… is the break-the-4th-wall face. Sounds (and looks) stupid, I know, I know. I’ve done 3D comics for a little while now, and though I haven’t really got the hang of caustics (it’s a light paths thing; you’ll see caustics slightly improve even within Lithium 8 …), it’s fair to say I have mostly figured out things like basic scenery, props, subsurface scattering, bump/reflection mapping, grain, believable human posture, chiaroscuro; all that bollocks that adds to the mix …
… but the hardest thing, the most difficult thing to get even slightly right, is someone’s expression when they’re breaking the fourth wall (pictured).
I’ve done probably 9 or 10 of these straight-to-camera looks in OHB and Lithium, and the only one I think I got right was the one pictured above. It’s hard to describe what makes it work, but I guess if you think about what happens in real life – this is the in-joke non-laugh that only really sophisticated people can really wield well. Know what I mean? I’m not saying I’m sophisticated, far from it, but it does seem there’s a non-expression that takes pure comedy genius to really put across. By ‘sophisticated’, I don’t mean someone with a Fine Arts masters and a love of medieval poetry, I mean someone with a sophisticated sense of humour – you’ll find as many of these fantastic people in slums as you do in penthouses.
Generally for a normal test render, I change the light a bit, change the expression maybe twice, move an arm and test the render again before sending to the render queue – but for an expression like this, I literally have to do 25 tests before I give up and say “Near enough” and send to render! It’s so difficult!
Twenty five. Slightly move an eyebrow. Nope too much. Purse the lips fractionally but widen the left corner one fricken millimetre, nope now it’s too smug. Wrong eyebrow angle by 0.5 degrees ruins the entire tone of the look.
Easy expressions:
Slightly harder expressions:
Extremely, ridiculously hard expressions:
… maybe it should be easier and I’m just bad at it, but it’s taught me a lot about how we communicate the subtlest, most beautiful and wonderful, cripplingly funny things to each other, with the tiniest most perfect nothings of a facial muscular tension.
And I wonder how the shoutiest, loudest, angriest Youtubers, busy banging their hatred gongs and dragging people into their own philosophical dead-ends to stave off the loneliness; I do wonder how they go through the business of communication without enjoying such wonderful beautiful, advanced silences as the breaking-the-fourth-wall look. How a life devoid of nuance must feel. A life devoted to hate, where every bile-spitting face-crushing gurn delivers meaty fists of nastiness. What a waste, what a shame, to miss the beauty, the difficult quiet, the simple knockout understatement. The transcendent peace. The gentle meta. Oooh snap, hold on, these are sounding like comic titles … haven’t actually named Lithium 8 yet …
Perhaps, thinking of the angry and confusion-ridden Bannon-esque communication poisoning things like Youtube, as Kryten says; “His only crime is being Arnold Rimmer. It is also … his punishment.”
… so it’s not something we really need to worry about.
Back in the real world, I’m taking an extremely vulnerable friend to get their vaccination today, I literally just ate Tiramisu (no joke), the world continues to turn, spring is coming, good things are happening everywhere, and wonder isn’t even slightly diminished. Good times 🙂
