Erotica/Hentai/Ecchi Anime By Acid Junkie A Brief Lesson On Drawing Anime Figures, Version 1.0 CONTENTS Introduction Part 1 -- The Head Part 2 -- The Body Part 3 -- Style Afterword Back to the top [INTRODUCTION, aka Skip-it-if-you-wish] I don't claim to be any good at drawing anime figures (though some of my fans may say otherwise :), but I try very hard to imitate the anime style of illustration by studying (yeah, right :) the works of professional anime artists. Which, if you don't know me, means playing h-anime games and downloading h-anime pictures :). But if you're taking notes, that's something you should remember. The reason why there isn't an ironclad set of rules that one could follow to draw in a particular style, is that you have to develop that style yourself. When you first put your pencil down (or load up your favorite paint program which, in my case, would be Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced for DOS), have the picture of a beloved anime character sitting next to you. Trace, if you wish, but pay attention to how each detail is drawn. It would really, really help if you have previous experience in drawing (realism in particular), because you would then know how to proportion the character's features properly. Mind you, anime figures seem to break every proportioning rule governing art, but sooner or later you'll realize that, after drawing them for a while, the anime-ism :) is just a spin-off, an exaggeration if you will, of realism. If your anime figure isn't properly proportioned, it'll come out like crap. I've encouraged all those who have seeked me out for advice on drawing anime figures to get some books that deal with figure drawing. John Kim, my idol :), is one of the best and most well-known anime artists, be it ecchi pictures or otherwise, on the Internet. His skills surpass my own by quite a long shot, but you really shouldn't bother him because he's a busy man :). He has kindly recommended a few books to me that will help you understand the art of drawing the human body better, which in turn will help your anime art. I'll attach the list at the end of the text so if you're not considering doing anything serious, you can ignore it. (note: I don't have the list with me at the moment, but will add it in as soon as I can get to it) Assuming that you have some skill at drawing (above the level of stick figures :), here are a few pointers, discoveries of my own whilst I was downloading anime por...uh, practicing my art :). Now, I have very little idea as to how good an average person can draw, so you'll have to bear with me if I ask you to perform some difficult maneuvers (heck I can't even draw a straight line :), or if I'm making things a bit too obvious. DISCLAIMER: this is how I draw. I don't care what your art teacher told you, and I don't expect you to follow my instructions word-for-word, so just take whatever advice you need and develop your own style. I personally have had very little training in art, and have relied upon my inborn "talent" and a hell of a lot of practice, so let the reader beware (dunno the Latin for that :) Caveat What-tor? :). [INSTRUCTIONS, PART 1 -- THE HEAD] 1. First start with one eyebrow. Start with the one closer to the viewer. There are several ways of drawing eyebrows, ie. thick, polygonal ones or just a thin, curved line. Males usually have thicker eyebrows than females, but some artists use thick eyebrows on figures of either sex. 2. You may wish to draw the other eyebrow at this time to determine which direction the character is looking in, and what emotion he or she is experiencing. I usually draw the eye first, but when I'm drawing someone in an awkward pose I'd put the other eyebrow in as a guideline. 3. The eyes are among the hardest features to draw in anime-ism. Since there are a billion ways to draw them, I won't begin to delve into this too deeply. But, as you know, most of the time they are very big, accompanied by huge, watery pupils to eliminate the illusion of a wide-eyed stare. The top eyelashes are almost always very thick, and females usually have very defined eyelashes, as if they are wearing mascara. There's usually a thin line just above the eyes (I can't remember what it's called -- double eyelids?) that roughly follows the contour of the eye. You can adjust the tilt on the eye to add variety to your characters (ie. Rei in Sailor Moon has eyes that are narrow towards the nose and wider towards the ears). Note that the tilt is sometimes in the same direction in a side view, but differ in a front view. This is, however, a matter of style and you should experiment with either method (I'm still trying to figure out which way is better myself). I'll also leave the pupils up to you, but don't overdo the shiney parts. You should be able to fit another eye (or at least half, since anime eyes are so huge) in between the eyes. Lastly, the eyes tend to take up about 1/3 or 1/2 of the face, lengthwise and excluding the forehead, but again this varies by style. 4. Nose. Yet another awkward thing to draw. Some artists (ie. off the top of my head, Masakazu Katsura, DNA^2 and VGAi) even leave this part out of the face or simplify it as much as possible. It's usually very small and sometimes pointy on females, and tends to elongate to suit more mature characters. On the other hand, males tend to have much more defined noses. I guess the reason for this is to emphasize a female's more delicate features. You can either outline it, or outline the shape of its shadow just above the mouth (and perhaps filling it in). 5. The mouth is perhaps the easiest feature to draw on the face. Just a simple straight line will usually do, but it takes a bit of manipulation to give the character some emotion. Anime characters usually don't have their lips outlined, but you have to be careful when you do a side view, because that's when you have to draw in the contours of the lips. I usually accentuate the corner of the mouth when it's closed, just because it looks good to me :). Oh, and be sure to include a line or a shadow on the bottom of the lips, no matter what the angle. 6. I can't begin to whine to you about how hard it is to get faces right, even with all the experience that I've had, but don't let this discourage you, simply because your mileage may vary. Perhaps it's because I've drawn too many realistic faces in the past, but anime-istic faces bug me so much sometimes because they're extremely simplified. Most female faces have no cheekbone whatsoever, but have puffy cheeks to make them look "cute". Most of the time they don't have rounded chins either, and their chins tend to be very sharp (I usually round it out just a bit to make it look less awkward). 7. At this point I usually draw the ears in. If you're doing a complete side view, the ear should be half-way between the nose and the back of the head (so this kinda helps you locate the back of the head if you have the ear drawn in). It should start at eye-level and the top of it should be somewhere between the eyebrows and the top of the eye, and the bottom should be horizontally parallel to the bottom of the nose, and ends pretty much right there, perhaps a bit higher. It should be half as wide as it is long. If you wish you can connect the facial outline with the ear. 8. You can now either draw the hair or the neck. I'll start with the neck since it pretty much acts as a guideline for the shape of the head. The "front" of the neck can be on either side of the chin, depending on the angle of the shot. If it's dead-centre, then the lines should start somewhere near the point where the facial outline connects with the ear. Be sure to make the neck look thin if the character isn't muscular (ie. Kenshiro had an extremely thick neck :). If it's a side view, then the back of the neck should start behind, or just under the ear. Don't connect the end of the ear's outline with the neck, but rather connect the neck outline at the earlobe. Gradually increase the distance between the chin and the "front" of the neck as the character turns away from you. Make the neck nice and long, and don't forget to put in some shadow where the Adam's Apple is supposed to be :). 9. Okay, here we go, the hair. Now, you can go absolutely wild with the hair as you like, but make sure that there is at least as much space from the bottom of the eyes to the chin as there is between the top of the head and the eyebrows, and perhaps even more if your character's eyes are huge. There's yet another billion ways to draw hair, so I'll leave this up to you. If you're drawing someone with short hair, make sure that the widest part of head is level with the mouth or the base of the nose. I know that realistically the proportion for this is incorrect, as it should be level with the eye, but it seems that most anime-istic heads are drawn the other way. Like I said in the ear section, when you're drawing a complete side view (I think they have a naming system for this, like 1/3 view or 1/4 view or something like that), the ear should be half way between the back of the head and the nose -- you get the point. As a side note, I'd just like to say that I have some trouble with drawing characters with their hair swept towards the back completely (ie. Cammy from SSF2). Almost all anime characters you see have bangs or long hair that cover up most of their temple, so I was really lost when I had to draw Cammy. You'll see why when you try it. Phew! We now have the head done. If you made it this far and neither one of us blundered, congratulations :). Now comes the even harder part -- the body. This is where training in realism really helps, since there're proportions and digits to worry about, but below are a few quick pointers. I'll also discuss some stylistic differences between realism and anime-ism to help you make your figures look more anime-like. [INSTRUCTIONS, PART 2 -- THE BODY] 1. I really don't remember any of the exact proportional relationships between the different parts of the body, but I've got a very good idea of it in my head and, with experience, you can tell in a split second when you're looking at a picture whether or not the body parts are proportional to each other (it just doesn't feel comfortable looking at it if it's screwed up). 2. The head is a bit larger than it should be realistically. 3. The shoulders should be just a bit wider than the hips (and a woman's hips are, naturally, larger than a man's), so if you chopped off the arms :), the hips and the cut should line up. 4. The elbows should be parallel to the waistline. 5. The wrists should be parallel to the widest point on the hips. I think a man's arms should be a little shorter than a woman's arms (and therefore his wrists should be above the hips), but it really doesn't matter when you're drawing anime characters. 6. You can probably get away with making the legs as long as you want them to be. In real life the shins are supposed to be shorter than the thighs, but again it matters very little, and the reverse is very common (especially when you're a fashion designer :). If you've gotten this far, you really should get yourself a book on drawing the human body. The least you could do is borrow a book on the subject and photocopy some of the pages :). Hell, the only thing I have as reference is a photocopied package of proportions and such I got back in Grade 10 visual arts :). [INSTRUCTIONS, PART 3 -- STYLE] If you've ignored all of the other parts, the least you could do is read up on this one :). It's simple, really, just a few things that I do when I draw, and perhaps this might inspire you to come up with your own style. 1. Lines. I love thick lines. My art teacher used to take marks off of my work because I use thick outlines (I guess I'm built more for cartoons than real art, eh?), but I love 'em. Tom Mitchel (another cool Internet "art guy", too bad he's on Compu$erve) revealed to me the reason why I love them -- it makes the figures smoother, more "anti-aliased" if ya know what I mean. It also gives the viewer the illusion of "sureness", that the artist knows what (s)he's doing. Experiment with thin and thick lines to see which ones you like. Of course, there are places to use thick lines, and there are places to use thin lines. For example, let's say we are drawing an arm. I would probably thicken the lines where the curves are concaved towards the body, and vice versa. Make sure the thick parts and the thin parts connect smoothly. Note that this is pretty much "automatic" if you're using an ink pen because of the wide nib, but if you're using an ink pen already then you're beyond this already :). 2. When you look at a realistic drawing, most of the time you'll see that all the tiny details are thrown in, like deep-set collar bones, ribs, folds of the skin, etc.. Forget them. Anime art is supposed to be smooth, something I didn't get until recently. This is probably the only time I use thin lines, to outline the inner body (ie. collar bones, shadow of the diaphragm/rib cage). Make the lines look as simplistic as possible. If you've done contour drawings, you'll know what I mean. Just keep your pen flowing; don't stop to put details in. For example, you don't see anime characters with really defined hip bones. Just a smooth, hourglass shape that flows continuously. Of course, you'll still need to make the elbows and the knee caps look visible because they're much more obvious than the hip bones, so evaluate the importance of a particular detail and decide whether or not it should be left in. Note that you should also use thick lines to outline breasts and belly button, if the situation calls for the display of these parts. 3. Edges and Curves. Take a realistic picture of, say, a shoulder. Most of the time it's perfectly round. If you wish, you can emphasize on those parts to make them look more rigid by manipulating the outline. Adjust the thickness of the outline as you wish, and make the shape more angular and rigid. But don't ever do this on a woman's breasts :), though you may use this on the buttocks, because there's a bone in there that may stretch the flesh just a little and flatten it out. You can't make it perfectly round when there's pressure on it anyway, like when you're sitting. I guess the rule of thumb for this is to make things look angular when there're bones in it (duh). [AFTERWORD] That's it for today, kids. Be sure you PRACTICE at home, because practice makes perfect. Just keep drawing and drawing, and don't give up if the picture doesn't come out right the first time. Eventually you'll figure out the best way to start that hard-to-draw face, and in no time you'll be able to draw an entire figure with no problems whatsoever. Art is not something that could be taught and learnt easily, due to the fact that it's mostly theory and success relies heavily upon the individual's own existing talents. Unlike teaching someone how to read and write English, there's no sure-fire way to teach someone how to draw exactly. There are no step-by-step instructions on how to paint the Mona Lisa, yet you could make a copy of Windows '95 by simply typing out the code with a hard copy of the source code in hand (which is not to say the task of writing WIN'95 was nearly as difficult as painting the Mona Lisa). Keep this in mind and you will persevere :). Back to the top! Acid Junkie's Ecchi Homepage / vitz@io.org