How To Draw Someone As A Anime Character

Many beginners cull anime/manga as their first drawing style, considering it looks very simple and appealing. However, if you want to draw a manga character from scratch, y'all need to understand the proportions and construction of the body. And if you want to draw anime bodies from imagination, you lot even need to know human beefcake. So while drawing anime characters is easier than drawing realistically, it's still not easy!

In this tutorial, I volition show y'all the basics of cartoon the bodies of anime characters. I'll show you how to offset a manga drawing—how to ascertain a pose for your character and how to make sure the proportions are right. Then I'll show y'all how to turn this "skeleton" into a 3D structure and how to add muscles to it.

You'll larn everything y'all need to know to draw an anime grapheme from scratch—the gesture, proportions, forms, and anatomy. It's all explained on a beginner level!

i. Anime Body Proportions

Anime characters don't accept very strict proportions—each creator has their own style, and it's impossible to create one correct sheet of proportions for a manga body. However, while at that place are no right and wrong proportions, there are intentional and unintentional ones.

To give your proportions an intentional look, y'all must keep them consistent. For this, it's best to follow sure rules while you're cartoon. The most universal rules for drawing a proportional anime body would be:

Well-nigh of the time, an anime character'south trunk can exist divided into halves right at the crotch level. Sometimes, the lower half is made longer to brand the legs longer or the trunk more robust, but it's rarely shorter (A).
The length of the arm (above the elbow) is unremarkably equal to the length of the forearm + the palm of the hand (B).
The altitude between the crotch and the halfway point of the knee is equal to the distance betwixt the halfway bespeak of the genu and the ankle (C).
Males are taller than females, and their chest and hips are of a like width. Females tend to have wider hips and narrower chests.

Once you lot remember your proportions like this, it's much easier to implement them than when you use and then-and-then-many-heads-long rule. Let's be honest—how do you start a manga drawing when the simply thing you know is how it's supposed to look when it's finished? Are you supposed to draw a head, and then multiply it six and a half times, and so draw a dynamic body over it somehow? This method of measuring proportions always looked ridiculous to me. So allow me show you a much more straightforward method!

Step 1

To describe a dynamic pose for your anime character, it'due south good to use a reference. Even pros do it, because it's non so piece of cake to imagine a natural pose. You tin use a drawing dummy or a photo reference. I used this photo of ii boxers, simply y'all tin notice many others on Envato Elements.

Once you have your reference, search for the main line of action. If you were to reduce the whole pose to a single line, what would information technology await like?

Did y'all find it? Draw it with a quick, smooth motion.

Step 2

That was easy, wasn't it? Let's complement this chief line with another one. Unremarkably, it will be the other leg. Again, describe it quickly and smoothly, ignoring the details.

how to draw anime gesture from reference

Step 3

Time for the arms! Don't worry too much nearly their length; the curve is more important here.

how to draw anime skeleton from reference

This is where you may run across your first problem—where to put the shoulders? It doesn't really matter that much, as long every bit there's some distance betwixt them and the crotch. We'll adjust it all later!

Step 4

Draw the head at present. It should be placed close to the master line of activeness. Its size will help us piece of work out the other proportions.

Stride 5

Do you lot recollect the rule about the half of the torso? You know where the head ends, and you know where the legs end (roughly), so now find the middle point—this volition exist the crotch area of our anime graphic symbol. Of grade, experience gratuitous to modify this proportion for your intended effect!

Step 6

To brand this skeleton clearer, add "the chest" and "the hips", like an hourglass. This is where you can play with the proportions to create a more characteristic body. 1 of my characters volition be a ridiculously muscular male, and the other a immature, fit female person. Observe how the shape of the "hourglass" reflects their bodies at this early stage.

Step vii

Time to incorporate the other rules. Observe the ankle and mark the middle of the altitude between it and the crotch to find the articulatio genus. Find the elbow and marking the end of the palm.

Stride 8

Finally, draw the actual "bones" over these dynamic, but slightly inaccurate lines.

2. How to Describe an Anime Torso

This "skeleton", though then simple, is actually half of the job—once you accept prepare the proportions the way yous want, there's not much you can practise incorrect! Merely a correctly drawn skeleton is just a skeleton, so let's see how to fill it and create a trunk.

An anime body tin can exist reduced to simple forms, like spheres and ellipsoids. They introduce another level of proportions, although they're much looser and easier to proceed right. It'southward of import to call back that although they look similar circles and ellipses in your drawing, they're actually 3D objects, and they are bailiwick to perspective.

Let's take a look at the body parts separately. The trunk still looks very much like an hourglass. You merely have to call up about the tilting of the chest and hips towards the waist in the back.

The limbs are a little more complex, simply all the same hands understandable. Just imagine them as the limbs of a drawing dummy! Also, pay attending to the joints.

Pace 1

Let's put it all into practice now. Outset, draw the trunk. You must be very careful here—adjust the perspective to the pose. Dynamic anime characters rarely utilize simple views like pure front or side!

Pace 2

Adjacent, locate the joints and mark them as spheres.

Stride 3

Add together the big muscle masses now. Feel complimentary to adjust their size and shape to the style of the character's body. My male person is supposed to be ridiculously muscular in opposition to a slim female.

Step 4

Finally, add together the buttocks, the crotch, and the breasts.

3. How to Describe an Anime Torso and Breasts

The whole body is well established, so now we simply need to add together the details. Even if you lot don't care much about showing the muscle definition, the beefcake still influences the final look of the body, and so you tin't ignore it. So let'due south take a closer look at the anatomy of anime bodies.

The trunk is the simplest to draw because it has big, clear muscle masses, and it doesn't alter shape as well much. The abs and the pectorals are the muscles known even to laymen, then make certain to mark them.

Step i

Let's see how these muscles can be simplified into piece of cake to draw lines. Showtime, the waist must be smoothed. The adult female has a narrower waist.

Stride 2

The chest tin can be divided into a few areas horizontally: the pinnacle and lesser of the pectorals, the lesser of the rib-cage, and the omphalos level.

Footstep three

The center line looks straight only in the forepart view. In other views it envelopes the muscles information technology crosses, accentuating their shape. In that location'due south a little hump under the navel, clearer in females.

Stride 4

The whole six-pack can be neatly outlined, suggesting the placement of its component. The pectorals become towards the armpits, and they are covered slightly past the arm muscle, which affects their shape.

Pace 5

The nipples can be found easily by going from the heart of the clavicles. The muscles on the side accept a serration that tin can be marked easily by post-obit the rhythm of the bottom of the rib-cage.

Step 6

The neck is adequately straightforward: just draw a line from the heart of the clavicles towards the ears, and fill up the rest equally a unproblematic column. As for the back, don't forget about the shoulder blades.

Step 7

The back muscles are big and quite simple. The upper i has the shape of a kite (it supports the neck from the back), and the lower one has the shape of a "Five" (information technology's connected to the arm).

Here's a simplified diagram of all these guide lines. Equally you lot tin come across, despite their simplicity, they show the musculus definition quite successfully.

Stride 8

Breasts can be tricky to describe, because they're not actually what they seem. They're soft masses, afflicted greatly by gravity, not simply firm assurance fastened to the chest. They don't really accept i solid shape—it changes all the time with the pose.

When you start cartoon the breasts, mark them equally uncomplicated spheres of the intended size. Identify the spheres partly within the chest for a more natural effect.

To place the breasts correctly and symmetrically in every view, imagine them with "straps" tied behind the neck.

Because in my pose the woman is keeping 1 of her arms close, I moved the adjacent breast higher, as it gets slightly pushed.

Step ix

The nipples can exist establish only like in the male, except they're lower and placed more than in the front end. This line will aid you create a proper shape for the top of the breast.

Step 10

To better see the 3D shape of the breast, peculiarly in hard views, you tin can draw two lines under the nipple, creating a triangle.

Hither's a simplified diagram of breasts for your reference.

I mentioned earlier that breasts change shape, and this is something you need to pay attending to. Natural breasts rarely look round on height unless they're pushed upward or towards the center.

4. How to Depict Anime Legs

Legs have many muscles of diverse shapes and lengths, going in diverse directions. They're not piece of cake to memorize, but luckily at that place's really no demand to. You simply take to understand how they affect the full general shape of the legs.

Step one

Legs have a few linear rhythms hidden in them, and once you lot find them, yous'll never have a trouble with cartoon them once again. Let's start with the long "Southward" shape visible in the side view.