Comic Tips: “Eyes” (Patreon)

So I’ve been wanting to write another one of these process tip posts again for awhile but I haven’t been able to think of what the subject could be, I’d hardly consider myself much of an expert on anything, however one character design element I have had some thoughts on lately has been in regards to eyes and how to draw them.

I’m not just talking about how to physically draw realistic eyes, by the way. I’ve been very conscious of something lately that is by no means a new concept or anything but once I realized it was possible it changed how I design characters. I’m referring to the idea of using different logic and rendering styles to make different types of eyes as a main way to differentiate different characters in the same universe. In other words basically, just having different types of eyes makes each character stand apart from them more.

Look at this picture. It’s the main cast lineup for the original Mobile Suit Gundam anime. Now look at it closely, do you notice what I’m getting at? Every single character here has completely different styles of how their eyes are drawn, some are just single dots, some are round, some are narrow, some have colored in scleras while some are just drawn with lineart, but also notice how they don’t look weird standing next to each other. That means that you can totally do this in your own comic too yaknow! I mean, I do.

 I know this is probably really obvious because obviously in regards to character design to differentiate different characters the first thing artists do is give them different traits, that’s basic stuff. However this is from an ANIME, a medium infamous for copy-paste faces. You’d expect some Betty and Veronica type stuff wouldn’t you?

Anyways, I’m rambling a bit but what I’d really like people to at least take away is how often forgotten about eyes are when it comes to character design sometimes. Nowadays when I’m designing a character the first thing I actually do is start with the eyes. That’s the first thing I did with my Movie Flick Chick character, and she was very specifically designed to have unique looking eyes compared to my other characters with very round fully rendered circles.

I know even I rely on design crutches sometimes and I’ve probably repeated a lot of characteristics often, it’s fine, designing is hard really. But it’s sometimes fun to break from your comfort zone and get kinda wild every now and then. Here’s a big collection of eyes from a bunch of different characters I’ve drawn over the two years of drawing nsfw art for the internet. If you can guess who they all belong to just from seeing the eyes you MIGHT just be a superfan to an almost unsettling degree but if you can guess just a few of them then maybe I’m doing something right.

So yeah, in closing, you can probably apply this concept to pretty much anything if you try hard enough. Also if there’s anything specific about art or my process or anything please let me know! I might do like a short article about it like this, but I kinda need more ideas. Anyways, thanks to ya’ll as always.