Sketchbook: Shoot me again (re-do)

Andy gave me some great feedback on my lip syncs so far and suggested that my "shoot me again" was a little at odds with the sarcastic tone of the dialogue, so I'm having a bit of a crack at re-doing it to better reflect that. Rather than moving forwards, he suggested that the character should pull back.

Click for full size

Sarcasm is quite a tricky expression to convey in any case, but it's even worse when your character doesn't have eyebrows! You don't quite realise how much dimension they add to a character's face until you remove them.

I had a shot at drawing some 'regular' expressions first, before attempting to translate them onto my character's significantly more simplified features. I've always felt that the aim of animation, and indeed drawing in general, is to convey as much information with as few lines as possible. You need to make each and every line count — if it's not contributing anything to the expression, remove it!

Also trying to pin down his body language at this stage — I want him to shift his body weight backwards, shoulders and arms up in an almost defensive shrug. "Shoot me again — I enjoy it!" I'm having some trouble getting the balance right.

Click for full view

So far I've not liked the way that adding eyebrows completely changes the structure of my character's face, so I'm leaning towards keeping them off. I'm trying to figure out a way of shaping his eyes to suggest the existence of eyebrows. I'm finding it quite difficult, though I think the inclusion of his lower eyelid into the expression helped a lot.

I still need to really pin down the expression and body language. I don't think it'll do too much good to keep working on them entirely separately. I need to start trying to combine them properly to see how they work together.