How to Animate a Blink

Why blinks matter more than they should

A character standing perfectly still is a drawing. The same character blinking twice is a person waiting. Nothing else in animation delivers that much change for six drawings, which is why a blink is usually the first thing added to an otherwise static shot and the last thing checked before a shot is called finished.

The reason is that we read eyes involuntarily. A face that never blinks registers as wrong within a couple of seconds, long before a viewer could tell you why — and a face that blinks at the right moments reads as thinking, even when nothing else on it moves. Blinks are also where animators hide transitions: a character can change expression during a closed eye and the switch will go unnoticed.

The anatomy of a blink

A blink is not an eye fading out. It is an eyelid — a curved flap of skin — sweeping down across a sphere and back up. Getting that right requires only a few observations, but missing them is what makes most beginner blinks look like a light switch.

• The lid moves downward, not inward. The closed eye sits low, roughly where the bottom of the open eye was. An eye that closes toward its own centre reads as shrinking.
• The upper lid does nearly all the work. The lower lid rises a little, but if you animate only the top one the blink still reads correctly.
• The lid is a curve. At half close it bows downward, following the eyeball. A straight line crossing the eye looks like a wipe.
• The closed eye is a curved line, not a dash. A slight downward bow keeps the sense of a sphere underneath; a flat dash flattens the whole face.
• The eyebrow usually dips. A couple of pixels down on the closed frame and back up afterwards. Optional, but it ties the blink into the face.

The six-frame blink

At 12 frames per second, six frames is half a second — very close to how long a real relaxed blink takes. It is worth memorising as a default, because it works in almost any shot and you can adjust from it in either direction.

Timing: down fast, up slow

The asymmetry is the single most important thing about a blink. Closing is a fast muscular snap; opening is a slower release. Animate it symmetrically and it reads as mechanical no matter how good the drawings are.

This is a spacing decision, not a frame-count one — the same idea covered in timing vs spacing. If you want a snappier blink, delete frame 2 so the eye goes from open to closed in a single frame. That one change is the difference between a relaxed blink and a startled one, and it costs you a drawing rather than adding one.

Blink variations and what they mean

Once the basic blink works, variations become a genuinely expressive tool. All of them are the same four drawings with the timing changed.

A blink can also carry a change of expression. Close the eye on a neutral face, change the eyebrows and mouth while the eye is shut, and open onto the new expression. The viewer reads it as a single beat of realisation rather than as two separate drawings, and it is far cheaper than animating a transition between the two faces.

Where to put blinks in a shot

Blink placement is performance, not decoration. Blinks happen at punctuation points in thought, which means the right places are fairly predictable:

• At the end of a head turn. Blink as the head arrives at its new position, not during the turn. This is the most natural-looking blink there is.
• Before a line of dialogue or a decision. A blink just before a character acts reads as the thought happening.
• On an accent. Blinking on a stressed word ties the face to the delivery.
• After a reaction. A character sees something, holds a surprised pose, then blinks — the blink is what tells us they have finished processing it.
• Not during fast action. Nobody can see a blink inside a punch, and you have spent four drawings on something invisible.

Rhythm matters as much as placement. Evenly spaced blinks read as a tic, so vary the gaps — two close together, then a longer pause, then one. A rough target for a calm character at 12 frames per second is a blink every two to four seconds, which is every 24 to 48 frames.

Build it step by step

This takes about ten minutes and gives you a reusable asset. Keep the head simple: the exercise is entirely about the eyelid.

1. 1
   Set up a short project

   Create a project and add six frames. Draw a simple head with open eyes on frame 1 — a circle, two eyes and a mouth is enough. The point of this exercise is the eyelid, not the drawing.
2. 2
   Put the open eye on its own layer

   Keep the head on one layer and the eyes on a layer above it. You will redraw the eyes six times and the head once, which saves five drawings and keeps the face from drifting.
3. 3
   Draw the half-closed frame

   On frame 2, draw the upper lid about halfway down. The lid is a curve that follows the surface of the eye, not a straight line dropping through it, and it should cover more of the top of the eye than the bottom.
4. 4
   Draw the closed frame

   On frame 3, close the eye completely. Use a single curved line that bows slightly downward rather than a flat dash, and keep it in the lower half of where the open eye sat — eyes close downward, they do not shrink to their centre.
5. 5
   Reopen with two frames, not one

   On frame 4 draw the lid about one third open, and on frame 5 about two thirds. Giving the opening more frames than the closing is what makes the blink feel like an eyelid rather than a shutter.
6. 6
   Return to the open eye

   On frame 6, copy the eye from frame 1 so the blink lands exactly where it started. Any difference between the first and last drawing will read as a jitter when the shot plays.
7. 7
   Play it back and tune

   Play at 12 frames per second. If the blink feels mechanical, remove the half-closed frame so the eye slams shut in one drawing; if it feels like a twitch, add one more frame to the opening.

Turn on onion skinning with O while you draw the intermediate lids — seeing the open and closed drawings at once is the only practical way to judge whether a half-closed lid is actually halfway. When the cycle works, export it with the loop setting enabled as described in exporting your animation.

Common mistakes

• A symmetrical blink. The same number of frames down and up reads as mechanical. Closing is always faster than opening.
• A two-frame blink. Open, closed, open with nothing in between reads as a single dropped frame rather than a blink. You need at least one drawing on the way back up.
• The eye closing to its centre. Lids sweep down. A closed eye sitting in the vertical middle of where the open eye was looks like the eye vanished.
• A flat dash for the closed eye. Bow the line downward slightly so the eyeball is still implied underneath.
• Frame 6 not matching frame 1. Copy it. A redrawn 'identical' eye produces a flicker right where the viewer is looking.
• Perfectly regular blinks. A blink exactly every two seconds reads as a nervous tic. Vary the intervals.
• Blinking during fast action. Invisible, and it costs you the same four drawings as a blink that would have been seen.

Where to go next

A blink is a tiny lesson in spacing, so timing vs spacing is the article that explains why the asymmetry works. For the vocabulary behind the four drawings, see keyframes and in-between frames.

If you are new to the editor, start with frame-by-frame animation basics and onion skinning. For the next practical exercise with a bit more body mechanics in it, try the simple jump animation.