QUIZ: What's Going On
Behind that Mask?
Now that almost everyone is wearing a mask, it's become much harder to read facial expressions. But the eyes can express quite a lot, depending on the emotion. We invite you to test your knowledge of the six basic facial expressions, with the eyes alone "in action."
Take a look at Figures 1 through 7 below and see if you can determine which of these expressions match the masked faces - Fear, Anger, Neutral, Joy, Disgust, Surprise and Sadness. Good luck!
Figure 1.
 Figure 2 |  Figure 3 |
 Figure 4 |  Figure 5 |
 Figure 6 |  Figure 7 |
Many of you make facial expressions for a living - on dragons, on robots, on superheros, and more - so it is essential that you make sure that your eyes say as much as your other features. I drew the different facial configurations and tested the masked versions on 'Mechanical Turk' to see what consensus I could get. So...
...here are the answers:
| |  | Figure 1: JOY |
| HAPPY EYES Joy belongs to a group of expressions - the others being Surprise and Disgust - which depends on both the mouth and the eyes being readable. We may thin that the "happy yes" in the full face (right) clearly indicate joy, but when the smile is hidden behind a mask, happiness can be hard to read. |
| |  | Figure 2: ANGER |
| ANGRY EYES Anger, unlike smiling, is recognizable even when the outh is masked. In online tests, testers had no problem reading anger with just the scowling glating eyes, a configuration unlike any other expression. |
| |  | Figure 3: SADNESS |
| SAD EYES Sadness is also clear without being able to see the mouth through the mask, although some testers saw this masked face as Fear, rather than Sad. |
| |  | Figure 4: NEUTRAL |
| NEUTRAL EYES Many testers were unsure abou this Neutral face when the mouth was hidden. 20% saw this masked face as Anger, while others thought it looked like Fear or Sad. About half of the testers said it had no expressions. It is important to note that, even with the outh visible, testers tend to project an emotion onto any face with no particular expression. |
 |  | Figure 5: FEAR |
| TERRIFIED EYES Terror, like Anger, is highly readable with just the upper face visible. Some testers thought the masked face showed Surprise, but the extremely wide, bulging eyes struck most testers as Fear. |
| |  | Figure 6: SURPRISE |
| SURPRISED EYES Most testers saw a strong expression in this masked face, but were split between Fear and Surpise. Surprise, like Joy and Disgust, is only fuly readable when the mouth is visible whereas Fear is recognizable with just the eyes, as long as they are wide open, as in Figure 5. |
| |  | Figure 7: DISGUST |
| DISGUSTED EYES Disgust, with the wrinkling action around the nose and the characteristic arched shape of the upper lip, is nearly unreadable when the nose and mouth are covered. It is the most dependent on lower face recognition of all of the cardinal expressions with Joy being a close second. How did you do? I asked readers to email me with their responses with the promise of a copy of my book, "The Artists Complete Guide to Facial Expression," as the prize. The winner was: Dave Normand, Animatiion Supervisor from Montreal, Canada. Way to go, Dave! CREDITS: All illustrations were drawn by the blog author, Gary Faigin, on his Wacom tablet. |
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