TOOLS 'N TIPS
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     Anime - Chibi (Cutesy) Eyes
I had a request to show how I drew the big eyes like on Sasami.  With art, there isn't really any "right" or "wrong" way to draw things, so I'll just show you my approach, and hopefully it will help out with your own style as you develop it.

The first thing I do is get everything laid out.  With the chibi face, you'll basically have a circle and a really wide U or V very slightly beneath it.  The mouth is about level with the corners of the jaw, and the nose is slightly above it.  The eyes go from about the height of the nose to slightly over the middle of the head:

Sorry about the quality of the images.  I don't have a scanner here, so I just used my digital camera, and I was too lazy to set it up so there weren't shadows all over it.

Now I start polishing up the outline of the eyelids.  You might want to work with both eyes at the same time.  I'm just doing one for the sake of this tutorial:


Next comes the iris.  With the chibi-style eyes, it's a rather stretched oval instead of a circle.  Make sure the "shine" in the eyes is consistent with the shading you plan to use on the rest of the character.  In this case my light source is shining from the upper left:


Once you've gotten it where you want it, polish it up and give it some dark outlines.  I generally tend to work around the whole face before darkening the eyes, but this is a tutorial specifically for the eyes, so that's all I'm going to focus on:


Next comes the iris details.  If you're going use color, you might want to skip this step and color it in later.  I always sketch outward from the center of the eye to the edge for the basic shading:


Now for the finishing details:  Clean up the outlines, add some eye lashes and shading, and make a few darker (and lighter, if possible) lines in the iris:


If you have any suggestions for future tutorials, or think something in this tutorial should be revised, please contact me!

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Created Nov. 3, 2002.
Content on this page is Copyright © 2002 Nathan "jitspoe" Wulf, all rights are made by reservation only.