Wanted to make a new sona,, concept art. the design details I didn't think about yet here. I was focused on exclusively expressions for this since I had some ideas but I wanted to rough them out seperately.

I wanted him to be one of those characters that's always smiling but I wasn't really sure what that'd look like. With characters like that, they tend to have the same kind of smile.... not necessarily that their expression is always the same, but that it's variations on the same idea?
the eyes/eyebrows might change a lot but their smile doesn't much- maybe it'll falter or get bigger but I can't think of much like here- these all feel like wildly different styles.
I don't think it's a bad thing here, this guy's meant to stand on his own so the expressiveness helps- but it doesn't exactly capture the things about the character designs I was thinking about while coming up with this, either....

I don't think it's a bad thing here, this guy's meant to stand on his own so the expressiveness helps- but it doesn't exactly capture the things about the character designs I was thinking about while coming up with this, either....

I've finished his concept art now but I never got closer to deciding the above. tbh I don't know if I'll actually stick to the concept!

I think the "always-smiling characters" can be really good at showing a wide range of emotions/fit a wide range of characters, compared to like, other characters that are partially locked into/out of certain expression.

I wonder how many people wouldn't've noticed that these are all smiling if I hadn't said....
Anyway I challenge you to do a bunch of expressions that're maybe not all smiling- but have some commonality between everything.