"Heroes" Eyes

A small observation thats been great for developing my film's lead character is the significance of eyes in anything associated with superheroes, whether in Western/Eastern animation, comic books or television.

I call it the Peter Petrelli face and anyone who's familiar with US tv show Heroes will know what I mean.

This is Peter Petrelli.



The second image is Peter's anti-hero alter ego from the future. We know he's from the future because he has a scar on his face and gets angry a lot. Still the same face though.

Other characters use it too, a kind of angry, confused, constantly-furrowed eyebrow.

"HRG" (Anti-Hero)

"Linderman" (Evil)

"Sylar" (Evil)

These eyes are great for expressing a wealth of emotions in a single glare; anger, confusion, intention etc. Similarly, the wider the eye is opened the more wild a stare becomes. This is great for making a character seem out of place, confused or insane, though sinister characters tend to keep theirs more tightly closed.

Sometimes the eyes go a little out of control.


Great reference for character expression and emotion because its already hilarious.

This expression appears in anime/manga as well. From it we can gauge a character clearly means business, but variations on the shape of the brow tell us what buisness i.e. good or evil.

Shohen Jump's Naruto for example:

Good.

Evil.

Crazy Evil.

Predominently, a longer thinner eye denotes a more sinister character, thus the wider the eye, the more we associate them with good, or at least confusion. This is apparent in the cast of Heroes too. Compare evil character Sylar's eyes to good guy Peter's. There's a big, symbolic difference, one that I hope to make use of in the unforgivingly near future.