Advice on Modeling Mouth & Topology

So I am modeling a non-human cartoon character for animation and have run into issues with his mouth. When I start applying shape keys, I’ve found it’s hard to move his mouth around without causing weird distortions in the mesh. I’d love some advice from people on a better way to do it.

Basically, what I did with the mouth, currently, is I selected the innermost edge loop and extruded it inward (toward the inside of the mesh) and then upward, to create a bit of a “lip” to work with. Then I kept extruding that internal edge inward as well until I got it far enough inside the mesh to completely enclose it. Essentially, creating a shallow throat area.

Now, I’m not so convinced that’s the way I should be proceeding. When I try to model the mouth into my various shape key positions, I end up have to also select the internal vertices too or else it gets all weird.

Attaching the file for you to look at. Would love thoughts and advice.Angry Mushroom Detail Work.blend (1.27 MB)

A few points:

  • don’t use high subdivision levels, use smooth shading. You rarely need to go over 2 and your model is no exception (with minor adjustments, namely smoothing the face size changes and placing more geometry to smooth sharp edges).
  • don’t use subdivision when you’re creating the geometry. If you edit the subdivided result, you don’t see how the real vertices are positioned. Subdivided result is better for final tweaking when you make small adjustments.

As for the mouth area, I’m including a .blend that I edited a bit. Perhaps that would be more suitable for what you’re doing.
I deleted the inside of the mouth completely because it had ngons in it and I wanted to edit the lips anyway. I removed the sharp edges from the lips, added an edge loop to the corners and that way it was a bit easier to give room for the inside part. If the extra edge loop is too much, it’s easy enough to remove.
The inside of the mouth is not great but it should be easier to modify now. I also re-added the mirror modifier.

[ATTACH]206574[/ATTACH]

Thank you! Very helpful! And I’ll try to take your advice to heart.