Maximize Emotional Impact
KEY CONCEPT: We focus much more on the eyes and inner eyebrow than anywhere else on the face, except the mouth.
Figure 1. | Brains are efficient – they pay particular attention to the parts of our environment that will give us the most information for the least work. When it comes to assessing the degree of illumination on a surface divided into shadow and light, for example, we focus on the boundary where there is the most rapid change from one to the other. Tonal changes that occur elsewhere on the surface don’t register nearly as strongly, allowing artists to use the shadow edge to either intensify, or diminish, the amount of perceived contrast and brightness. |
I talk about the lower "hot spot" (the mouth) in a later blog; here I focus on the eyes and brows. It’s not as though there is no change in the aspect of a face when an eyebrow moves in the area above this hot zone, or tips upwards with its outer end. But the amount and type of change we perceive with these actions is slight and ambiguous, compared to the much more powerful effects of movements inside the "hot spot."
Figure 9. | Similarly, the frown in Fig. 9 is unmistakable, although frowns by their nature are a bit harder to ascribe to one cause without participation by the mouth. Some observers might describe this face as thoughtful or perplexed others as stern or annoyed. But there is a very expressive change from the neutral face in comparison to the ambiguous expressions of Fig. 5, 6, and 7. |
Figure 10. | Figure 11. | Even more bang for the artist’s buck is created by tiny alterations in the arc of the upper eyelid, perhaps the hottest spot of the “hot spot.” Note the increasing intensity in Figure 11, compared to Figure 10, and how much more penetrating the eye looks than the neutral eye of Figure 2. |
Figure 14. The arc of the eyelids and occluded irises give the giant crab her highly expressive appeal. | The faces I drew here are realistic; however, the principle of “hot spots” applies equally to stylized characters, although the exact boundaries of the “hot spot” depend on the particular character design. With Tamatoa (Figure14), the giant crab in “Moana,” for example, there are no eyebrows, so the "hot spot" is focused on the shape of the eyelids and the amount of iris that is exposed. |