Throughout the years professional animators have used mirrors to capture facial expressions, even the use of full body mirrors to capture all of the characters movement to assist them in their animation. The mirror is a very important tool for animators. Some might say an animators job is easy, and they just make it all up in their head. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Since the dawn of traditional animation animators have used mirrors to help them with their animation, not just to make funny faces but as reference for mouth shapes, eye expression, hair movement, body language, anything the animator could get out of their own acting ability.
In this day and age many animators will use devices that can record themselves, such as an iPhone, iPad, webcam, or video recorders. Then simply just import the video into the program of their choice then use the key frames or extreme poses that work best for them or print them out and use them as a guide when animating on paper. Which is called, “Photo Stats”. Below you will find some of the Animation Masters using mirrors and having a FUN time doing it!
