Sofia Kim - How to draw manga, Basic guide to drawing cute chibis

The chibis we saw in the anime is small and cute. Although he has many styles, his main characteristics are threefold:

big head;

small body;

limbs are short and round.

The head is one of the important parts of the character's body. It is mainly composed of facial features, facial contours and hair, which intuitively expresses the character's appearance. In painting, it is like a ruler, which can match the approximate figure length.

We use the length of one head as a unit to match the length of a character with several heads.

First determine the length of the head, from the top of the head to the chin.

Move the length of one head vertically under the first head to determine the position of the second head length. A chibi with a body length equal to one head can be called a chibi with two heads.

To draw the facial features of a character, one must understand the location of "three courts and five eyes". "Three courts" refers to the ratio of the length of the face, which is the distance from the hairline to the eyebrow, from the eyebrow to the bottom of the nose, and from the bottom of the nose to the chin, each accounting for 1/3 of the length of the face. "Five eyes" refers to the ratio of the width of the face. It is the length of one eye. The width of the face is divided into five equal parts. From the left side to the right side, it is the length of five eyes. The distance between the two eyes is the length of one eye, and the distance from the outside to the side hair of each eye is the distance between one eye, each accounting for 1/5 of the ratio.

An incorrect head will give people an ugly feeling and make readers have no mood to appreciate it. Therefore, when drawing the head of a character, find out the proportion and structure of the facial features.

Dislocation of facial features

Disorder of facial features

Normal facial features

Although the characters in the anime world have many styles and the appearance of native officials is also different, their basic structure is unchanged. The correct facial features structure and proportion will make the characters appear vivid and cute, so how can we draw the correct facial features?

Even if you want to draw a particularly simple eye, you can't omit the positioning of the facial features. Use cross hair to mark the orientation of facial features.

Then draw the size of the eyes. Because the facial features are drawn at a 45-degree angle, the size of the eyes will vary due to perspective.

Position the nose and mouth. After setting, add eyelashes and eyebrows to the eyes, so that you can draw, simple facial features.

It can be clearly seen visually that the prominent feature of the chibi is "circle", and "circle" is formed by a curve. What is the curve? There are generally two types of lines, one is a straight line and the other is a curve.

straight line

Curve

Straight lines have the characteristics of rigidity, straightness, and sharpness, and are often used to draw square boxes, books, buildings, etc.

The curve gives a soft and smooth feeling. Commonly used to draw female characters, chibis, flying scarves or satin, etc.

When drawing lines, the weight of the pen will cause the thickness of the lines to be different. A good line draft is to use the correct line drawing technique.

How to use the correct line drawing technique?

In drawing, where the objects overlap, lines should be drawn heavier.

The lines in a picture are thick and thin to make it look good. Basically, soft objects have thinner lines, such as mouth, cheeks, and hair ends.

The flat line is the line that intersects the line to produce a darker line, used to draw the shadow of the character

Line-to-line superposition

Horizontal

Vertical

Oblique

Uniform

Weight first

Dense first

First draw a line of the same thickness

Use one or more overlay methods to darken the painting area

The number of times the lines are superimposed when drawing dark parts is not quantitative, as long as the effect is achieved.

In this face-seeking world, a good-looking face can bring some attention to this character. Of course, the characters in the anime world are no exception. In addition to enjoying the characters we draw, we also hope that others will like them, so it is very important to draw the head well.

Which of the following two avatars do you prefer?

Facial features incorrect avatar

Facial features correct avatar

The head performance of the characters in different versions from different angles

The heads at different angles are simply summarized as front, side, and front. The side is also called the three-quarter side, which is a transition between the front and the front side, which can be subdivided into 45 degrees side, 60 degrees side, etc.

When making a bottom view or a top view of a person's head, because the face and the beauty of the face are to be emphasized, the angle need not be too large.

When drawing a character's head, it is necessary to understand the structure of the head and beautified "props" step by step. The head will produce different changes at different angles, as shown in the figure below.

The face shape of the chibis

Different characters have different face shapes. When it comes to face shape, in real life, people will think of egg face, melon seed face, Chinese character face and so on. Although the faces of the characters in the comics version are mostly fleshy, they also have different faces. The basic shape of the face is a circle or an ellipse. By adding and reducing, you can create a variety of face shapes to enrich the drawn characters.