Among Us' series creator tells us the secret behind making characters expressive without faces

The Among Us animated series does a great job at making its characters feel expressive. Through the performances of its star-studded cast and the work of the animation team. Recently, we got the chance to chat with series creator Owen Dennis, and we couldn't help but ask about the difficulties involved in making a character expressive without eyes, a mouth, or any real discernible facial features.

"Yeah, it's hard," Dennis admitted. "When it comes to figuring out how to show expressions in a character that has no eyes and no mouth, for anyone who's watched my previous show, Infinity Train, I had a character called One-One who had two vertical circle eyes and no mouth and nothing else. And we still had to get expressions through his face somehow."

Dennis explained that he essentially took the lessons learned from One-One and applied it to the crewmates in Among Us. He also said that a lot of expressions can be interpreted in different ways. "It's funny because you'll have, like, if you make a sort of an arch, like a rainbow shape, that can come across as funny. But also that can come across as pompous or it can come across, it can come across as happy or pompous or it can come, like depending on how you like position the body, it can suddenly make it more, it can change the tone entirely."

Much of the reading of an expression can come through the voice actor's side, but Dennis also made sure to hire animators and artists with their own unique voice, too, so that they could get it across in the show. If you want to hear more about that, check out the full interview below: