This tutorial is going to show you the secret to animating a perfect blink.
This method works for every eye shape and type.
If I say take out a piece of paper and animate a blink, a less experienced person is going
to do this:
Open, halfway open, closed, halfway open, open.
Here’s what that looks like.
It gets the job done, but it is rigid and artificial looking.
The secret formula to animating a regular blink is this:
Open, slightly less open, closed, closed two, slightly open, repeat earlier drawing, open.
Note these two closed drawings are not the same.
The second keeps the same endpoints but curves down in the middle more than the first.
This blink method is called one down, two up.
You’ll also frequently see the other version, which is two down and one up.
Just change the order of the frames, move this one here.
Whether you take one or two frames to close the eye is an acting choice.
Use whatever you feel looks best for that character in that situation.
If you are in a rush and don’t have time to draw the secret formula, you can use the
condensed version.
Get rid of the second closed drawing and reuse the first one.
Get rid of the repeated open frame.
Those two drawings create the fluidity of the blink, but they aren’t necessary.
See?
So, at the very least, this is what you want.
Not this.
Experiment a lot with blinks because even tiny changes will make a big difference in
attitude.
I like to switch out this repeated open position to one that is wider than the resting position.
It makes the blink nice and bouncy.
I also tend to add an extra frame on the way back up to make a more slow, gentle blink.
That makes my usual formula the standard one, but with one more frame: the slightly wider
one.
A superfast cartoony double blinks switches from open to closed immediately, with one
transition frame before or after closing.
Now, eyelashes.
For short, realistic eyelashes there’s not much to worry about other than the shape of
the eyelashes in open, closed, and middling positions.
There’s no bounciness to short eyelashes.
On the other hand, you need to animate long cartoon eyelashes because they are different
on the way down than they are on the way back up.
If I use the same eyelash positions this is the result.
But if I animate them…
Yeah.
Huge difference.
Notice that because long cartoon eyelashes are so floaty, I need to give them time to
return to resting position.
When you are doing eyelashes, all you have to remember is point up on the way down, and
point down on the way up.
One last thing about blinks, the lower eyelid actually rises up to meet the top one in a
real blink.
You’ll see it a lot in 3D animation, but for 2D art you’ll rarely see the lower lid
move in a regular blink because it looks weird.