Facial Rigging Practice

My aim for this term is to learn facial rigging so that I can create the blend shapes that will make the expressions for the characters. I have not done this before and made this very basic Marmot head in order to practice on. His texture is just a basic file with a little bit of Planar Mapping.

I made locators for the eye blinks as I feel the eyes will be important and tell alot about the Marmot character
And used Blend Shapes to make the eyebrows move. I do not know why however when I tried to move his right brow it moved down here... it may be due to not freeze transforming the eyebrows properly when I copied it across.


Here is my first rigging test of the year to show the blink working and at least the left eyebrow:

This is my first initial rigging test and I realise that it is only a refresher for using blend shapes, but I am glad I have done this before attempting more complex facial shapes and my aim now is to take it further where the eyebrows are part of the geometry of the face and also the eyelids may be aswell. It has also shown how there are different methods of using the rigs and how people may prefer to animate.