What I did:

Thinking ahead (I really just need to focus on the job in hand!), I wanted to understand the science behind facial ageing rather than just relying on my own observations. Like, I knew lips got thinner, skin sagged, wrinkles formed and your nose and ears were the two things that kept on growing, but was there more I should know to inform the ageing process of my character?

I came across an excellent academic paper that used 3D scanning technology to analyse how faces change from youth to elderly age – bingo!

The study, published in Scientific Reports in 2022, is called “Three-dimensional analysis of modeled facial aging and sexual dimorphism from juvenile to elderly age” by Velemínská et al. from Charles University in Prague.

Why this research matters:

This isn’t just artistic interpretation or guesswork – this research used 3D facial scans of 456 real people aged 14-83 years to scientifically measure how faces change over time. That’s proper data I can reference for my ageing characters!

The researchers used structured light-based optical scanners (similar to the technology used in 3D character creation) to capture facial surface models, then analysed the changes across different age groups. This is basically what I’m trying to replicate in my animation, but they’ve done the hard scientific work of measuring exactly what changes occur.

Key findings for character ageing (30s to 90s):

The study identified several common ageing traits that appear in both men and women:

Facial Shape Changes:

  • Faces become rounder and less convex (flatter)
  • Facial width increases, especially in the cheek area
  • Soft tissue begins to sag, particularly around the eyes and lower face
  • The jawline becomes less defined – they describe it as a “broken jawline” which perfectly captures that loss of sharp definition

Eye Changes:

  • Eye slits narrow significantly in both width and height
  • The distance between the eyes actually increases
  • Under-eye bags become more prominent
  • The visible area of the eyes becomes smaller

Nose Changes:

  • The nose continues to lengthen and widen throughout life
  • The nasal tip drops downward
  • In elderly age, the nose keeps growing

Mouth and Lip Changes:

  • Lips become significantly thinner
  • The mouth widens slightly
  • The distance between the nose and mouth increases (the philtrum gets longer)
  • The upper lip particularly narrows

Forehead Changes:

  • The forehead becomes flatter (less convex)
  • In males, the prominence of the brow ridge decreases with age

What surprised me:

A really interesting finding: after age 70, male faces actually decrease slightly in size, whilst female faces remain more stable. I hadn’t expected that! Male faces grow until about 30, then from 70 onwards they actually shrink a bit.

Also, sexual dimorphism (the differences between male and female faces) actually decreases with age, particularly in the forehead and nose areas. So whilst young men and women look quite different, elderly men and women become more similar in some facial features.

How this applies to my project:

This research validates a lot of the changes I’ve been planning for my character variants:

  1. The eye topology I’ve been struggling with – now I know the eye slits need to narrow significantly, which means my edge loops around the eyes need to support that inward movement
  2. Nose modelling – I need to make the nose longer, wider, and slightly drooped for the older versions
  3. Lip thickness – the lips need to thin out considerably, which affects both geometry and materials
  4. Cheek and jaw areas – the widening of the face and loss of jawline definition means I need to think carefully about how the geometry deforms in these areas
  5. Overall face shape – the shift from convex to flatter helps explain why older faces look different even without wrinkles – it’s the underlying shape that changes

The technical approach:

What I particularly appreciate about this study is that they used geometric morphometrics – essentially the same kind of 3D analysis used in professional character modelling. They measured things like:

  • Centroid size (overall facial size)
  • Specific distances between facial landmarks
  • Surface changes using colour-coded distance maps

What I learned:

Scientific research can directly inform artistic choices in character creation. Understanding the actual measurements and patterns of ageing helps create more believable characters than just adding wrinkles and calling it “old.”

The paper confirms that ageing is about structural changes (bone resorption, soft tissue redistribution) as well as surface changes (wrinkles, texture). This means I need to focus on both geometry modifications and shader/texture adjustments for my different age variants.

Also, ageing isn’t linear or uniform – different parts of the face age at different rates and in different ways. The nose keeps growing, the eyes narrow, the face widens, but these don’t all happen at the same pace.

Reference:

Velemínská, J., Kožejová Jaklová, L., Kočandrlová, K., Hofmannová, E., Koudelová, J., Suchá, B., & Dupej, J. (2022). Three-dimensional analysis of modeled facial aging and sexual dimorphism from juvenile to elderly age. Scientific Reports, 12, 21821. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-26376-8

Next:

It’s still GET THIS HEAD FINISHED!