Tag of the Day: Parted lips

Welcome to tag of the day, my not-daily series where I share tags I found useful but underutilized in generations and explain how/why you should use it.

Parted lips is not an emotion tag onto itself, but rather another component of a fully functioning facial expression. Emotion tags in generation tend to be very unsubtle with their results, with "sad" expressing soul-wrenching sadness and "afraid" resulting in horror in the face of the void. Beyond lowering their weights, emotions can also be tamed in intensity by adding a dash of dull surprise to the mix with "parted lips".

The tag is also extremely useful in training because its everywhere in animation, where it is both used as an attempt at emotional expression, as well as just a character being caught mid mouth flap. It tends to be one auto-labels tend not to catch, either missing entirely or using the more intense "open mouth" instead.

Possible pairings: Besides emotion tags, you can also make the inside of the mouth white or not by tagging teeth in positive or negative.