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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
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[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
:).



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