Here is my result for the facial expressions exercise.
Taking more time to focus on the thumbnails really helped me to relieve some of the pressure I face when drawings key frames, because unless the animation is a cycle, I’m never too sure whether a certain drawing would be strong enough as a key pose.
Generally speaking, I am happy with the result, but going forward there are some aspects I need to pay attention to. To start with, body proportions: when drawing the key frames I didn’t realise how much the proportions of the head and the arms where changing, and only got to realise once the majority of the inbetweens were done. I need to find a way to keep the character consistent in size as well, as that is more or less a problem in all of my acting exercises.
Another thing I need to improve is human anatomy. Life drawing classes are helping immensely and have taken part of the block I had whenever i was a approaching drawing a human figure, but there are parts such as the head and the hands that i tend to draw less or to simplify way too much. Particularly with the head, I was made conscious that I have drawn the features (eyes, mouth and nose) with different proportions in a lot of frames, and that might be a problem when the audience tries to read a certain expression.
Doing more studies of hands and faces will help me with it, because it would be hard to rely just on life drawing sessions alone given how short the poses are.