2.5d face-rig

For an animation regarding the states of mourning with children, the storyboard quickly evolved to one focusing on the child’s facial emotions, supported by a voice-over.

With the limitations of the art-style in mind, I set out to build a 2.5d face-rig in After Effects using Expression Scripting. This would allow me to easily change the face’s orientation to make it go from sad to uplifting. Below is an example of it in action and the seperate illustrations.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

For this to work I applied numerous Expressions within Adobe After Effects (the coding language within the software) to link numerous properties to a single controller.

The most difficult piece of code is barely noticeable actually, namely the face and how it slightly scales when rotated. I made this piece of code for that:

    increment = 25

    scaleValue = Math.pow(transform.yRotation, 2)/(100+increment)*-1 + 100;

    [scaleValue, scaleValue, scaleValue]