Puppetry of the Face

Artnatomy is a gem, of the intelligent kind, one that gets you to marvel, giggle, and email all your friends.

Artnatomy is a stunning interactive tool designed for fine arts students to learn the anatomical basis of facial expression. It details and analyzes the movements of all facial muscles and their links to expressions such as surprise, scorn or doubt. And importantly, it allows you to experiment with Zygomaticus, Procerus et al. to create hilarious grimaces.

“The idea came to me when I was teaching animation and drawing at a Spanish university,” recalls Victoria Contreras, the brilliant woman behind the site. “All I wanted to do was a tool that’s useful to my students and me.” She devoted all her spare time to the project and pulled it off all on her own, with no funding whatsoever. “All this scientific information was readily available in books,” she says. “I only organized it in a different way.”

Artnatomy ends up being both rigorous and playful, and much too pretty to stay in the hands of art students alone. Beyond painters, sculptors and actors, doctors also find Artnatomy helpful—from neurologists who show their patients or students how some diseases affect muscles and face expression, to plastic surgeons that preview the effects of botox injections.

After several requests Contreras is now selling an offline version of Artnatomy. “But I want the resources to remain free for anybody to use on the web,” she asserts. The sales will precisely cover the cost of the server to keep Artnatomia online. So go enjoy this fascinating masterpiece. Its success might convince Contreras to extend the idea to the entire human body.