Poles cause pinching and surface artifacts. That's not always a bad thing. You can use them to achieve surface details where otherwise you'd need much more geometry. for instance, they can be useful for better defining the temporal ridge (your avoidance of one in that region is making an overly round, cartoony look).…
Yea I rig up and animate faces all day and it's not huge issue to have a few 5 edged poles, sitting around the face. I prefer a few 5 edge poles to the nightmare geometry that gets created as people try to avoid using them. For me the two big factors that effect their placement are: 1) Do they cause loops to re-route to…