In the image below, you can see an expression sheet that is composed of 8 varying expressions, ranging from a gentle smile to show that the person is happy to gasping with wide eyes to show that the person is shocked. Additionally, I wanted to challenge myself to include elements from the past weeks into this project to further reinforce and practice my skills.
INSPIRATION
My inspiration for this piece came from the online Dungeons and Dragons show Critical Role, which I have been a fan of since around August 2017. The show is interesting, as the cast of Critical Role are professional voice actors who are very active in the Games Industry. As an example of some of the cast’s work, Ashley Johnson is the voice of Ellie Williams in Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us series, Laura Bailey is the voice of Abby Anderson in The Last of Us Part II and recently became Polina Petrova in Call of Duty: Vanguard and Matthew Mercer is the voice of the Overwatch character Cole Cassidy, who originally was named McCree.
As the voice actors are roleplaying as their characters, there have been moments throughout the history of the show that I decided to reference for the expression sheet. The various reactions to events that happened within the show made for good reference material for character expressions, as the reactions ranged from small and subtle to the extreme, which would allow for me to practice expression work further.
(Critical Role, 2021d)
(Critical Role, 2021a)
(Critical Role, 2021f)
(Critical Role, 2021e)
EXPLANATION
As the main cast of Critical Role has 8 people in it, I had 8 opportunities to practice drawing a range of different expressions. I started by gathering various shots and images of the cast members, aiming to have a variety of expressions to replicate, ranging from simple expressions such as having the face relaxed in a neutral manner, with their facial muscles relaxed to more challenging expressions such as someone shouting, which can create squash and stretch on the cheeks and the eyes.
A tutorial that I did reference when gathering my reference material was Toniko Pantoja’s “Drawing Genuine Facial Expressions (Part1)” on YouTube, which raised the point that human expressions can be simplified down into a respective emoji (Pantoja, 2020). When I was looking at my reference material, I checked that I could see their various emotions in a simpler format, such as how worry sees the eyebrows furrow and the mouth slightly open.
Once I had gathered my reference material, I progressed to blocking out a rough form for each of the drawings, which would act as a framework for the body. I wanted to include the upper torso in the drawing as I felt that it would allow me to further practice aspects of anatomy that I had learnt from my last project whilst also making the drawings have an element of life to them. I did briefly experiment with how the drawings would look if the drawing was only the head and the neck visible, yet personally found the drawings to be better with the inclusion of the chest and arms.
From this, I then started to create the final drawings for the expressions over the initial framework, which would have cleaner linework in comparison to the rough block outs that I had made. I focused on the expression that each person was making first, and translated this over to my drawing aiming to make it as accurate to the source that I could, then created additional features such as the person’s hair, clothes and any additional elements that could be seen in the image, such as a watch, necklace or the design of their top.
Furthermore, I decided to further bring the drawings to life by rendering them, which would help me to practice and solidify shading techniques. I decided to approach rendering the drawings through the use of layering colours, experimenting with varying opacity and fill percentages and through the use of Photoshop’s blending modes, namely multiply, to add to the outlines.
With the expressions “Ecstatic/Overjoy”, “Rage” and “Neutral”, I added reddening to the skin by replicating the same technique that I had done on my Anatomy and Character Design project. As the reference images show that there were areas of the head that were redder than the rest of any visible skin, I created a new layer with red colouring to mask over the already existing colours whilst editing the opacity and the fill of the layer to replicate this effect.
OUTCOME
I’m relatively happy with this piece, as I rarely practice areas such as these for my own personal projects. I was able to successfully create 8 different expressions that ranged from being relatively neutral, such as having a soft smile that has very minimal squash and stretch on the face to the polar opposite, such as someone shouting.
If I were to make improvements to the piece, I would potentially look at creating varying levels of expressions. As an example, having a happy expression can range from a simple smile that shows no teeth, with the face in a relatively relaxed manner to a full grin that has the cheek muscles affect the eyes, which could have potentially been done for this piece.
Reference Material:
Critical Role (2021a) A MOOD | @Critical_Role | Instagram. www.instagram.com. Available online: https://www.instagram.com/p/CK5Q0d7BYyH/ [Accessed 14 Dec. 2021].
Critical Role (2021b) Campaign 3 Opening Title | It’s Thursday Night (Critical Role Theme). www.youtube.com. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kpdh5S9myc4 [Accessed 14 Dec. 2021].
Critical Role (2021c) Grelnok’s Skull is now open for business! | @Critical_Role | Instagram. www.instagram.com. Available online: https://www.instagram.com/p/CVg72gQJFJ7/ [Accessed 14 Dec. 2021].
Critical Role (2021d) Growing Bonds and Teasing Threads | Critical Role | Campaign 3, Episode 6. YouTube. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBeyMyMzQWg&t=.
Critical Role (2021e) On the Trail of a Killer | Critical Role | Campaign 3, Episode 4. www.youtube.com. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ7u5NE_q4k [Accessed 14 Dec. 2021].
Critical Role (2021f) Playing the Long Game #Shorts #CriticalRole. www.youtube.com. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhYdG7WbBJw [Accessed 14 Dec. 2021].
Critical Role (2021g) Programming Schedule: Week of December 6, 2021 | Critical Role. critrole.com. Available online: https://critrole.com/programming-schedule-week-of-december-6-2021/ [Accessed 14 Dec. 2021].
Pantoja, T. (2020) Drawing Genuine Facial Expressions (Part1). www.youtube.com. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNUW_POtWEI&t=1s [Accessed 14 Dec. 2021].
Riegel, S. (2017) #shirtception continues… Twitter. Available online: https://twitter.com/samriegel/status/878097713585246209 [Accessed 14 Dec. 2021].