Mote Crester heads appear to have an inconsistent shape based on the viewing angle. There's an area of around 90 degrees in which their eyes appear to be facing the viewer despite the actual angle of their head. Despite this, their heads do not actually change shape based on the angle; they have a field of warped space around their faces which distorts the light. The field is disrupted by the presence of other objects, so you can rub their faces without your hand looking too distorted. The field is also anisotropic, so their vision is not crazily distorted.

The effect applies to tilting as well as the type of rotation shown here, but just animating this was a lot of work already.