ABSTRACT
Animating a character's face is one of the most interesting and enjoyable parts of the animation process. Facial animation could fill many volumes on its own, but here we'll get into the bread-and-butter techniques that give people a great starting point. In the real world, the planning and preparation would have been done before the body was animated, as it would influence decisions in that regard as well. The accents people indicated in planning stage create a perfect framework on which to base the poses. The jaw is blabbing away, so it's time to work on the mouth corners. As a rule of thumb, mouth shapes for vowel sounds happen on the frame people hear the sound, while most consonants need to hit the shape a frame or two before the sound. Another nice touch for blinks can be adding some very slight up-and-down movement in the brows.
