antonius block

for our first assignment, we are to make a face using only primitive shapes: circles, squares, and the lot.  we can squash and stretch them but no getting funky with the verts.  extrusions are definitely out.

i decided to use max von sydow's character from the seventh seal.

since his face is naturally very angular, i attempted to do it using only manipulated cubes; no circles except for the eyes.  it didn't hurt that the character's name is antonius bloch.

i'm not sure how successful the experiment was.

front

three-quarter

side

looking at it now, he kind of looks like sloth from the goonies....

if i were to animate this guy for a sort of "bergman meets dire straits" video twist, the paremetrics would be as follows:

• eyelids open to close
• eyebrows raise and lower
• lips raise and lower for speech
• perhaps giving movement to his lower jaw for speech

this has me wondering, now: with such an abstract character, would more controls (jaw movement, cheek muscles, etc.) make it look more bizarre in a sort of reverse uncanny valley effect?

the man in the mirror

kicking things off in our facial animation class, we were to spend 15-20 minutes in front of the mirror, making different expressions to study just how much our face can stretch and change.

for me, this was about as difficult a homework assignment as saying "go watch an ingmar bergman movie."  my whole iphoto library pretty much looks like this.  i'm as entertained with my own reflection as my sixth month-old nephew is.

i did a set of big expressions and another of relatively smaller, more subtle changes.  i remember seeing a brief featurette on tcm about ingrid bergman.  patricia clarkson cited a scene from "notorious" where she realized cary grant did not love her and a "whole flood of emotion" washed over her face (as the narrator put it), yet it was extremely subtle (you can't pull that off, mr. james cameron).
so i thought i'd see what i could do.

hopefully my photoshop skills will improve, too.  it took me three times as long to compile these pictures together as it did to shoot them and i'm still not sure how to crop the edges neatly.
bah, i'm off to watch an ingmar bergman movie.