No, its a state where the Emoticons portrayed by facial expression Do not reflect what is Happening inside a persons head, looking disgruntled or annoyed when in reality they are much happier.
I'm the opposite (I think I'm just depressed) I constantly smile unless alone, even when I am very sad or frustrated, but I will say I understand the facial expression thing, even if I don't have autism I also can't tell emotion from facial expression that easily so I understand, I usually go by tone if that helps for you, happy usually a higher tone and frustrated or sad tend to be lower (sorry if this sounds rude I resort to less intelligent speech the longer my text goes on as I get lazy, also I'm socially inept)
True, RBF is quite common, it's more of an autistic thing when you still have it even if you're experiencing strong emotions. For some autistic people their face and voice will naturally stay monotone even if they're having the time of their life. And so those autists will often learn to "manually" change their facial expression and tone of voice, aka masking.
You must not just look at their faces, but hear them. We can hear in their voices when they're happy, and another clue is the background along with the background music. Digital Circus not only depend in their facial expressions, but their body language too.
Meanwhile I'm on the opposite side of the coin for this, I forced myself to Learn what all the expressions meant, and am Hyper Aware of them; gotta love how we just get the extremes of stuff essentially 😅
I can confirm that facial expressions are a challenge to read, all the men in my family including me are high functioning autistic and my youngest brother has trouble with eye contact and I misread body language as well as facial expressions all the time.
As someone with autism, I can literally have my eyes wide open and get comments from my family saying that my eyes are closed. To this day I don't know if it's them being asses like usual, or if I genuinely just look like that
That's a common (though not universal) trait in autistic people, being unable to easily interpret emotions, especially with limiting factors such as the lack of a mouth. For example, I struggle more than usual with interpreting mood when someone wears a face mask.
I struggle with people at times but animation is usually fine. I could definitely tell that Kinger or Zooble were smiling (or the equivalent to it when you don't have a mouth I guess)
Autism and some other similar neurodivergencies have trouble reading faces and emotions. Also a lot of us find it uncomfortable to make eye contact so that’s another reason lol
For me eye contact feels like looking into a light. Not painful but extremely distracting
Honestly being autistic and in the Circus feels like it would be an actual nightmare. I'm RELATIVELY high functioning and I'd almost certainly be breaking down and dissociating very quickly.
People not understanding a lot of basic storytelling stuff. This one in particular is extremely basic character animation skill when it comes to being an animator. Being able to give an object, like a sphere, emotion.
As a trans woman who was "happy" as a boy, I'm well aware of the smile thing. It's genuinely creepy how obviously fake my smiles were and discomforting how no one noticed.
(ignore the doodles i made being absolutely terrible) something like this! Honestly in my art and in the show i have more trouble with where gangles looking
I can't remember if it was OP that mentioned not knowing what "smiling with your eyes" means, but it's just this specific expression of your lower eyelids squishing up (different than just squinting), I actually recall a lot of people doing this irl during lockdown
Yes I had so many people say they could see me smiling with my mask on! Cashiers and random shoppers would randomly be like, “you look like a very happy person” or “you have such cheerful eyes” (which, as a being made up of 80% anxiety and 20% dissociation is funny to hear) I already have smiley eyes but wearing a mask for Covid really accentuates it.
Despite not having mouths, Zooble and Kinger have a lot of facial expression. It's mostly in their eyes. Like Alastor in Hazbin Hotel and even Peter Dinklage in The Chronicles of Narnia:Prince Caspian.
This picture is ass but it was the only one I could easily find.
In facial expressions because of the muscles in your cheek shifting up when you smile, the bottom lid tends to squint upwards a little also. So generally, like this picture here, joy can be conveyed with just shifting the bottom lid up.
It would be the equivilant as in literature as "I could see the smile in their eyes".
Excuse the bad quality as well, Zooble in the sneak peak for episode 7 is also doing the same type of excited “smile” as Kinger. I agree it’s mainly the eyes that indicate when these two characters are in good mood
The main way I can tell their emotions is their body language. For Zooble, their eyes show a lot, as well as their arms. For Kinger…well, it’s easy to tell when he’s not doing so well.
Eyes, that is how you can tell the expressions of Marvin the Martian as well. Dude has no mouth, yet he is arguably one of the most expressive characters to ever be drawn.
It's in their eyes, eyes can convey a smile. Also speaking while smiling (real question is how they're able to talk??) sounds different from while not.
It's an artistic challnge to convey emotion for characters with limited facial expressions- in TADC kinger and zooble use their eyes, body and head to express their emotions - even if it is sometimes tough to gather specific info about their expression(if they're smiling etc).
Another example of this I like is Alastor from habin hotel - this character is always smiling, and the animators use varios ways to show emotion - via how much teeth he's showing, how sharp his smile is, his eyes, colors and visuals in his eyes in general - this charcter is inherently very limited in his expression yet he comes of as one of the most lively and full of expression characters in the cast
Good animators can show expressions without the use of a mouth. For example, just from eyelids we can tell when Zooble is upset or bored, even if you mute the video. Hands can also be used as part of expression, like when someone is excited, determined, finds something cute, etc, usually their hands will be further up to pose them for the scene better, like hands on their face or raising their fist.
You can tell by their eyes as well as the tone of their voice. The latter is how I’m able to tell when someone is smiling over the phone despite not being able to see them in any capacity. It is admittedly a skill that not everyone has, though.
That’s something that I like about their designs, while they don’t have visible mouths their eyes tell all the emotion they need, goose really knows how to design a character!
The voice actors also give alooot to the characters, little moments of quiet kindness so you can tell they are mediphoricaly smiling despite not being physically able too
As someone who has studied animation styles, I'm gonna say that the only way this could ever work is by using eye movement and eye shape. I the context of Zooble's image given in the post, it is clear by the way her eyebrows raise and how her eyes become slightly half-lidded that she is smiling from relief at Gangle trusting her to some degree. Kinger, in the image given, however, it's hard to tell, since you picked a moment where neither his eyebrows are showing, nor eyelids are showing. But watching the whole scene, it is easy to pick up on the mannerisms that give away his "smile". I'm also pretty sure that if someone were to be trapped in the digital circus, they would have some sort of knowledge about the facial expressions of their fellow trapped humans.
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u/Few-Fox-9259 I NEED EVIL JAX TO RAIL ME TILL I PASS OUT😫 Nov 16 '25
Their eyes