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May 2019

Have you studied gesture drawing and expressions? There's a lot of emotion you can convey in how someone holds their shoulders or the tension in the muscles near the eyes.

I am no expert in the field but maybe you can try watching some tutorials of gestures and how to draw facial expressions.
I also struggle in that, sometimes I just google surprised face and try to draw the one that suits my character the best. Just make some research.

For example I really like this page. I can feel confusion, pain and bits of darkness.

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Maybe experiment more with the line weights; make line art thicker or thinner according to shadows and weight of the object. The poses are a bit stiff, but I find the art's flatness to be more of an issue to my eyes. That might work with comedic newspaper strips, but with a more serious style like yours, it's more jarring.

I think using a different size pen for things in the background/foreground will help, too. It'll make your characters stand out more, which can bring a little more interest to the drawing.

Hope that makes sense and helps :open_mouth:

You need to do more sketches. No lineart, no colours, first try to do a lot of sketches. It takes time.
Use mirror!
Make an ugly face, a horrified, a smiling, lots of faces and draw from them. These are photos of Disney animators, they are not doing ithe emotions from the top of the head!



Also, find tutorials, a bunch of them! Try them, you can even just redraw for beginning. There are lots of groups in VK like TD (artists group), they have all the hashtags to find each type of tutorials easy.

Oh, I also recommend to check out the group "Snegovski" in VK and look at her comics and art. Won't say that you will like the art (but maybe you will), but she is so good at exaggerated emotions, you can understand every one of them clearly. Maybe it will help you too!

Study expressions! One of the biggest things I noticed is that you don't include eyebrows in your expressions. Eyebrows are one of the most essential and useful part when it comes to emoting. They can be really pushed and exaggerated.

For example; when the girl says "Relax man!" I'd assume shes worried/concerned for her safety. Her eyebrows would be raised in shock/fright. Shes also shouting. Her mouth should be open more.

again. Eyebrows. When the girl says "what?" she could raise her one eyebrow in confusion. Maybe cock her head to the side a little.

Try to look up expressions when you can and see what changes with each expression.

Aside from facial emoting, the body emotes too! The girl putting her hands up when she says "relax man!" is a good example as well as having the girl cock her head slightly when shes asking something :slight_smile: Shoulders slump, shoulders tense up, heads hang low, heads are held high, fists clench, chests puff out. There's all sorts of stuff.

What I see here is that they lacked expression, or just lacked some additional atmosphere to support the feelings they are showing.

For the panel you said the girl seems shockd rather than fear, You could do it like this. Widen the eye, and male the iris a bit smaller. Add some sweat drops on her face and make some squiggly lines like ~~~ around her body (couldn't draw to show you since its already 1 am, so sorry).

One way I could suggest is that you take a mirror, Make expression, exaggerated them, and draw it from here. That's the easiest way, I think.

Also, make different angles from what you have right now. Either it's from top to bottom, from bottom to top, etc. a very dramatic close up to their face will also be good. Like a panel solely for their eyes. If you draw them right, that could already convey a lot of emotions.

I don't think these were that helpful but this is some old pages I made some years ago (they are sketchy as f plus made on a lined papers and I never made it public yet), but you can see that eyes convey a lot of emotions here :

Using my own drawing might bit be the best way to convey it, and I'm not that good with explaining but I hope you got what I mean.

I agree that gesture drawing and practicing expressions are the best solution. In addition to looking at how other comics do similar things, you can watch movies and occasionally pause during significant moments to study the body language, expressions, composition, etc.

Some specific thoughts.. for the girl in the second example, eyes wider so you see more of the whites, and possibly try having her look slightly upward with the "camera angle" for the panel looking down. When the camera looks down on a person it suggests they are or feel more helpless, and if it points up it suggests power/strength. And yeah, scrunching the shoulders up so her body looks tense/defensive would also help.

The third one isn't bad, really. The guy is actually pretty expressive, and it's always hard to capture multiple emotions when you only have one or two panels. You might try having the girl cross her arms in the first panel, which would suggest vulnerability, then have her eyebrows pinched a bit when she asks "what?"

But I will say that in context you probably are getting your meaning and emotions across. The art is stiff, but you can continue to work on that and get better since you're aware of it.

lol no, it's not due to heartlessness. Maybe you just lack a bit of study.

I suggest exaggerating the placement/ arch of brows, making the eyes squint, drawing the pupils smaller/bigger, or stretching the corners of the mouth. It depends on the emotion you're going for.

Evoking emotion is a combination of techniques, not just facial expressions. It can be done by choosing the right colors and camera angels. Close up shots and a change in the elevation of the camera angles are great tricks too. You could also add panels that emphasize the mood. for example, if you want to emphasize how gray-haired-guy's cool swords skills, draw him in multiple shots as he swings his sword to his enemies. If you want readers to be shocked, close up to Mr.Unibrow's neck or add a panel with blood spraying everywhere.

I think exaggerating the action poses can help. I remember when I took a drawing class, i was having a hard time drawing someone sitting, until the prof pointed out that the curve of the models back wasn't as straight as i thought; it was almost a C shape.

For the 2nd pic, usually when people are surprised, scared, shocked, etc. the irises shrink showing more whites of the eyes. Also the pupils dialate too, but I rarely see that in drawings though

You can go online and find facial expressions for just about everything. That will help with the expression. As for the drawing, try working sketchy, where you don't commit to one line but use several to find the form.

seconding looking at gesture, drawing expressions, using references, alla dat

also, think about how youre framing your shots. if youve got a really intense shot, you might want to zoom out to a mid so you can see the emotion in their body - or you might wanna zoom right in to just their eye. your composition can say a lot about the emotion of the scene, as well as the way you draw things

I look at sketches on Pinterest for facial expressions and body postures. I think I spend more hours looking for reference material than actually drawing my comic.

Yes, I spend much more time on lineart and coloring than on sketches themselves. Maybe this is really a part of the problem. :thinking:

** Cough **
I'm unable to do anything like these expressions with my own face. Sometimes I make uncontrollable weird expressions when I feel very strong feelings, but I'm unable to reproduce them intentionally. I'm able to do willingly, in controllable way, only sad or disgusted face. That's all strong expressions I'm able to express.
I really tried to learn to stretch my facial muscles for imitating appropriate emotions in right moments, and from some moment it turned into a habit. But I'm still not sure if I succeed in it. There are usually not strong expressions anyway, so people still often misunderstand it. (Also, to be honest, I forget to stretch my facial muscles in proper way, when I'm thinking deeply, and in such a moments I make either inadequate expressions, or (more often) stiff face. LOL!)

An example: My HAPPIEST face during the last few years


I was really, sincerely happy, when I did this selfie (well, as much as I can be happy in principle, LOL), because it was made in such an excitement moment in London (I were there for the first time, and everything looked wonderful for me).

That's why I'm afraid that probably the root of the problem is in my personality...

This sounds as a reasonable advice. I didn't think about it. Thanks!

I liked your sketches, too.

on top of exaggerating more, i feel like your comic could benefit from more diverse camera angles. all the panels seem to be mounted to the 'straight ahead horizon view'.

for example, in the panel where the characters' heads are severed, you could add intensity by placing the angle along the slash line, and maybe show that the heads are more disconnected. the bodies would be pushed in the direction of the slash, while the heads are pushed away. i bring up avas demon a lot but it really does have a good few example panels for this type of movement
(warning for gore)

the lack of the bodies moving with the swords' movement makes it feel less intense of a hit.

irt facial expressions, eyebrows and lower lids are everything. if you leave them neutral its gonna take away from the emotion.

Biggest thing that stands out to me is the straight lines. Straight lines are static, curves flow and move. When a sword moves at speed, it appears to curve. And exaggerate. Extreme emotions are not pretty (eg, no matter what art tells you, no one is cute when they're crying). For all people complain about them, chibis, over the top faces and those cliche anime sweatdrops get the point across. One of the best pieces of advice I got for practicing was to once a day set a 30 min timer and just copy a screen shot and manga cap or something. Pick something dramatic and exaggerated and for 30 minutes just copy it and try to finish it and then leave it alone. You can also try redrawing the basics of the screen shot with other characters.
Eg, when I do fanart on an artblocky day I look up Heartcatch Percure and redraw some of those wonderful exaggerated screenshots for stuff like this (don't look too hard it's like 3 years old and I really do knock them out in about half an hour)

And by being totally over the top and wacky it gets the the point across very simply and effectively. And once you know how to exaggerate it you can start making it smaller.

Also another great piece of advice lots of people have given. Sketch all in one. The more you go over layers the more life you lose. One layer of sketch one layer of line art. Stop trying to refine.
Another very old (even older than the last one) fanart WIP gif, I do so much on that red and blue sketch layer and I'm told (by artists better than me) that's what gives my work more flow and naturalness

Thanks!
I've also noticed, that if camera looks down up, the character look more smug; or threatening - if they are looking in camera in this moment.

Yes, I try! But not always succeed.

Succeeding is the hard part, but the expression largely comes down to mouth and eyes.

There are actually expression templates of faces that list everything from anger to awe to sneakiness. Sometimes when I'm stuck, I'll look at one of those.