How To Draw Anime

Anime has become a huge obsession lately and everyone wants to learn this unique skill of creating the perfect anime. Well no one can just magically give you skills of an artist but if you have basic drawing and art skills then this is a tutorial on learning how to  draw basic anime.

Here are some tips:

1. When starting with a Caucasian head, start the shape  like an inverted egg. Using light sweeping lines, secure the symmetry letting  the lines come together at a sharp angle when structuring the chin. The anime character culture wants the sharp angled chin to dominate, and here is why: It’s normal for Asians of the Far East, including the Southeast, to have receding chins. And the pointed-angle chin suggests this.

2. Other then the  sharp angled chin, there is not too much more details like their Caucasian counterparts. There are figures whose chin points are somewhat  filed away, but will still look anime as long as the dimension works the illusion of a small regressing chin. The larger chin is a dominant facet of the Caucasian model.

3. This feature is generally applied to boy baby-faced heroes, children, and girls. The large Herculean sidekicks are frequently square-jawed and big-chinned like a Caucasian.

4. The very famous anime eyes are notably large; each iris is fairly vertically oval and essentially  composed of two concentric circles. The innermost circle, the pupil, is the darkest; the larger outer one, the iris, holds the eye color. And in this pattern, a white circle or two are drawn to indicate the reflection of light. Why this passion for the large eyes and their detail? The Japanese, as well as the Koreans, find large eyes beautiful. The detailing is probably an expression of the intensity for this preference.

5. Above and below each beloved eye are the short sandwiching lines that never quite make it to the corners of the opening. They are, nevertheless, part of providing expression to the eyes. You need to make the lines  abundant width mid-length. This is an effective method in accenting the characters personality, particularly among females, with  long curling eyelashes that go upward.

6. Moving onto the eyebrows. Heroes normally have the shape of a scythe blade, the thickest portion assigned to the inner part of the face. The muscular sidekicks have thicker and bushier eyebrows. The female eyebrows are much thinner, normally a concave shape. The villains have a explicit downward-slope, making this the largest part that rises before reaching the temple.

7. The less important detailed part of the face is the nostrils, almost not even indicated at all, and the mouth. Anime characters usually have small mouths. It is another predominating feature of this art culture. It is almost a general fact that the smaller the mouth, the more serious the character. A larger mouth, on the other hand, predominate the western style; and is usually assigned to comical characters.

8. Experiment on the hair. Anime hairdo has its own personality; and the development of the anime characters through the years have become a hair-dressing competition.

9. Anime characters are eminently on the slender side, not like the western character which is more muscular for the males and voluptuous for the females. For more references, you can take a look at  David Bowie’s characterization of the Goblin King in the movie Labyrinth.