Facial Performance by AnimSchool

This advanced course is all about the craft of facial acting. You’ll animate a dialogue-driven performance, focusing on the subtle emotional beats that reveal what a character is thinking. The goal isn’t just moving controls—it’s making the entire face work as one connected shape to sell thought and emotion.

🎯 What you’ll learn

• Build strong facial poses that clearly communicate a character’s thoughts and emotions
• Treat the face as a unified shape rather than a collection of isolated controls
• Animate the eyes and brows to support intention, focus, and emotional subtext
• Create believable lip sync for a spoken dialogue performance
• Understand phonemes and translate speech sounds into readable mouth shapes
• Coordinate the mouth, jaw, cheeks, eyes, and brows during dialogue
• Identify and animate subtle emotional beats within a performance
• Use blocking, squash and stretch, and polishing techniques for facial animation
• Refine a dialogue shot through structured critique and iteration

✅ Requirements

• Skills: Completion of Character Performance or equivalent experience creating dialogue-based character animation
• Tools: Autodesk Maya

📝 Description

Facial Performance is an advanced character-animation course that digs into the demanding craft of facial acting. You’ll animate a line of dialogue while concentrating on the subtle emotional beats that reveal what a character is thinking and feeling. This isn’t about isolated controls—it’s about treating the face as one unified shape that communicates intention.

The course kicks off with character story and acting analysis. You’ll establish the intentions and emotional progression behind your performance before touching a single control. From there, dedicated lectures explore the role of the eyes in facial performance. You’ll examine how eye direction, focus, blinks, brows, and surrounding facial shapes contribute to attention, emotion, and subtext. The key takeaway? The face functions as one connected unit, not a collection of separate features.

The lip-sync portion is where things get practical. You’ll study mouth shapes, jaw movement, phonemes, and the relationship between speech sounds and readable poses. The goal isn’t just matching mouth movement to audio—it’s integrating lip sync into the larger acting performance so the dialogue feels alive and intentional.

Later lessons cover different blocking approaches and the use of squash and stretch in facial animation. These techniques help you create clear transitions, avoid mechanical movement, and add flexibility and appeal without losing the emotional intent of the shot. Throughout the course, critique sessions provide detailed feedback on acting choices, facial poses, eye animation, lip sync, timing, and polish. You’ll repeatedly revise your work, progressing from initial story and blocking stages to a refined dialogue performance with real emotional depth.

🧑‍🎓 Who this course is for

• Advanced character animators who want to specialize in facial acting and dialogue performance
• Students who have already developed a foundation in body mechanics and character performance
• Animators seeking to improve eye acting, facial posing, phonemes, and lip sync
• Artists preparing dialogue-based character animation for a professional demo reel

🧑‍🏫 About the Author

AnimSchool is an accredited online school specializing in 3D animation, modeling, and rigging. Founded in 2010 by David Gallagher, an animator, rigger, and former Character Development Supervisor at Blue Sky Studios, the school offers instruction from working professionals in the animation, visual-effects, and game industries.

🏁 Final Result

• A polished dialogue-based character animation focused on facial acting, emotional beats, expressive eye movement, phonemes, and synchronized mouth shapes
• A stronger understanding of how the entire face works together to communicate thought, emotion, and personality

📢 Guys, this is a Group Buy campaign, check the GBC forum thread to get access

You can find the course preview in the download section below.