Evaluation

What

For the end of this project, in order to aid the development of my final major project in which I use elements of exaggeration for a comic, I have carried out a series of different experiments that explore the many different ways that people and artists represent facial expressions through exaggeration which are mainly used in comics and animation. Out of the many experiments I carried out, I felt that my investigation was ultimately quite successful, and aided me well when developing final artwork for my final major project. I also learned brand new techniques to represent the art of exaggeration, which will thus further the development of my stories when I continue to develop them after I graduate.

Why

I decided to carry out this investigation for my research project in this way due to the fact that I thought it would compliment and help in the development of my final major project and further my skills throughout the process. Because I aim to carry on creating more the stories from my final major project in the same way after graduating, this seemed like the ideal concept to focus my research project on.

How

To start out with, I began with researching into exaggeration of facial features and caricatures of people like looking at exaggeration of presenting certain famous figures. I then decided to narrow down the subject matter to just facial expressions as I figured that this would benefit the development of my final major project more than looking something that didn't have anything to do with my project like caricature. After I made this choice, I looked into how artists and animators are able to portray exaggeration in their fields without having people wonder what they were trying to achieve. With the research I found, I found I was able to implement some of those techniques into my final major project.

How

To start out with, I began with researching into exaggeration of facial features and caricatures of people like looking at exaggeration of presenting certain famous figures. I then decided to narrow down the subject matter to just facial expressions as I figured that this would benefit the development of my final major project more than looking something that didn't have anything to do with my project like caricature. After I made this choice, I looked into how artists and animators are able to portray exaggeration in their fields without having people wonder what they were trying to achieve. With the research I found, I found I was able to implement some of those techniques into my final major project. 

In conclusion, I feel that my research project has overall been most successful in teaching me new techniques into how to display how a character is feeling using different media in alternative ways such as using different colour, use of shading, and depth of lines. These techniques I have investigated will no doubt benefit my continuing practise after I graduate, as I aim to continue to create more stories from my final major project with the same exaggerated style. Something that will continue to grow thanks to the research and experiments from this project.

  

Experiment: Anime Eyes

Looking at Anime/Manga techniques of presenting eyes, I tried out an experiment to see how portraying eyes this way worked on the main character from my final major project. After trying out three different eye expressions, I found that the more joyous expressions I tried were more effective. The reasons behind their effectiveness were the fact that, even though the eyes themselves are not realistically accurate in appearance, they encapsulate the feeling they are trying to display so effectively. I found that the starry-eyed look was particularly successful, as the stars within the enormous eyes of the character clearly display the wonderment and joy of being extremely happy. 

Suspicious 

Happy

Starry Eyed

Anime Eyes

Japanese animator Tezuka Osamu, who many people dub as the father of anime and manga, presented the eyes of characters in his pieces largely so that they could clearly display their emotions more effectively to the viewer; to this day, many people agree that the eyes of anime and manga characters are the part which are most expressive.


With a character who is seen to be someone good or innocent, the eyes are displayed as large and childlike. The eyes of a sneaky more suspicious character however will have smaller eyes. In typical anime and manga, it is evil characters who prove to have the smallest eyes of all. Characters in these pieces do a number of different things to reflect their mood when expressing emotion.  

A usual anime/manga character can display an evil look when in a certain situation looking suspicious or thinking evil thoughts. An evil look is usually accompanied, depending on the circumstance, with either a blue blush, a sweat drop, or an anger vein. On the other hand, the happy look is seen as much more common. The character's eyes transform into two thick half-circles, giving characters either a delighted, or adorable look. Either sexes of characters can have that form of a happy look, but unusual to female anime/manga characters are starry-eyes. With otherwise normal eyes, female character's eyes will suddenly grow into giant sizes with dozens of stars and little white spots surrounding them. These features signal to the viewer that the character is extremely happy.

Experiment: Anime Emotions

After looking at how to present different emotions in an Anime style, I decided to try working in the same style to see how working like this works for the main character from my final major project. Out of all the different emotions I tried out in this format, I found that anger was the most effective emotion to get across to the viewer. This is because the lines used are more aggressive and thicker. I also think this is the most effective emotion due to the dark shadowing used on the forehead and eyes, giving a menacing effect. I did however also feel that the method for presenting extreme embarrassment for very effective as well, as it clearly presenting the feeling of being stopped in your tracks by someone, the slow feeling of embarrassment running through you via the vertical lines and the dark shadowing from the top of the head. The inclusion of a sweat drop also provides an indication for the viewer of how much of a panic the character is in by the size of the sweat drop (the larger the sweat drop the bigger the panic). For me, the other emotions I tried to present didn't really work, as they seemed too simplistic and not detailed enough to justify the emotions I felt that were trying to represent.

Extreme Anger

Crying

Slight Embarrassment 

Severe Embarrassment

Facial Expressions In Anime

Anime is renowned for its over the top facial styles to represent how characters are feeling in certain situations. As part of a course there, the University of Michigan studied into how things like a bleeding nose, blushing or a sweat drop can translate into a person's emotion a particular moment.

 Blushing is known as a usual way of showing a person's embarrassment or feelings of love to another person. However, in the world of anime and manga, there are many forms of blushing used to symbolise basically every type of feeling. A slight embarrassment can be shown by having tiny red lines across both cheeks, a deeper feeling of embarrassment may by indicated by a thick red line across both the nose and cheeks, and with severe embarrassment the whole of a character's face can be seen to turn completely red.   

Blushing in blue still represents the feeling of embarrassment, but this is usually associated with the feeling of embarrassment with a mixture of anger. It can be seen to show that a character is still with embarrassment. This is usually partnered with evil-looking eyes, and maybe also with an anger vein or sweat drop.

In other circumstances, sweat drops may be displayed next to a character's head. These sweat drops can represent the feeling of embarrassment, the harshness of the feeling is measured by the size of the sweat drop on the character's head, and also maybe the number of sweat drops. This usually shows a less severe sort of embarrassment compared to the blue blush, and a less amorous form of embarrassment than a red blush.  

When a character is extremely aggravated and angry, three veins may be shown on their forehead or on their fist. These so called anger veins, can be used amply, but not always in a realistic way. These anger veins can be used in extremes, like in manga where the same sort of veins may appear on the back of a character's hand when in an violent rage.

In anime/manga, a bloody nose may not necessarily indicate that someone is injured, it instead means that they are either thinking of a beautiful woman, the sex of the character usually associated with this display is men, or that they are thinking of lustful thoughts. Many people question why a bloody nose is associated with lustful thoughts. When Gilles Poitras, author of the book 'The Anime Companion' questioned the same thing, he found the best answer he got was from a Japanese man who recollected to him that his mother told him that when he was much younger, if he stared at a beautiful woman he would get a nose bleed.

When anime and manga characters are shown crying, it is mostly shown as very exaggerated. One way of crying is shown in the form of 'tear lines'. 'Tear lines' can be seen as two wavy lines drawn from each of the character's eyes to the bottom of their face, filled with white to show that they are crying. An even more over the top way of showing a character is crying is when the artist takes the tear lines off the two-dimensional space of the face and then direct it out towards the sky, making the viewer perceive the character is crying waterfalls. Both these ways of crying are usually not taken seriously. In more dramatic or serious situations crying is seen to be more subtle.  

Experiment: Face Mash Up

After looking at the way flash cards teach younger people the characteristics of simple emotions, I decided to try an experiment directed towards an older audience. In this experiment, I wanted to see if people could read a different emotion or feeling from mixing up different characteristics from different basic emotions. For example, I have separated the eyes, noses and mouths of sad, nervous, angry, happy and surprised faces and jumbled them up to see if when put together, people can perceive a legitimate feeling from the images, or whether they just look muddled up.

Emotion Flash Cards

To begin with, I decided to have a look into how people are taught about emotions from an early age, and how people are taught about the characteristics of certain emotions. To teach children through visual learning, some teachers or parents use what are known as emotion flashcards. These teach children about different feelings by holding up certain pictures of people expressing themselves facially. The parents or teachers will then ask the children to identify what emotion the person is feeling, and why they think that is the case. For example, a child may point out that a person is feeling angry because the persons eyes are getting smaller, or their nose is scrunching up, or that there are more lines either around the person's eyes or on their forehead. This technique is especially beneficial to children with autism, who may have difficulty associating between different feelings.

  

Experiment: Surreal Facial Emotion

After looking at cut away shots from animations, I decided to try out a couple of detailed close up images of people to see if I can clearly convey a certain feeling from both of them, by using a mixture of inks and colouring pencils. From the two that I tried out, I found that they were both complimented by the detailed style due to the shading of the eyes and skin to clearly show the emotions of fear and anger. The detailed studies emphasise the feelings of panic in fear, and the aggression of anger with help from dark lines, appropriate shading and eye colour. Anger is aided by using a lot of warm colours to show the heat and the passion of the emotion, whereas fear was aided by dark colours to exaggerate the coldness of the situation as if time is standing still. Whilst making these images, I also tried out putting the traditional media through filters of Photoshop to see if it made a difference to the mood of the pieces. In the case of the fear drawing, putting it through an ink outlines filter increased the pieces shadows and therefore gave it a more horrified aspect to it. For anger, putting the image through a fresco filter increased the sense of darkness and grief, whereas putting it through a dry brush filter increased the brightness of the fiery colours, boosting the piece's heated feeling.

Anger (Traditional Media)

                       

                                                                Fear (Traditional Media)

 Anger (Fresco Filter) 

                                                                       Fear (Ink Outlines)  

   Anger (Dry Brush Filter)

Experiment: Facial Movements In Animation

After looking at how animations use lines on faces to exaggerate certain emotions, I decided to try the same using stop frame animation techniques, to try and convincingly portray three different emotions on a human head. The face starts off emotionless and then goes into anger, happiness and sadness. I found that adding lines under certain features of the face bode well for the depictions of anger and sadness the best, as they really exaggerate both feelings in different ways. The emotion of anger is complimented by lines across the forehead to get across the feeling of aggression, whereas the emotion of sadness is aided well by lines under the eyes and mouth to give a sense of welling up and to display to the viewer that the character is about to start crying. 

Surrealism In Western Animation

Some western animations are known for their surreal elements to emphasise a characters' nature or how they are feeling. One good example of this is The Ren & Stimpy Show, which regularly used over the top aesthetics to express the goofy and bizarre nature of the show's characters. For example, in the clip below, the character Ren is being shown as deranged and descending into madness. To show this within the show, the animators use widened eyes, widened pupils and lines under the eyes. Close up cut away shots of gruesome paintings of the character are used to give the viewer a window into his mind to show the psychotic nature.

Another animation that uses similar painted cutaway shots to convey certain moods is Spongebob Squarepants. Like in Ren & Stimpy, the cutaway shot is used as a window into the mind of the character(s) involved. The scene below shows Spongebob's feeling of desperation for hydration, but also shows his attempt at resisting temptation by cutting away from the bottle of water, to a detailed painted close up image of his dry looking face to exaggerate Spongebob's thirst resistance against temptation to not dry the water.

Experiment: Underground Style

After looking at how Underground Comix artists portray facial expressions, I decided to try out working in their same over the top style to characters from my final major project, to see what kind of effect it gives off. I found that with the representation of madness, the larger than life features such as the nose and eyes clearly compliment the feeling of the what the character is meant to be portraying, whereas the flat colour of the image also goes well with the bizarre, cartoon like nature of the style. I found that when trying to show both sinister and creepy looks, the black and white colour scheme went very well with the images, as it compliments the coldness of the feeling of each face, and clearly displays the evil nature of both characters.

Madness

    

Sinister

Creepy

Underground Comix

Underground Comix are independent comic books which originated in the 1960's. With 'The Comics Code Authority' being introduced in the 1950's, comics were censored to remove any material that people may find inappropriate in an attempt to save the innocence of young people. Underground Comix can be seen as a direct result of the authority, publishing storylines and material that mainstream comics would never be able to get away with, including hard drug use, sexuality and violence.


Underground Comix typically have an exaggerated style to their imagery. Famous comic book artists such as Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton are known for their over the top style, which not only was good to separate the mainstream comics with their comics, but also to portray certain characteristics in their storylines. For example, if a story involved the use of drugs psychedelic imagery would be present. If a story contained lustfulness or sexual themes, there would most likely be scenes of perversion, nudity or sexual activity.


Facial expressions in underground comics really depended on the mood of the particular comic. For example, if the comic was a humorous title, or was a bit funny and silly in it's nature, the faces of the characters involved would most likely be cartoon like with rounder faces and typical cartoony features such as a huge nose or huge eyes to make them appear wacky or mad. With a comic that dealt with more of a sexual nature, that involved creepy or perverted characters, the characters would usually have more realistic faces but would have dark lines around certain features such as their eyes, mouth or forehead to exaggerate their desperate and sick nature. The images would also most likely be in black and white to compliment the character's sinister and twisted nature. 

Proposal

 For my final major project, I wanted to create a series of comics that had an exaggerated and over the top style to make the stories and my characters within the stories appear humorous to the reader. For my research experiment project, I have decided to compliment the aims of my final major project by investigating and delving into the aspect of facial expressions through exaggeration. I will not only look into how artists incorporate this into their work, but I will also look into how people gauge reactions and feelings from an early age. I will look into different artists who portray this method in different media such as comic books, animation, photography and surrealism. I will also talk about how the artists are are able to make it seem believable to the reader or the viewer, without making them question why they are doing it and making it seem silly and unnecessary.