Awesome Face / Epic Face

Awesome Face, also known as "epic face", refers to a drawing of a round yellow-colored smiley face with upturned eyes. It has been predominantly used on sites and web forums like Something Awful and 4chan as a reaction face indicating approval, but can also be used ironically to convey disdain.

Origin
According to Chris Ainsworth of the gaming blog Driph, the Awesome Face was part of a series of emoticons designed and illustrated for the Pokemon-related web forum Pokemopolis. He claims to have contacted the creator of the image, and published the following correspondence:"I drew the icon years ago as part of an emoticon set he wanted for their new forum software, and I think he showed you all the other ones that were designed along with it. I’m not really sure what exactly I wanted it to represent but I think the ‘ridiculous childish glee’ that it now signifies is probably close!"

Spread
The Awesome Face gained popularity through popular forums and image boards, most notably on the SomethingAwful forums and 4chan's image boards. On January 30th, 2007, a forum thread was posted to SomethingAwful titled "NEW EMOTICON HITS SOMETHING AWFUL – BUT HOW POPULAR IS TOO POPULAR?"[2] that complained about how the emoticon and its derivatives were becoming too prevalent on the SA forums. The face spread to 4chan where it was often featured in wallpaper threads dedicated to awesome face desktop backgrounds.

A Facebook fan page has 42,649 likes as of August 26th, 2011. An awesome face Firefox browser theme is available on the site Get Personas. On Newgrounds an entire flash game dedicated to the face was uploaded by creator juegos

Portraying Other Emotions
Numerous derivatives of Awesome Face have been seen portraying emotions other than "awesomeness", such as sadness, pain and surprise.