.

 

The head can be thought of as a structure in which the face is attached like a mask to the skull, which contains the brain.

Draw the sphere of the skull, carve out the temples, and then add the face.

This way you can draw the head at any angle.

In particular, understanding the three-dimensional curve of the eyeball = the three-dimensional curve of the eyelid will make it easier to draw the expressions of the eyes later, and will help speed up your work and improve the quality later on.

Getting a rough idea of the area from the brow bone, where the eyebrows grow, to the forehead will help guide you in drawing expressions in that area.

Whether to move the jaw

I'll mention this first because if you want to move the jaw, you'll need to prepare it first, such as by separating the parts for the animation.

 

Normally, when you move your mouth, such as when talking, the jaw will naturally move as well, but when depicting the movements of boys and girls at an age where they still have a sense of innocence in anime (especially in a Japanese context), even if the mouth moves, the jaw movement is often omitted.

Jaw movement is not something people pay much attention to in the first place, and in many cases it is better to omit it in order to reduce the amount of work required.

 

However, this is only when it comes to the mouth movements that occur when speaking normally.

In screaming scenes, it can sometimes be better to move the jaw.

 

Jaws are generally more developed in men than in women, and in adults than in children, so animation that shows this movement is a special expression that gives a masculine, mature, or powerful impression.

So that's all for today's explanation of jaw movement in the anime.

Closed eyes expression

Usually, when people close their eyes, they tend to think that only the upper eyelid moves and closes.

However, at this time, the lower eyelid also moves upwards to some extent and closes.

So…

When character A closes their eyes, it doesn't become B.

Taking into account the slightly exaggerated movement of the lower eyelids due to manga and anime-like deformations, closing the eyes at a height of about C will give a more natural expression.

That said, whether to choose B or C is up to the artist's sense, but with a design with large eyes like in manga, closing only the upper eyelids can give the impression of there being too much space above the eyes, so I would go with C.

Based on the above, animation production

Now it's time to actually create facial expressions in animation, and you can either create them by hand, frame by frame, or use keyframe transformations.

For the purposes of this explanation, the method doesn't matter as long as each feature fits neatly into the three-dimensional form of the face without any inconsistencies.

In either case, the important thing is to accurately grasp the three-dimensional form of the face.

 

This time I'll be doing it by hand using Clip Studio Paint's functions.

Layer Composition

This animation is only about facial expressions, so it has a simple structure like this, with animation folders for the eyebrows, eyes, and mouth placed between the base face and hair.

Once you have finished drawing the line art and arranging it on the timeline, you can copy the entire folder and place it below, which will create a timeline structure that can be used for coloring as is.

Eyelid closing and opening speed

The reflex and speed with which a person closes their eyelids

is so fast that even an untrained amateur with no martial arts experience can close their eyelids in response to a boxer's punch.

However, the speed at which they open is not so fast.

So here's a natural-looking blinking animation...

It's fine to switch from open to closed instantly without any intermediate steps.

Of course, you can also choose to close the frame a little more slowly, so use different techniques depending on the expression or emotion you want to convey.

Reusing tops

When creating a repetitive action in animation, such as blinking or lip-syncing, it is common to reuse the same frame.

As you can see, there are multiple layers with the same name pasted on the timeline, and this is how Clip Studio Paint manages the animation frames.

This is how blinking and lip-syncing are depicted.

Blinking is a "build-up"

This is the stage where the animation has been created down to the line drawing stage.

Now, some of you may have noticed this, but

When there is a change, it is separated by a blink.

 

There is something called "pause" in all anime movements, not just in facial expressions.

Look at this, for example.

Notice how he bends slightly just before being startled.

Without this, it looks like this.

It will look a little abrupt.

 

A real person's sudden startled movement would not have this kind of pause, but because anime is meant to be watched by an audience, frames like this are inserted to make it easier to understand, and to give the viewer a sense of dynamism and rhythm.

 

And when animating using facial expressions alone, blinking is the perfect way to take on the role of this "pause."

If you keep this in mind, in addition to blinking at a natural frequency, your animation will look better.

Finish

Color it and it's finished.

As mentioned above, you can simply copy the completed anime line art folder and use it for coloring, so remember that.

 

That's all for this TIPS.

Please use this as a reference when creating your own facial expression animations.