NEUTRAL | Enigma - July 2017

The NEUTRAL Face
is no Blank Slate

KEY CONCEPT:   If you wish to create a successful neutral face with no unintended emotion, there are three basic requirements for "posing" the eyebrows, eyes and mouth.

Figure 1.  An actor, a criminal and an artist (the author) pose for "mug shots".

What do the three faces in Figure 1 have in common?  

If you said, "Expressionless," I would agree with you.  But Neutral faces turn out to be hard to agree on. In my tests of the faces in Figure 1, only 60% of testers voted "neutral", 25% voted for "Sad," and the rest saw either "Anger" or "Fear."  For the most part, these are a best results one can get with a realistic drawing, painting or photo of a "blank face."  ​

With all the other expressions, I've frequently achieved 90% agreement.  Why is Neutral so much harder to pull off?

​Here's my theory.  The emotional state of other people is of enormous importance to us.  When we encounter someone, we instinctively ​ attempt to read their state of mind from their face: are they unfriendly or friendly, annoyed or content, sad or cheerful?  This works great when the face is portraying one of the cardinal emotions – Anger, Sadness, Joy, Surprise, Disgust, and Fear – but not so well if the face is so relaxed that all the usual cues are slight and ambiguous.

KEY POINTS about NEUTRAL FACES:
It is more difficult to get unanimity on neutral faces – faces without any expression - than any of the six cardinal expressions.

On average, one-quarter to one-third of viewers perceive realistic faces with no expression as sad.

Stylized faces can be more successful at portraying a neutral expression than realistic faces because so many details which are liable to various interpretations are missing.  Only the essentials are included.

​Neutral faces are the result of a person NOT feeling a dominant emotion - they are instead experiencing a stable, everyday mental state.  It’s what we usually see, day in and day out, on the faces of people walking past us in the street, sitting on the subway, or drinking a cup of coffee in a café.

​The problem is that we can’t turn off our expression-detecting radar, and given the slightest excuse, we will read into these neutral faces a feeling that quite often is not really there.​

When there is very little obvious activity on the face, in fact, two things happen: 1) Only some folks (usually around 50%) will think it is, in fact, neutral; 2) Many people will see an expression on the face that others do not.  I have puzzled mightily over what was possessing people to see a particular face as angry, sad, or disgusted (the most popular “imaginary” expressions), and often I come away a bit mystified.  What details on the face is triggering their response?

​

Figure 2. Here’s a classic example.  This IS a neutral face, but the gentleman's enormous, showy eyebrows, his pronounced naso-labial fold (runs down the cheek) and naturally down-turned mouth, give viewers considerable room to perceive emotion. 90% of the testers agreed his wasn’t neutral, but their alternative answers were all over the map.  Such disagreement is common with neutral faces.

Figure 3. This test is more typical than Figure 2. The actress was asked to assume a blank face.  Sadness is by far the most common misreading of relaxed faces, as shown here.  What features make her look sad - perhaps her shadowed eyes?  Or, are many people simply predisposed to see sadness in an otherwise inexpressive face?  ​

I pointed out in my last blog that of all the expressions of emotion, Sadness can be expressed with the most subtle changes.  It’s most likely for that reason that people – who might also be projecting their own feelings – seem so quick to find Sadness in otherwise calm faces. 

Although I have never achieved agreement much over 60% with a realistic Neutral face (and that’s hard to achieve), it is quite possible with stylized faces to get a much stronger agreement.  The drastically reduced amount of detail, and the absence of creasing, shadowing, and bulging (all of which can trigger a perception of expression) makes it much easier to “tune out” the ambiguous cues that lead to disagreement when viewing neutral, realistic faces. 

We’ve all heard “expert” interpreters wax eloquent with deep psychological interpretations of portraits, claiming an authority to read volumes of information in a deadpan face where no two people might agree.  The art historian Laura Cumming was so insistent on the validity of her narratives of what various self-portraits expressed, that I finally abandoned her book A Face to the World: On Self-Portraits.  Here is her over-the-top  claim for the self portrait of German artist, Anton Mengs:

​

Figure 4. “But the eyes are red with exhaustion, the jaw hangs, the mouth is open and faltering as if trying to form a phrase. The artist stammers; whatever he really is cannot be summoned. Here he is in this false position, turning himself inside out to coincide with some sort of public image. But Mengs seems to doubt not just the imposture but himself as well, as if he knew he could never live up to expectations.”​ 

​Note that the Mengs portrait (Figure 4) scored nearly identically to that of the woman in Figure 3, for whom no complicated backstory seems warranted.  Neutral faces, however, are sort of a blank slate, and it is surprisingly easy to convince oneself (or someone else) that something is there that is not obvious to the untutored eye.  Are you ready to “buy” Cumming’s conclusion?  I’m comfortable in the clear terrain of the Cardinal Expressions; neutral faces can be open doors to whatever someone might choose to think.  

Figure 5.  A stylized face that scores extremely well for No Expression.  Unlike realistic faces, there are no extra folds, bulges, or creases that might be interpreted as an expression – only the minimum of detail required to portray the features.  Ambiguity is thus kept to a minimum.

For animators of stylized faces wishing to create a successful, non-ambiguous Neutral face, here are the three basic requirements: 

• The eyebrows are level and not elevated;
• The upper eyelid grazes the upper rim of iris;
• The line between the lips  is horizontally aligned with the corners of the mouth.

---

Credits: Figure 1 (left) and Figure 3 - The Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces, Karolinska Institutet, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Section of Psychology, Stockholm, Sweden; Figure 1 (middle) - Mug shot of Shannon J. Miles from Harris County Sheriff’s Office; Figure 1 (right) - Self-portrait of Gary Faigin. Figure 2 - www.Danheller.com . Figure 4 - Anton Raphael Meng "Self-Portrait, " Oil on Mohagany Panel, 29" x 22", in the collection of the Walker Art Gallery. Figure 5 - Mathilda, free Maya rigging model.