Emotion 2: Representing character emotion

Both of these are fear.

The first seems fake, the second seems real.

Why?

• The model in the first picture is good. But maybe what she's doing is very literal: she she's something scary, she screams and recoils.
• But the child with the rabbit is not screaming, she's crying while pulling away and looking at someone out of frame.

Maybe it's that sense of complexity that makes it seem more real?

The first photo, of actress Goldie Hawn, represents something like delight? Joy? Excitement? But it seems fake, like Goldie isn't experiencing it but rather she's projecting it outwards, communicating it to the viewer.

In that sense, it's almost like it represents the idea of fun or excitement.

The photo of Billie Eilish, on the other hand, seems to capture her in a moment of genuine happiness and delight.

One clue is that when people are genuinely smiling, they get creases around their eyes. Goldie Hawn's eyes are round and creaseless; Billie Eilish's are crinkled.

There's also something about looking direct to camera and looking off—as if we as an audience know there is no real reason for Goldie Hawn to look at us with such exaggerated delight, but we believe Billie Eilish is delighted by whatever she sees out-of-frame (even if it's the image of herself with the heart filter on her head).

This boy is bored, frustrated.

Is his feeling real? Given he's in a suit with his parents, probably!

Is his expression real?

What does real even mean in this context?

It's not a natural expression; he's pulling a face. But pulling an exaggerated face to express an emotion is a genuine thing to do!

So it's really hard to know with this one. We probably feel it to be genuine emotion because we don't imagine a kid this age has a reason to be deceptive, but there is a chance he's simply responding to the photographer. 

Maybe the photographer has been taking a lot of photos of the kid, and this is his 'go away' face. Again—does that make it any less genuine?

The painting is interesting.

It's another young man who is uncomfortable in some way—tired, fatigued, bored?

It’s a painting, so it’s not ‘real’ in the same way a photo is real.

But is it 'emotionally fake' in the way a couple of the portraits above are fake?

Not exactly. The painting of the young man studying feels pretty real—why is that?

The slump seems real, the hand on the head, the preoccupation of his face. There's something right about it.

Realness and fakeness seems to have more to do with details than with medium.