Face Designs-My gripes and my own guidelines

Around February 16 2024, I did a post about teeth design in cartoons and anime.

Now let’s get to Facial designs.

"This drawing of a Cat reminds me of the MR. BUTTONS 3d Maya Rig."

First, lets start off with the mouth design.

Have you ever seen the way mouths are constructed on cartoon and anime characters? Does it ever get into your mind on what the designers or artists were thinking when designing these types of characters?

Then you may also ask, does the jaw react? Does the cheeks react? 

I often see some cartoon and anime characters where there's no reaction from the character's facial muscles and even if that was possible, it's just the jaw that moves in secondary action to the mouths.

Honestly, sometimes I ask whether or not the animators or artists actually study the muscular anatomy of facial muscles because the face does more than just open or close the mouth. It actually has elements of the face that reacts to the mouth.

Below is an science artist's rendition of Facial Muscle Anatomy.

Part of the reason I'm now obsessed with mouth muscle construction and hierarchy is because I'm frusturated with how today's western animation has ditched proper construction for facial mouth muscles just because the puppet rigs and CALARTS style doesn't lend itself too well to the anatomy of the facial muscles.

And anime is not immune to this either. Even dedication to keeping everything hand-drawn and frame-by-frame isn't gonna prevent a character from having a floating mouth on the face

or the side of a character's cheek with no silhouette. 

I swear to god every time I see fanart of characters drawn in the anime art style, even if it's with western characters, the fan artists don't even give shit about silhouette. They think that all anime artists draw characters with mouths to the cheeks of characters. 

THAT'S NOT TRUE!!!!

Anime may be a so-called universal art form in Japan but just like in North American animation, anime art styles can differ from mangaka artist to mangaka artist.

For example, you're not going to find a character like this girl shown below...

And expect her to be the same like the USAGI as shown below.

Part of the reason I'm obsessed with mouth construction regardless of profile is because I'm still hard at work with the MARYLANDIA Pitch but I need to point out a few things that I think artists really need to grasp if they want to draw my characters to the exact specifications I want.

One example is the mouths. You may notice how I've constructed the characters in my series with the way I drew my characters. Below is a Cel of my characters Minerva and Delia.

Admittingly, I too am guilty of the floaty mouth without cheek and jaw actions and I want to change that when the time comes to prepare the style guide for how I want my characters to look exactly.

Below is not an exact representation of how I want my characters to look but it's kind of a temp example to show how the characters will look in the long run.

If you notice the side profile of Hayden at the exact center of this head sheet, then you'll get what I really mean with mouth construction. 

As a much better alternative to the head sheet above, take a gander at this colored cel shown below.

Notice how none of the guy's mouths are within the cheek. Notice the silhouette of the mouth, overbite, mandible, etc? That's exactly what I want with my characters whenever there's a side profile.

None of that LAZY ARTIST bullshit. Admittingly I may be lazy but even the lazy part of me draws the line at drawing cheek mouths. It's like my right hand, which is my drawing hand, has a mind of it's own and cannot tolerate cut corners in mouth design.

And drawing side profile mouth silhouettes don't end with the silhouette either. 

What my right hand also can't stand is perfect perpendicularity in the design. 

Like these side profiles of both DOUG and SKEETER shown below.

You notice how but Doug and Skeeter's Jawlines are drawn in a perfect curve even with those lower lips? That's a sign of trying to appease the ON-MODEL obsessed art directors but then again, DOUG had to get away with this due to the choice of design for these kinds of characters.

As much as I'll be critical of how crude the SEASON 1 designs for DOUG looked, 

I'll admit I really love this side profile of Patti Mayonnaise from the cooking Episode.

 It's a shame that come forth the second season, the Side Profiles for Patti turned into this:

Compared that to Bill Bluff's side profile of his Chadly Chin in the same episode where I got this side profile of Patti from.

"AT LEAST I HAVE THE BALLS TO KEEP MY CHADLY SILHOUETTE... BONE!!!"

THE SIMPSONS is immune to this side profile mouth problem but the only reason it has it's GET OUT OF JAIL FREE card on side profile mouth designs is because of MATT GROENING's design style lending itself to the principles of mouth construction.

Dr. Tofu and his model skeleton Betty will also demonstrate the importance of mouth silhouettes

Hey, at least one fan artist knows about the importance of Jaw Silhouettes when making this fanart of Nagatoro flirting with Naoto.

The point being is that it's important to pay attention to the construction of the mouths in side profiles and show a goddamn silhouette no matter how simple the character is designed.

Now let's get to the cream and butter of this topic: THE FACIAL Muscles... sort of.

In case you haven't noticed or haven't looked in the mirror more thoroughly, the Construction of the face is much more complicated than you realize.

Is that the reason for so many artists in Western Animation and Anime wanting to rid themselves of the complexities of the human face when designing characters?

You'll notice how different the facial construction of a caricature is compared to the facial construction of characters on cartoons and anime.

You're not going to find people like Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter and think they're facial construction is the same no matter how different their jowls or chin are. The difference is simply that their facial muscles are going to react differently.

The portraits may not lend themselves well to this but if you look at a caricature of politicians, their features are exaggerated compared to real life.

Like this caricature of TONY BLAIR as drawn by GERALD SCARFE.

Same goes for animators too.

Below are caricatures of Disney Animators RON CLEMENTS & JOHN MUSKER.

These are just based on my own art style which is tame compared to the Gerald Scarfe example shown above this one but the facial features are based on Clements and Musker's caricatures of themselves but you can see that they way their face is constructed is not exactly the same.

If you were to remove the facial hair off of these two, you're understand the difference ins Cheek size, the nose shape, whether one has a profound chin, or if their face is vertically lanky.

The same goes for the various celebrities that show up on shows such as THE SIMPSONS.

I don't know who the FOX executive is susposed to represent but I know the guy in the blue hat and Red Varsity Vest is RON HOWARD.

I'm always fascinated with the difference in design of the celebrities in THE SIMPSONS and FAMILY GUY because as expected, these celebrities aren't going to be constructed the same as the other characters in your cartoon and it was a real bugger for me to attempt to draw celebrities but keep the facial construction of celebrities and not end up with designs that look like my own characters.

And this includes people in Real-Life or.... YOUTUBE videos such as the EHH guy shown below.

The EHH Guy is based on a character created by a fellow Vancouverite who made these plush series called CUTE MARIO BROS. Here's the link to their YouTube Channel.

https://www.youtube.com/@TheCuteMarioBros/videos

Anyway, The EHH Guy above is my own caricature of the character if he were to appear in MARYLANDIA so I had to get the face as close to his appearance in the YOUTUBE series as possible.

And now let's get to nose designs.... or the designs of the Nasal Bridge.

When I design my characters, no matter how simple their face is, I always want to at least put some detail on the Nasal Bridge Construction.

No matter if they share the same face, the Nasal Bridge is still important.

If the character needs a specific design to their facial construction like this Cel of Neil below, then careful design to the Nasal Bridge is required to help him stand out to the simplistic characters.

If it's an adult character like faculty or government official, then designing just the face and nose is not enough. I need to design the cheek bones, etc.

But back to noses, The reason for my obsession with Nasal Bridges no matter how simple the design of my characters are is because I'm getting sick of this phenomenon where anime characters with simplistic designs are lacking the Nasal Bridge in their front and 3/4 profiles.

What's up with this trend of portraying front and 3/4 profiles with just a goddamn speck for a nose? 

Sometimes, the best way to counter this problem with just the speck for the nose is to just put a darker shade of color of the character's skin tone but if you look at the synthetic nature of digital cels, with the thicker outlines and less amount of light source, the shading might not lend it self well.

"Senpai, Did you just replace my Nasal Bridge with a shadow?"

Right on Nagatoro. Nobody should replace your Nasal Bridge with a just a speck and shadow.

I haven't paid that much attention to the Western Animated shows that use ANIME principles for character design instead of Puppet Rigs.... but I'm sure glad as Balls MY ADVENTURES WITH SUPERMAN did not resort to that stupid speck for Nasal Bridge Designs no matter how simple the face looks... especially for Lois Lane shown below.

However, I did find some fanart of this incarnation of LOIS LANE where the artist didn't want to ditch their beloved SPECK regardless if it's AI Generated or not.

At least this example was smart enough to retain the nasal bridge.

LOIS LANE's much more beautiful when her nasal bridge is retained in anime style fanart.

I'm glad that with the addition of Kara Zor-El in the Second Season of 

MY ADVENTURES WITH SUPERMAN, they did not skimp on Nasal Bridge designs.

This will be KARA's reaction towards fan-artists who refuse the nasal bridge 

in favor of their beloved Specks and shadows

Anyhow, my point being, I dislike specks for noses. It's lazy and.... ARGH....

I'm ok if you want to draw my own characters in an anime style like that of Naruto, Haruhi Suzumiya, MY HERO ACADEMIA, or whatever anime is out there but if you want to dedicate the time to draw or AI generate the fanart...

RETAIN THE NASAL BRIDGE!!!!!

Here's a page from the MARYLANDIA style guide on my demand for Nasal Bridges.

I even have a meme from 2015 to show you how much of an issue with the speck for the nose is to my eyes,

Back to side profiles, did I mention how I despise when artists don't draw a silhouette and instead draw the mouth on the side of the cheek whenever there's a side profile view of a character? 

Yeah, I forgot to show a page on that but here it is.

And I really do mean it. I'm serious about side profiles silhouettes.

And yes I'm serious that HAYAO MIYAZKI will not tolerate cheek mouths if this image below from PRINCESS MONONOKE is any indication.

Again, If I see fanart which I do encourage, make sure the mouths are drawn with silhouette. And if it's AI Generated, tell your CPU and GPU the define the mouth with silhouette.

And last but not least, Things to consider when drawing mouths. 

Pardon the typo in one of the rule sentences but what I want is for teeth angle, avoidance of SIMPSONS teeth, some signs of individuality in close ups of the teeth, as well as the define the UVULA as realistic as possible.

Woah did I ever sound so critical..... I need to control my temper but at the same time, I have a profound love for my art and It would be devastating for me if my rules for what I want in my own character designs are ever broken.

But seriously, overprotection for one's art direction is a result of a love for an art form and to better our skills as well as transfer our knowledge to future generations.

As for the pages of my style guide, I started the guide sometime around Early 2022 but stopped half way due to my college studies so I had no time to continue that. 

And even then, I've learnt so much that I felt I'll need to start over again with the style guide and improve on the faults since I know more design wise. 

So if anybody want's to see more of the MARYLANDIA style guide, wait until I have started the new one. The complete guide won't be ready until months from now but I'll periodically show images of it on this BLOG, FACEBOOK, LINKEDIN, BlueSky, etc.

Until then, see you next blogpost.