Tutorial: Manga/Anime Eyes

Here I'm giving a few examples of eyes that I draw for my characters, and as you can see, they are all quite similar to a certain degree. Many comments I receive about my artwork is about the eyes. Why are they so big? Easy, to EMPHASIZE emotion. Through the use of complex and stimulating facial expressions that manga/anime artist is able to convey a great deal of emotion to the observer without words. As it is said, Eyes are the windows to the soul, and this is true for manga/anime characters as well. A skilled artist can create the feeling an evil or a benign character just with the eyes.

Let's get started. First, I'll cover drawing a feminine type eye. This is a basic template, so to speak, that you can use to branch off of. The eye is basically made up of two parabola shaped line and the top and bottom; and then immediately closed off at either end.

Next is the more masculine eye which has a more rectangular shape than the feminine eye. If you need a tough guy this is the eye to use. Notice the "untrimmed" eyebrows.

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Tutorial Time! First up...CHIBI!

Okay, I promised tutorials and gosh darn it, I'll give you some tutorials. Before I go any further, I probably should explain what Chibi is. It is a style of manga or anime that focuses on the "cuteness" of a character rather than realistic proportions; it is also know as SD (Super Deformed). Now I'm going to bring you from sketch to final work in this short tutorial.

Let's get to the meat and potatoes of actually drawing a manga character (forgive the excessive use of idioms). First this any character absolutely needs is proper proportion, otherwise you end up with an ugly and unnatural looking character. Chibi style is characterized by a "three-head tall" anatomy, in contrast to normal manga which has seven to eight-head high characters. To help keep proportions consistent, I recommend using bubble drawing before you full flesh out a character.

The picture you see here is now the "inked" version and this can be done on the computer with a mouse or tablet, or on paper with a pen and a good eraser. This was done on the computer by creating a transparent layer in a photo editing program and then running the mouse or hyperpen over the sketched lines. This produces a nice clean result which is ready for coloring. The red lines mark the areas approximately where "gaps" are corrected because the flood fill will otherwise go everywhere.

Once the base colors are in, you can use layers and an airbrush setting to shade your character to a desired depth. The particular method that I used on this was a technique know as "CG-ing". This is basically using an airbrush to make it look like it was computer generated or 3-D. Cel Shading is another method that can be used to create a more anime type feel, although it is quite flat looking. Some advice when coloring characters, it helps to stick to a color scheme of three main colors; otherwise, the image may become too chaotic.

This was my first tutorial on anime/manga, so I would like some feedback on how I did. If you have any questions or comments on the "how to's" please feel free to give me notice. Coming up next week, tutorial on the construction of the the head, face, eyes, mouth, and nose.

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