#i've never watched an anime that can convey so much emotion with facial expression

[shebaa]

god i love trigun stampede so much

[janthonyashtoreth]

hi!! this is kind of a weird question, but do you have any tips on making art more expressive? I've always been really rigid and perfectionistic with my art and I'm just starting to venture into a looser, "cartoonier" style. I'm having a lot of difficulties pushing my art to be really exaggerated though. I really admire your style and how well you can communicate emotion!! thank you so much in advance!!

@crawlyqqeen Hello!! I’m so honored that you’re coming to me for art advice lksdsjfs

I just want to preface this by saying that everyone’s process is different! this is just what works best for me, but you may have success with different methods. with that being said, ill talk about my tips for a bit!

good omens is the first fandom that i’ve done art for that is live action (fancy way of saying i just did anime art all the time fbjgfkg). im really glad i decided to start drawing for gomens because, among other reasons, it’s been great practice for drawing from life (or screenshots in my case)

the first thing i did way back in august was get some paper and my pencil and just start drawing from references! on one of my many watches of the show, i screenshotted a bunch of frames of david and michael making exaggerated faces from different angles and a couple of them making neutral faces just to get a feel for the shapes of their faces/facial features. 

they’re not perfect by any means, but they were good to get the feel of drawing michael and david! they’re all pretty rigid and stiff because i wasn’t comfortable drawing them yet and didnt really know how i wanted to fit them to my style. also this paper is huge sorry for poor lighting alkdfj

once you feel comfortable with the subjects you’re drawing, you can start thinking about stylizing them a bit. the way i did this was by going back and looking at all of the life drawings i did and trying to pick out some key features of david and michael’s faces, while also keeping in mind some features that i already had in my head based on crowley and aziraphale’s characters. i came out of this phase with the basic ideas of crowley having sharper angles, high cheek bones, and a squarer jaw, while aziraphale would have rounder angles, smaller eyes, and a softer jaw.

i still use these basic shapes in my art now, but the way i draw them is much different from my initial practice pages and even my first posts on this account. once you get into the groove of drawing them fairly accurately, it gets much easier to stylize their features more and find a style that works for you

something else that helped me make my art more fluid/expressive is utilizing wrinkles and creases in the face! they help to emphasize facial expressions sooo much. for example, here’s a few drawings of mine both with and without wrinkles/creases:

all of the emotions that they’re portraying feel more subdued/don’t come across at all without the creases to add emphasis. also, body language definitely helps to keep things more fluid! think of the emotion you’re trying to have a character convey before you even lay pencil to paper so you can match not only their face but their overall pose to that emotion

i struggled a lot in the past (and still now sometimes) with my art being very rigid like you said, and the only thing that’s really worked well for me is practice with drawing references! i know a lot of other artists have success with gesture drawing but i never really got the hang of it and it just frustrated me to no end. if a certain technique isn’t working for you, don’t push yourself to make it work- it may be better to spend that energy finding another method

im sorry if this is really long and rambly, but i hope i got the point across!!