Facial studies...

[Juan2.0]

[AlphaMale73]

somebody likes Michael Turner.

[Bruce Lee]

Juan,

I'd love to see you work more with facial expressions, man. Often it's expressions that really help give faces character. My advice is to get one of those portable mirrors to help in those regards.

[Juan2.0]

Juan,

I'd love to see you work more with facial expressions, man. Often it's expressions that really help give faces character. My advice is to get one of those portable mirrors to help in those regards.

Yeah, I've been working on that too, but I'm having a heck of a time being able to keep my faces consistent with each other so that the person looks like the same person in every panel. Any advice?

[Manji]

I agree with Loston on this, I was disappointed in your post because I was expecting to see people scared, sad, mad, happy etc instead it is just kind of the same face on different people. You are capable of so much more you just have to try different things.

[Bruce Lee]

Yeah, I've been working on that too, but I'm having a heck of a time being able to keep my faces consistent with each other so that the person looks like the same person in every panel. Any advice?

Maintaining a consistant likenesses is all about proportion and shape. If you keep consistancy in regards to feature shapes, the size of various features, and strive to maintain the appropriate distances between the features, you'll do all right. That's the ballgame.

Another suggestion I can make is to try to change the facial shapes in general. Even pretty girls have varying head shapes! A few examples: Christina Ricci has sort of an upside down teardrop head shape; Tiffani Amber Thiessan has sort of a pentagon shaped head; Christina Applegate is more of an oval-shaped head. Don't be afraid to try something different.

Loston

[Juan2.0]

Yeah, I picked up this hairstyle magazine for reference awhile back that shows different styles of face shapes on celebrities. It's very interesting. Everything from an egg shaped heads to a heart shaped and everything in between.

[JimLeeforGod]

Good stuff Juan. I agree with the above posts including the Michael Turner comment

[Tony Moore]

one thing i recommend is really trying to give each person their OWN face. pick a couple key iconic features to put into a face, like a specific nose, or shape of mouth, glasses, moustache, whatever, and really strive to make each person as individual as you can. Look at some folk who have interesting features, such as whatever hideous beast lumbers down the aisle at the grocery store, versus pretty people, and really study what each one has and how it sets them apart from the others, visually. I also recommend studying various racial features such as facial structure. Treat 'em like Legos, and use 'em to build new individual faces.

-T

[pencilpunx]

If you've got a little bit of extra cash, I totally recommend this book for facial reference. The sections are divided up by age, gender, and race, and contain dozens of photos of each subject running the gamut of expressions from numerous angles. If you're trying to work on consistency, having photos of one face conveying a hundred emotions will really help with that. It's pretty cheap online, but I walked into Borders the other day and bought it off the discount table for $7.