Could you do a guide on faces / how you style them? I don’t know how you get your expressions so expressive 😭
By all means! I'm always happy to talk about these things :]
But honestly, as far as the expressions themselves go, objectively speaking I am not doing anything particularly special! What really sells them is the body language that goes with them.
Like, the face I drew here for Apo is angry, but it doesn't really land the same without the physicality to go with it:
Likewise, Drift's expressions here:
are extremely simple and pretty nothingburger on their own:
In fact, these Drifts are all the same expression:
She's scowling, her lips are pouty—heck, she even has her arms crossed in all three of these! But her physicality is different, which is what brings the nuance to each expression. The first she leans forwards (aggressive), the second she scrunches her shoulders up and tucks her chin in (pouty), and in the last she leans back (grumpy).
I think panels like this are another good example. Shelby's face is not really that easy to see here, but her body language allows you to read it
And the expressions in these panels are carried by the way Avid shrinks
I will say though, the more extreme an expression is, the more simplified I will draw it. My style is generally semi-realistic, but the more extreme an expression becomes, sticking to realism will either land you in uncanny valley or leave the expression feeling lacklustre:
There's nothing wrong per-se with the realistic version, but the simplified expression is definitely stronger! Also sometimes it's funnier
Another pretty key part of how my expressions read come down to the framing of them, too:
The tension in these panels and the expressions therein are carried by the cramped framing of all of them. It wouldn't be the same if they weren't cropped as closely as they are.
Instinctually when we draw a face, or indeed even the head in general, there's this desire to draw the entire thing unobscured in any way. Something that frequently changes between the rough drafts of my pages and the final version is me just zooming panels in more LOL
Like, this expression, even with the body language, would not land as well as it does if it wasn't so close:
And the thing is, what you don't show is just as important as what you do show. The impact of Scott's anger here is carried by me deliberately not showing his face for a very long time:
And Drift's grief is held in the fact you don't ever truly see her face:
As far as actually drawing faces goes, I learnt a lot about drawing people in general from Figure Drawing Design and Invention by Michael Hampton. I own a physical copy of it, but you can find a PDF on the internet archive!
This is like an expansion upon the loomis method, which I learnt from proko's original video but he has a newer series covering it that starts here:
But also, I use 3d models for reference a lot. CSP has built in head models, and I often make my own like the poseable mouth that i shared a while back
which makes a big difference for getting all the difficult angles right! But the 3d models wouldn't be quite so useful without having studied the loomis & hampton guidelines first haha
anyway I hope that helps!!
