Emoting without a face?

[Desichan]

Hey guys, I'm just curious what you think about making sprites that have a face you can't see whatsoever...

For example, I have this guy, with a mask on his mouth, and bangs covering the entirety of his eyes, but I wanna make sure he kind of can emote, but my best clue how, would be by making little word type bubbles appear above his head, with things to symbolize how he feels.

What would you guys think to do in such a situation?

[Darkmoonfire]

Ideally if you had the time/money, you could use multiple poses to use body language to emote.

I know that anime has a few symbols that are put on peoples heads to indicate emotions, like the sweat drop or the red cross-popping vein symbol. It's a bit similar to the speech bubble idea.

[Mammon]

Like darkmoonfire said, poses or anime symbols would be your best bet. An emoji(-ish) textbubble could work too, I've seen it before but that's more an RPG game thing. And if neither works, you could give him an array of sound effects.

You should probably anticipate that unless you get a wide variety of poses to convey a lot of nuanced emotions, all of these solutions will come with a loss of character depth and seriousness. Even if their lines and actions suggest a serious character, the audience won't consider them as such in most cases. In the event that you do plan on a serious character, having no expressive emotions or doing it through written channels only would be the only viable course.

(If your game features full voice-acting this might also be a way around the problem.)

[RotGtIE]

The purpose of concealment is concealment.

[Desichan]

Oh wow, okay you guys all address some very good points, which have certainly helped me understand this a bit more. I never thought about if you want to convey the character seriously or comically, and when I think of this, it makes it really easy to figure out what to do.

But yeah, all of your guys's points are really great. For example @mammon, you pointing out how it'll make the character be considered less serious unless they have countless movements, is very interesting to think of. The more I think of it as well, I feel like the fact the person may seem cartoony and not be taken seriously, actually will work for my project.

But yeah, great points that everyone addressed!

[SundownKid]

You can mess with the mask and give it face-like eye movements if youre willing to embellish it a little. Like the eyes widen despite the fact that it's an unmoving mask.

Also, body language of course, like with the hands.

[Katy133]

I actually read somewhere that characters with hidden or minimalist designs will cause viewers to identify with them more, because the viewer has to use their imagination to fill in the details of the character, and will end up filling those details with concepts personal and individual to them. That's why people tend to find pixel art and minimalist/kawaii art "cute."

A good example of this would be the designs of the titular characters from "The Three Robbers" children's book:




Is their skin really blue, or is it the blue tint of the night? Do they have beards, or are they clean-shaven? Are they triplets? Siblings? Friends? We don't even know for sure from the narration if they're male or female.

Like RotGtIE pointed out, characters who are dressed to conceal themselves usually do so for a reason. The robbers dress like this because they're wanted by the authorities. So, there's an in-story reason for them to look like that.