dirtcup answered:

ahhh hmm.. I will try my best to give you some info at least on how i do it/good things ive seen? I don’t have a lot of rules about my faces and I tend to just kind of Go At It a lot of the time? But I can give you some things to think about or the techniques I like to use. There are lots of ways to construct heads and stylize faces.

I think the most important things I keep in mind, like with everything else, is that the head is a solid object with volume, and that it has its own muscles and fat and stuff.

in terms of anatomy, with the way i stylize stuff, i like to show a few key things







1) The head is not separate from the neck, and it is not just sitting on the next like a lollipop. The neck interacts with the head. Most people also have at least a little bit of neck/chin fat, if not just loose skin there so that you can move your head. that area is in general soft.

2) the eyes are In the head, not just stickers on the head or spheres stuck to the head. (of course, this is not the only way to stylize, this is just what I like to show) the eyes are set into the cheek.

3) the mouth area makes no sense like thats not how that works but don’t worry about it.

the most basic way i construct a head is i start with like, a sphere, which im sure you’ve seen before:

the lines of the symmetry for me are pretty rough. i don’t follow them very specifically. I use them more for like “the head is facing this direction on this axis and this direction on this other axis”

vertical line is how far left or right its rotated, and the horizontal is how far up or down. I know the horizontal line is supposed to also be roughly where the eyes go, but I don’t really follow that too carefully. I mean it helps figure out where the eyes are going to be, but if it ends up not feeling right, be free to adjust. It’s more for keeping the head volumetric.

then i have a second oval (of varying shapes for different faces) for the lower half of the face. the top of the cheek starts roughly at the horizontal line of symmetry. I tend to think of this also as a volume.

This maps out the entire lower half of the head for me, so im sort of like, drawing all the way around underneath the head if that makes sense? it’s very helpful for drawing heads in weird perspectives. For example it helps with over the head perspective a lot because it sort of puts the jaw underneath the cheek bones, underneath the forehead, etc.

then i construct the face over that, using the nose to indicate direction by keeping it right on the vertical axis or floating over the vertical axis.





In doing facial expressions, I think something really important to keep in mind is the retention of mass. Like, even when you’re stretching the face really far, don’t add mass. (at least, for the style that i’m working with. this isn’t applicable to all styles) This combined with remembering what parts of the face are hard and what parts are soft will make characters seem, more, Solid.

so like:

the jaw doesn’t grow or shrink with the mouth opening, there’s still the same amount of chin. the jaw opens to open the mouth, the upper teeth are not on a hinge so the lower jaw is the only thing that moves.

I totally do not always follow this, though.

like, the chin here is probably a little bit “shrunk” to accommodate the mouth. However, other thing to think about that I’m trying to show with this, is that when one part of the face moves, so does the rest of it. Even if the facial anatomy isn’t realistic, it still all interacts. Like, the mouth opening up that wide smushes up the cheek muscles into the eye. (even though the mouth is just kind of drawn as a hole in the face)

(more examples of this)

even if the face is kind of “rubbery” here, though, the overall mass is still kept consistent. like its stretched in the second on, but it hasn’t “grown”

flesh is pulled over an imaginary skeleton underneath, and there is still “depth” shown by the angle of the teeth. there is also thought about how the eyes are sitting in their sockets, even though those sockets are being “stretched” a little bit.

I hope this isn’t a completely incoherent mess and that its at least somewhat useful information?