Customer Reviews
Animator Must - By: Rach, 13 Sep 2008 
This is a fantastic resource. I am an animation student & I am sure I will find this invaluable. It's clear, simple, but packed full of pictures (and very little text, it's not needed). It has a wide range of face types & ages. It also has a phonemes section which is worth the price of the book alone.
Go on, get it.
A fun and useful tool - By: Angela, 15 Jul 2007 
As a budding comic book artist, I found this book very useful. The facial expressions are well photographed & the models (both attractive & not so much) have some great & unusual expressions which are definately useful. Also though, the hairstyles, weight & age of the models is agreat help. Most reference books use people ages only 20-30, but this book covers ages 20 to 83.
Also at the end of the book, there is a galllery of sequential expressions, kissing, hats & headgear & phonemes (for those not in the know, these are the shape your mouth makes when you say certain letters. Dead useful for animation).
Definately great reference for any artist, but it would have been better in colour, hence the 4 star rating.
so so - By: Chris Hooper, 03 Apr 2007 
This book is certainly useful, however I imagine there to be several better books available. The trouble I found with this was, although there are several differing shots for emotions etc, the actual photography can be pretty bad. For example, the shots are sometimes out of focus, too smalll & the contrast on the images is not high enough to enable you to see clearly the detail. It would have worked better using less images & making them larger. Not that it matters too much but the illustrations are hideous! Used for general face shape in many positions/emotions, this is a half decent book & the phonemes at the back are very useful.
Useful rather than essential - By: G. Whyman, 08 Mar 2007 This is a useful but not essential reference book for the artist. There is a comprehensive range of models of various ages depicting an array of expressions though it is at times difficult to know which ones they're supposed to be! It would have been helpful if the author had listed the expression under each photo instead of having to cross reference a list at the front of the book. I think it's unfair, as a previous reviewer wrote, to label alll the people as 'ugly'. They are, by & large, ordinary looking people you'd probably see in the street & many have faces full of character. Who would want to buy a book full of unnaturallly beautiful or bland faces to work from? I checked out the Fairburn system too; it's out of print & if you do find a set of books it's very expensive (over £100). This is an inexpensive alternative - cheap & cheerful - but I can't help think that you'd be better of with a handily placed mirror to work from or, better still, a digital camera to take pictures of yourself for reference.
what it says on the tin - By: , 02 Mar 2006 
this is indeed a book of facial expressions. However it is also a collection of some very ugly people, along with some truly terrible illustrations. If you reallly want a decent artists refernce hunt down the fairburn system.
