Essential character art expressions/poses?

[Sleepy]

I've been chipping away at planning for my project and one of the long term thoughts is how to handle things like character art. While character art isn't essential early on (and I do my own backgrounds so that's not a problem), it's a bigger concern when trying to keep into account things like budgeting, since I commission mine. As such, I've been curious. What poses or expressions do people consider most essential for even a general project?

One list I like to borrow from, though based in rp, uses:

Amusement
Happiness
Excitement
Surprise
Fear

Guilt/Shame
Disgust
Anger
Boredom/Contempt
Sadness

Confusion
Contentment
Scheming

With addition of things like "neutral", just to have a default expression to go back to.

[SundownKid]

IMO, having at least 5 expressions is essential, Neutral, Happy, Sad, Angry and Surprised.

[Keinart]

One good technique I found out is to create open and closed eyes versions for everything.

That way you can comission 5 basic expressions as mentioned above, then you can combine it with open/closed eyes to get new expressions. For example neutral with closed eyes can look like a "thinking" expression, sad with closed eyes could be "regret" or even "shyness", happy with open eyes is more energetic while with closed eyes will only look like a smug smile.

You can also apply the same with body positions, or hands gestures, the same expressions with just a small change in hands positions can make a huge difference, this way with some imagination you can get more variety without having to make a different expression for each.

[RotGtIE]

One of the advantages in writing your script first is that you can read through it and plan out everything you will need as you turn it into a screenplay. This is easily the least wasteful way to plan and produce assets.

It's common and boring advice, but I recommend you finish writing your story first, then use it to start your asset planning while your script is in editing. You'll be glad you did.

[Kinjo]

I usually go with: default, smiling, laughing, angry, worried, serious, crying, surprised.

[Rosstin]

I'm interested in this thread to, sometimes you mess this up and don't do an essential expression and it sucks.

I'd also be interested in suggestions for essential voice effects.

[Ghost of Crux]

I agree with what RotGtIE said; unless you're an artist and have the spare time to churn out more sprite, it's honestly better to finish your script first.

Why? Because while any essential "basic list" are useful, there are times where you want a particular scene to pop out, or one particular tone to shine. For example, I have a VN planned that's basically heavy on tense atmosphere and I want certain moments to have heavy impact to instill into the players that their choices have certain bad consequences. To do this, the arts must contribute to the tone, too. And if I go by a list of "Neutral, Happy, Sad, Angry and Surprised" I might get convenience but at the cost of less immersion. Have you ever had those moments where the dialogue box are "WATCH OUT!" and the character's sprite is just making a small "o" mouth? Yeah.

But that's just my opinion, because 1) I'm an artist and can whip myself to work for free, and 2) it works for the VN I'm developing. But honestly, I think it's still valid because IMO you can cut some corners on the less "impactful" moments. Like... in the slow paced sections of the story, I think you can get away with reducing the character expressions put into them. Like you can, for one, describe confusion while showing neutral face. You can merge amusement with happiness. It all depends on what your VN is all about. The VN I was referring to is about supernatural things that aren't afraid to harm the main characters and them all fighting each other in spite of it, so naturally I would want to put more resources and effort into having, say, two different scared expressions that would fit specific scenarios than to have two different happiness expressions in form of amusement and happy.

[Fuseblower]

Well, Paul Ekman has done a lot of research into the universality of facial expressions. In his book "Unmasking the Face", he argues there are 6 universal facial expressions (in addition to the neutral face).

• Surprise
• Fear
• Disgust
• Anger
• Happiness
• Sadness

The book explains how these facial expressions work. Ekman also developed FACS, the facial action coding system which links every facial expression to the facial muscles that are used.

The book contains photos of all these expressions performed by a man and a woman and, interestingly, also combines facial expressions by mixing the "eye part" of one emotion with the "mouth part" of another emotion (for example : fearful eyes and an angry mouth).

This way you can get some more mileage out of just 6 expressions (7, with the neutral one added).

So, I guess these 6 basic facial expressions are essential (and a neutral one should be present too).

A problem I see with this is intensity. The mild surprise you experience when a package is delivered in the mail when nothing was ordered is of a very different magnitude than the surprise when martians land their spaceship on your lawn and demand you to take them to your leader.

[ketskari]

I prefer to determine sprite expressions according to facial muscles. Some examples might be:

Eyebrows - surprised, furrowed/angry, worried, sad, neutral
Eyes - closed, left, center, right, partially closed, squinting, surprised
Nose - wrinkled
Mouth - smiling, slightly open, shouting, grinning, sneering, neutral

There are more, of course, but I find it easier to simply mix and match with the above, and then to add extra expressions for select characters (i.e., a unique angry expression for one character, a smirk for another). I rarely find I'm missing expressions this way, and it's easier to determine the intensity of the expression. (So surprised brows + normal eyes + neutral mouth = mild surprise, whereas surprised brows + surprised eyes + slightly open mouth = very surprised).

[YossarianIII]

If you want a really thorough look at facial expressions, The Artist's Complete Guide to Facial Expression by Gary Faigan is pretty comprehensive. (I found it through the bibliography of Scott McCloud's Making Comics, which also has some good stuff on facial expressions.)

It's pretty much a book-length look at the stuff Fuseblower and ketskari mention in their posts, which is all helpful to know. It can be helpful even just to skim a book about facial expressions for artists to get an idea of the theory behind making them.