I thought of opening this thread in the Rigging section since this is very closely related.

In another thread, I mentioned Gary Faigin's book "The artist complete guide to Facial Expression". Here is a review of the book with scanned pages so you can have an idea of what you will find in it.

More links:

Notes with some scanned figures from Faigin's Book.

A web page with analysis of facial expressions from photographs.

An interesting article about rigging faces for emotions. It is on Gamasutra so I think you must be a member (costs nothng if I remember). The interesting approach is to assign different emotions to pose sliders.

An interesting page from a researcher that shows expressions that comes by mixing different basic expressions in the upper and lower part of the face.

An finally a 19th century online book: "The expression of emotions in man and animal" by Charles Darwin himself. No pictures there but might be interesting read.

I hope this isn't considered a topic hijack,
But this may be helpful too.

http://www.artnatomia.net/uk/index.html

Not at all. In fact, I should have included the links I posted a few days ago.

And BTW, I found that page I was mentioning about where small details in the face can change the expression In this case, eyelids. It is almost at the bottom of that page. Or follow this link.

And anybody is welcome to post any usefull information concerning facial expression here.

ANother sheet with facial expression on this page.

This is from Andrew Loomis "Fun with a pencil" book.

One thing I observe from those charts is that they are all taken from full face. This is an imprtant shortcoming of those expression charts. So a very important word of caution seems necessary here.

Facial expresisons should not be thought as just flat facial feature movements. The head posses a rounded morphology and all the facial features must follow the head contour when they are moved, stretched or contracted.

A wide smile, for instance, is not just the mouth corner widening and pulling up. The mouth corner must also be pulled back. When we smile, the mouth corners are pulled up and back by the great zigomatic muscle which is attached to the cheek-bone.

The only book that I know which covers this in details and actually shows face and profile views of expresisons as well as explicit discussions of expressions width, depth and height, is "Stop Staring" by Jason Osipa. Not surprisingly, this book is specifically addressed for 3D riggers an animators.

2D animators usually don't need that sort of detailed 3D coverage of facial expressions because they learn to draw the expressions at different head angles and don't really think of those expressions in an analytic way. It just need to read well. But in 3D, that is another story. The facial expressions rigging needs to be designed so the expression will read well from the conception time. Not at the time where the expression is actually used.

Jason Osipa's book is probably the best reference available for 3D facial animation. Wonderful reference!

For photo references of facial expressions, my favorite so far is Mark Simon's "Facial Expressions--A Visual Reference for Artists." Has 50 models from children to elderly. Shows expressions from several angles, which is one of the things I like best about it. About 60 pictures per model. Great range of facial types as well as facial expressions. Published by Watson-Guptill.

Bill Gaylord