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Cartoony eyes – How to

Posted on October 19, 2016  4 Comments
Filed under Animation, Education, Reference

zootopia_anatomy

Eyes vocabulary

After few month working on Okido, I felt there was a lack of consistency between all the animators and decided to make a compilation of examples from my favourite animated movies.

Cartoony eyes are usually so massive that unlike realistic eyes, the appeal is very quickly lost if you don’t know how to handle them. Clarity and appeal are the keywords when working on eyes so the first rule of cartoony eyes posing is :

1. Centering:
Never, ever, have both eyes (pupils) centered on their respective orbital cavity. Instead and to avoid the zombie look, get the pupils closer to each others and have more space/white (sclera) on the outside of the eyes. This will create a more appealing pose.
f046b660-a9ff-4cdd-bd99-b5a83fdad984

2. Favouring:
When a character is looking sideway, one of the eyes should be centered and the other one much closer to the bridge of nose, or even intersect with the orbital cavity:
Flash Zootopia
maxresdefault

3. Focus:
As the character focuses on an object really close, you might want to increase the space on the outside of the eyes, but when the character is looking far away, again, do not center the eyes! (see rule 1)
Presto_03

Presto_02

4. Surprise
Even when trying to communicate surprise, we still revert to rule #1 and have more space on the outside of the eyes.
Ratatouille_16

Ratatouille_21

5. Profile
For profile view, you will first need to have a discussion with your supervisor, the rigging AND lighting team to know how the eye is rendered. Historically it was recommended to cheat as much as possible just so we can see a sliver of the iris but on more high end production, instead of being buried in the iris, the pupil will instead be projected (refracted) on the cornea so what you see in your viewport might be different from the final render.
ZOOTOPIA

Bonus tip:
Pay attention to the way the top lid is shaped on half lidded character in Zootopia, especially Nick. This will be included in a forthcoming article about stylised animation.

I hope this will help some of you, the following images are for education purpose only and copyrighted to their respective owners Disney and Pixar:

Toy Story_05

ZootopiaIN

zootopia-review

Inside-Out_01

Inside-Out_02

Inside-Out_003

maxresdefault (1)

Presto_01

Presto_02

Presto_03

Presto_04

Ratatouille_01

Ratatouille_02

Ratatouille_03

Ratatouille_04

Ratatouille_05

Ratatouille_06

Ratatouille_07

Ratatouille_08

Ratatouille_09

Ratatouille_10

Ratatouille_11

Ratatouille_12

Ratatouille_13

Ratatouille_14

Ratatouille_15

Ratatouille_16

Ratatouille_17

Ratatouille_18

Ratatouille_19

Ratatouille_20

Ratatouille_22

Ratatouille_23

Toy Story_01

Toy Story_02

Toy Story_03

Toy Story_04

Serkis

Motion capture worthy eyes

Related posts:
Messy goes to Okido animation reel

Comments

4 Responses to “Cartoony eyes – How to”

  1. Mirac on October 19th, 2016 13:09

    thanks!

  2. Olivier Ladeuix on October 19th, 2016 13:51

    thanks Mirac, great work on your Vimeo channel and that Hobo shot is really entertaining!

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