A Tutorial On Meatspace I Made For My Patrons Last Year! Making Things Exist In The Same Space Believably

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M16, Pillars of Star Creation

their name means "strong lizard" but I don't see them going to the gym

Deep Blue Eyes by MAJIN DENG

//spiderverse 2 spoilers

Experiments..or not lol

I reaaally like the way you draw faces and expressions, so if you want to share your process I'm here for it 👀👀

Yeah! I made a post a while ago talking about face proportions and such here but I can go into depth about how I do expressions!

I start with a really simple sketch which is usually funnier and way more exaggerated than the end product, for example:

Just like with poses, a lot of it is shapes and angles, and as a general rule in art, things that contrast help things feel dynamic! So the eye line contrasts with the mouth line or eyebrow line etc etc. And even the eyes usually differ from each other with one being more squinted or open. It's very cartoony but I like it :)

And the eye mask is a shape that can help you plan where eyes and eyebrows will go. Here's a thread on twitter about it since it explains it better than me. My eyes generally aren't as round and a bit more angular but the eye mask still helps plan how squished or stretched the eye area should be.

Different expressions obviously call for different things. Eyebrows are really helpful for this because just slightly turning them up or down can make totally different vibes. More serious expressions will probably have more wrinkles or tightness in the face, or more tightly knitted eyebrows, while relaxed ones will sit naturally just above the eyes. Also I just default towards the one eyebrow up + smirk combo because it's just too good okay I can see why dreamsworks throws every character into this expression for their posters T-T

Here is an example timelapse !!!!!!!!!!

So yeah, I'd also study expression sheets like those of Spiderverse (Especially Ami Thompson and Shiyoon Kim who did the sheet below for Gwen in the first movie) bc they are great to study from!!! As you can see the face shape also changes and features like her nose or mouth scrunch up. I usually focus on squishing/stretching the eyes but doing the same for the rest of the face is something I wanna work on too to make expressions more fun :)

Art by Minji Kim

Vampire knight by LUOLIN

Art by Leonardo Vincent