""HEART IS IN THE RIGHT PLACE, BRAIN IS IN THE DIRT""
Greetings, fellow Earthlings, and welcome to my blog. I'm Anastasia, or Ana, or whatever. I'm Canadian, eh? Nineteen and into tons of shit. Msg me, yo.
Drawing basic facial expressions is not the hardest. Most people can draw a sad face, a happy face, angry etc., but making more multidimensional expressions is more of a challenge. I have gotten a lot of compliments on how I draw facial expressions, (specifically “angsty ones”) telling me that they are very dramatic and well… expressive! And there are actually only a few things I think about when I draw faces that take them to the next level, so I thought i’d illustrate them all here!
SUPER IMPORTANT TIP BEFORE WE START: Look at your own face when you draw faces. Even making the face when you are drawing (you don’t even have to look at it), will give you some sense of how the face muscles pull and where things fold and stretch, because you can feel it. You are the best reference when it comes to facial expressions!
Angles
Draw the head in an angle that matches the expressions you want to make. It is not a requirement, but is going to add to the effect.
Symmetry vs asymmetry
A face is rarely symmetric. Unless the face the character is making is 100 % relaxed or even dissociating, the eyebrows, mouth and facial muscles will have different placements of their respective side. This image shows the dramatic impact asymmetry has on a face:
That’s the difference between a smile and a smirk!
The first one’s like “oh yeah?” and the second is like “oH YEAH??”
The “balloon squishing principle”
This is something I did subconsciously, and I didn’t know about until I made this tutorial. And this principle goes hand in hand with an asymmetric face. Basically, if you squish one part of the face, you need to even out the empty space by “inflating” the other part of the face so that it doesn’t appear shrunken. The picture hopefully explains it:
Teeth
Don’t forget to add the gum when the mouth is open to its full potential!
Squinting and folding
Adding folds around the eyes when a character is squinting makes a HUGE difference. It makes a smile more genuine and a growl more intimidating. Adding folds to the face in general makes your characters more lifelike and ‘visually relatable’. Like, they look human, and less plastic or fake.
and so on..
Pupils and irises
The placement of the iris and pupil in relation to the eyelids is very important! The less of the white you see, the more relaxed the character is.
And then of course eyebrows and eyes go hand in hand!
Gestures, spitting, sweating…
Adding more elements than just a face is key to making the character actually look like they are feeling what you want them to feel. Just the tiniest sweat drop adds to their anxiety, spitting adds frustration to their rage, slouching shoulders, waving hands, a double chin, extreme angles, the list goes on! Add whatever and see what kind of impact it makes! Does it do the trick? Great! Add it!
Over exaggeration!!
Remember that you can almost always exaggerate more. Don’t be afraid to do draw “too much” because you’re just experimenting. See what works and what doesn’t. What do you like to exaggerate?
Now that you know some theory, it’s time to practice!
Fill a page with circles and fill them in with different expressions. Try and exaggerate as much as you can!
This is mostly for experimenting. They are quicker to draw than complete faces, but the same rules should apply!
And that’s about it!
I don’t know if I covered everything in this tutorial, since some things might be obvious for me, and this post perhaps only scratches the surface. So feel free to send me a message if you want an explanation about something more in depth! Thank you for reading! And now DRAW!!! ✨🎨
And now for today’s lesson in institutionalised misogyny.
Today’s news: Ghostbusters ‘tanks’, ‘stumbles’ with 53% drop in its second week.
Presumably that’s a bad performance compared to other action movies in their second week then?
Let’s check…
Captain America: Civil War: -59.5%
Dark Knight: -52%
Amazing Spider Man: -61%
Oh, and for an example of an actual ‘tanking’:
Batman vs Superman: -69%
Now, let’s examine all the reporting last week that Ghostbusters was going to struggle because of its first week multiplier against its budget…
Ghostbusters first weekend US figures: $46m It had a $144m budget, so in its first week it made 32% of that. Descriptions: ‘Lacklustre’, ‘problematic’, ‘will haunt Sony’
Star Trek Beyond first weekend US figures: $59.6m It had a $189m budget, so in its first week it made 30% of its budget. Reporting: ‘Dominates’, ‘wins big’
To be clear: there are articles describing both movies’ openings as ‘solid’. But there’s basically no one calling Beyond worrying or Ghostbusters a big win.
So. ‘Nuff said?
Stats don’t lie bruh.
I went to see Ghostbusters yesterday, and we ended up having to attend a later showing, because the earlier screening sold out while we were still waiting in the ticket line, so…
I saw it Saturday night, the AMC 16 only had it in one theatre. That theatre was SOLD OUT. Like there was a lady in my row standing in the aisle because she couldn’t find a seat with her kid.
After all those “Ghostbusters tanks” headlines on opening weekend, I was like, really? So I went and looked up some box office numbers.
The Secret Life of Pets made a little under $51 million. Ghostbusters came in at $46 million, about ten percent less.
But if you look over at the theater count, you’ll see that SLP was playing in 4,381 theaters, and Ghostbusters was playing in 3,963–about ten percent less.
These are both very wide releases, and both films made millions of dollars that weekend. But a more accurate headline would be “Film Playing in Ten Percent Less Theaters Than Other Film Makes Ten Percent Less Money.”
And if you rank the films by average gross per theater, what do you see?
They’re basically equal, with Ghostbusters ahead by a few bucks.
And if you look at the top ten films for the weekend Ghostbusters opened, you’ll see that a drop of 40-50% from one week to the next is pretty normal, especially in the summer when there’s a new blockbuster coming out every weekend.
Clearly what’s going on here ain’t related to statistics.
