We City Folk: Girl 8 Shading - WIP 2

Her face was one for big, watery eyes and an overhanging brow. A bit homely but in a kind, harmless sort of way.

Something that is very useful for communicating personality is to move where the eye highlights are. It's almost a no-brainer to put them at the upper right of the eye in a lot of cartoons, especially if the style is heavily informed by manga and anime. But there are other options. The excellent anime Azumanga Daioh (it was also a manga, but I never read it) had the character Ayumu Kasuga, known as "Osaka," and the shines on her eyes were almost always on the lower half of her eyes. To me, that always made her look so wistful and gentle.

Now the way I learned how to do eyes was to draw the highlight in the eye as a part of the design and not as a reflection of light. Even when I actively try to properly do the whole lighting thing, I usually fall back on instinct and set the highlight where I think it's most appropriate from the standpoint of character design.

Setting the highlight in various places can be useful for accentuating personality types. Sort of, anyway. A big highlight on the upper right of the eye is classic. It looks bright and cheerful. A big highlight on the bottom left, however, looks soft, almost doleful. It also serves to make the eyes look watery, as it's similar to the glistening effect created by watery/teary eyes. One I really like is the thin horizontal line of a highlight very close to or pointing directly at the pupil. That's a ticket to intensity right there but also to an animalistic or fierce nature. A teeny-tiny pinprick of light in the center of the pupil looks eerie. There's an unnatural, otherworldly feel to it, especially if the eyes are black. Gives you the feeling of being X-rayed.

Or you could go the Yu-Gi-Oh! route and make everyone look like they have the worst cataracts known to man.

#girl #cartoon #animalcrossing #wecityfolk #genrechowderstudios