Week 3 - Expression, exaggeration and narrative

For this exercise I chose to experiment on essential expressions by using simplicity and creating simplified characters/portraits to visualise emotions. Examples of simplified expressions to show how these are portrayed in comic strips, graphic novels or TV animations.

‘Snoopy’, Charles Schulz

The character expressions for Snoopy composes of small oval eyes and thin lines for his eyebrows. When it comes to other expressions that conveys more emotion, the design of the eyes changes from the simple round dots, that the audience/readers are familiar to, to a much more complex design (bigger eyes with slightly more detail). While there are other emotions that Snoopy displays, there isn’t that much of a difference but with the exceptions of his eyebrows that conveys other emotion such as confusion. The eyes is an important feature that expresses a lot about emotion and the overall character design does not need to change in order to try to fit with the emotion the character is displaying. With the character displaying a big head and a small, skinny body, it allows the viewers to focus more on the head, which is important in characters if the aim was to visually read their emotions that helps progress the story to some degree in terms of character development.

 Tintin, designed by Hergé (Georges Prosper Remi)

The character design for Tintin is very, very simple, that all emotions the character conveys in the comic strips and in the TV show are not as diverse in terms of emotional input. Despite the lack of variety in facial expressions, the only characteristics of this character’s face that conveys emotion are his eyebrows and mouth. The eyes remain the same but with the help of his eyebrows and mouth allows the simple character design of Tintin (especially his eyes drawn as dots) to convey some emotion. However, the overall body language/movement can help to sustain the lack of facial expression in order to convey emotion and empathy. It is a similar case to the character design in Snoopy where the only unchangeable feature of these characters are their dotted eyes.

  

 Making Comics, expressions by Scott McCloud, 2006

An example I had looked into about the intensity of a single emotion. The levels of a single emotion can range from simple designs to a more complex variant with additional details. The level of detail on the face increases to convey a more convincing emotion (the highest level of emotion of that category).

I will use this to help design some simplified facial expressions of a simplified version of me as a character, although I would want to approach each emotion with minimal detail as possible (such as the characters of Tintin and Snoopy) that would otherwise stray away the purpose of drawing simplified characters if I were to add too much. I will draw what is necessary in order to convey the emotions directly to the audience.

Experiment of conveying different expressions using minimal detail.

The experiment is relatively ok, although there might be a few which may not represent the emotion I was trying to visualise, such as ‘stressed’ and ‘tired’, which may of representing another emotion instead. I kept the simplicity with the eyes the same just like the character of Tintin and only use the eyebrows and mouth to help convey the emotion although a little more input may be needed since they all look vaguely similar to one another. There are some emotions that may display a similar visual response, but that’s because I do find it slightly difficult to keep each emotion unique while maintaining minimal detail without straying from simplicity.