How to Draw an Anime Character

Last Updated : 01 Feb, 2024

Anime characters have very distinct features. Their facial expression, over-exaggerated body, face, and eyes are their identity. Drawing anime characters is pretty simple and easy. Anime characters are enjoyable to draw due to their unique and inconsistent proportions, which only add to the creative challenge. For those interested in learning how to create an original anime character or fanart of their favourite anime persona, following a set of five steps can lead to successful results.

These steps provide guidance on properly proportioning the body, styling distinctive anime hairstyles, and most crucially, mastering the creation of oversized anime eyes. Although drawing an anime character differs from depicting humans, there are fundamental similarities between the two techniques that can be useful for artists to keep in mind during the process.

So here are five steps you need to follow to draw Anime characters.

Step 1: Create the Basic Structure of the Face

Starting an anime character is similar to drawing any person. The general rule is to draw the basic structure of the face. It is the main thing in drawing any living thing.

Step 1: Any basic drawing of the face starts with the base structure. The first thing an artist must do is draw a circle.

Step 2: Draw a horizontal line that divides the circle in half. This will be the placement of your eyes and ears.

Step 3: Draw a vertical line, this will be the placement for the mouth and nose of your character.

Now these lines help artists to adjust the placements of a character’s eyes, nose and mouth.

Step 2: Add Facial Features

With the help of the circle and the cross, you can finally find the placement for facial features such as eyes, nose and mouth. Now you can draw these features and fill in the details.

Eyes

Anime characters’ most prominent features are their eyes. Those big, enchanting eyes amaze the viewers. To draw them you need to follow three simple steps:

Step 1: Draw a curved upper eyelid.

Step 2: Draw a tiny line that extends from the outer corner of the eyes.

Step 3: Leave the inner corner to make the eyes look open and soft.

Once you have drawn the outer features you can finally put in the details. Draw a big circle inside the eyes for the Iris and a smaller circle in the iris for the pupil.

If you want to create light reflections inside your eyes, just add two more smaller circles in the Iris. When you start colouring the eyes, leave these circles white to make them look like reflections and create a gradient.

Now add eyelashes to the upper and bottom lid. To draw eyelashes is simple, just move your pencil upward and downward from the eyelid in an asymmetrical format or in wavy format. If the character is male, then just add a shadow to the upper eyelid for eyelashes.

Nose and Mouth

Nose and Mouth are simple to draw. It is very easy to draw anime character’s noses and mouths as compared to their eyes. They are smaller and with little to no details.

To draw a nose, you need to add two small lines in place of the nostril and that’s your nose. As for the mouth, you need to draw a simple curve or line, depending on the emotion your character is showing.

If the character is neutral, draw a line.
If the Character is disgusted, draw a small oval.
If they are smiling, draw a curve that goes upward at both ends.
And if they are sad, draw a curve that goes down at both ends.
And if they are smirking, one side of the curve going upward while the other is a straight flatline.
And that’s mouth and face for you.

Ears

To draw ears just add two C’s or D’s facing each other on either side of the face at the horizontal line two ends, or to understand easily draw them between the eyes and nose’s tip.

Then add in some details, like lines and shadows to give some texture to the ears of the character.

Step 3: Draw the Hair

Now there are few ways to draw hair. It differs from artist to artist. Some prefer to draw dramatic and angular hairstyles for their characters, whereas some prefer to use free form and draw flowy hairstyles.

We will learn how to draw the flowy style because of its simplicity and easy to understand nature. To draw the flow hair, you need to follow two quick steps:

Step 1: Do quick, light handed lines that start from above down to the face and side of the face.

Step 2: Add in some details to the hair. Make sure you give them volume or they will end up looking ugly and flat.

If you want to make it look beautiful here’s a small tip when you are drawing hair, start by extending the hair above the initial circle you made. It will give them volume and some texture.

Step 4: Add the Body

Now drawing a body in not just anime characters but any character is extremely hard and only few experienced artists can get it right in the first take.

Weirdly enough, the step of drawing a body is pretty simple to follow. It is just a bunch of geometrical shapes that when combined together make a body. A rectangle makes the chest, oval makes the hips and when you add four lines below them they become legs and when you add two small circles at any point of the line, in proportion to feet, they become knees.

Body

To draw the body, start drawing the shapes for baseline:

Step 1: Use a rectangle for chest, an oval for hips.

Step 2: Connect the Rectangle chest and Oval hip with lines. This will create the waist.

Step 3: Once you add lines and connect all of the body parts, start adding in details on the specifications of the body the character will have.

Each character is different, look wise, body size wise as well as expression wise. So when you draw a character make sure to keep all of these in mind when you draw their basic proportions. Now the proportions for legs are:

Legs = Upper Body. Meaning whatever the size of the character’s upper body is, i.e from the head to the hip, should be the size of the leg.

And once you are done with the upper and lower body, now you can add arms. The rule for arms is simple, the elbow must align with the waist and the arm below the elbow along with hands should align with the mid thighs. It will make them look proportionate to the character’s body, no matter what body type you draw.

Clothes

Now with all the above steps you have drawn the entire anatomy of the you can start adding clothes. To add clothes:

Step 1: You must first choose what your character will wear. Once you have decided, draw a rough line along the body to fit the clothes.

Step 2: Draw lines along the body to note the baseline of the corners and ends of the clothing.

Step 5: Add Details and Ink the Drawing

Once you are done with all the baselines, you can start adding details. Details include the highlights, shadows and texture.

It can be done by a mixture of using black and white pencils or pens. It is suggested to use Black pen for overall inking and a Jelly white pen for detailing and highlighting. You can also add additional colours by using coloured pencils if you like to do that.

Conclusion

Once you acquire proficiency in drawing anime characters, you may then delve into more advanced techniques such as depicting them in varied postures and emotional states. Experimentation with distinct perspectives, hair styles, attire, and facial expressions is also possible.