The DreamWorks Face-Marketing's favorite expression, loathed by animators + Other Ramblings

How about I talk about a personal pet peeve of mine.... no I take it back, it's actually every animator's pet peeve and part of the reason animators want to launch executives into the vacuum of space all exposed.

I present to you THE DREAMWORKS FACE.

So named because this has appeared on so many on posters from DreamWorks' animation output that people believe that's where the face comes from.

It's basically a smirk with one eyebrow raised.

And it's not just DreamWorks that uses this face but also Disney, Illumination, Sony Pictures, Laika, just to name a few.

Now I'll admit, I grew up as one of the last holdouts of the Millennial Generation as a result of my 1997 birthdate but during most of my childhood, I never really understood the logic behind all that DreamWorks face nonsense but now that I'm 26, I now cringe at seeing this marketing tactic being used left and right.

Seriously, we don't need to emphasis attitude like Tom Kalinske was doing at Sega back in the 90s but for some reason, this face always seems to stick with marketing.

And get this, even animators at DreamWorks admit they are sick of this face used in their movie posters but there's nothing they can do about it because... EXECUTIVES!!!

Is this where half of Dreamwork's Lenovo AMD Ryzen THREADRIPPER PRO workstation money went to? 

There was once a time when the director of a film or series was actually in charge of ideas for a poster and would write them down to the artist.

Just ask the ghost of Stanley Kubrick because I've read that the original 1980 poster for THE SHINING went through multiple revisions made by Saul Bass but until we got the poster below, there were multiple designs that Kubrick rejected.

Saul Bass went through multiple revisions of this classic but chilling poster and as far as I can tell, Kubrick always rejected those previous revisions for what was perceived as not fitting very well for the theme of the film or it does fit the film's theme but the visuals loses primary focus.

I do believe the poster revision nightmare that Saul Bass went through still applies today but nowadays, it's mostly an executive demanding the smirk on the face of the protagonist.... ugh....

I do feel bad for the artists working on these movies who put all poured all their blood and sweat making these movies but then they're told by executives do put that smirk on the posters no-ifs-ands-or-buts.

To quote Colonel Hathi from THE JUNGLE BOOK:

"WIPE OFF THAT SILLY GRIN!!! THIS IS THE ARMY!!!"

To be honest, we are still seeing that DreamWorks face even today but now there's a new phenomenon that I can't tell if it's better or worse:

THE SCARED POSTER FACE!

This is most common on animated films and I'm seeing this trend left and right. The most recent films to use this face are TURNING RED and MIGRATION.

The scared face is not new however. The Scared Poster face may actually have it's origins to HOME ALONE from 1990. Maybe even older.

Macauley Culkin's Home Alone face is not actually him being scared but rather feeling the stinging pain from the Aftershave which is where the face actually came from.

Thank balls anime doesn't use the smirk or scared face with their posters.....

Though in place of the DreamWorks face, Japanese marketeers focus mostly on the cute moe characters that show up.... with mixed results depending on the production.

Honestly, I'd choose my cute moe characters over the eyebrow smirk thank you very much.