FanimeCon 2026 Forums

When you draw an anime character, what is the hardest part of the anatomy to draw?

Quote from: JyunishinshoWhen you draw an anime character, what is the hardest part of the anatomy to draw?

For me, everytime, is the breasts and the waist area. I can't draw them right when I draw an girl anime/manga-style. <_<

For me it's like ... EVERYTHING.  I suck at drawing people, and people always confuse me for a furry for it. ;o; waaaaail

But I voted for face because I can never seem to get the shape of the head and the placement of the eyes right...

Anything. Mainly the Face because my art keeps changing in a really fast pace. And the same problem Chu has. The Eyes being Deformed when you look at the image from the back.

After studying Physiology, Body structures aren't that hard to do.

And oh yeah. Another reason for the face: It takes up far more time than any other part of the body because you have to get it "perfect" X_X

I have a miserable time with the bodies.  The faces look good, the hair looks relatively okay, the hands and feet could admittedly use work, but... the bodies.. >_<  Always terrible.  I can't handle poses and I have a very poor knowledge of the way wrinkles in clothes should be done/look.  Blar.

Hands are the worse to draw oh and the body is my 2nd vote. That is why I just do portriat (sp) drawings :(.

This is the last drawing that I did for to congrats our doujinshi group for the 2nd printing of our doujinshi.

(https://forums.fanime.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.djldc.com%2Fapk-bebop.jpg&hash=096fb5bd777bb8f0af5a7a12fbe4768bdebd6d35)

Body.  This wouldn't have been the case if I had kept on drawing on a consistent basis.  It would have been the hair instead.

you know what i hate

i can draw the body fine seperately and the head/face seperately just fine, but if were to do them all together it isn't proportionate =/

i'd say the face is easy, and boobs are hard too =P

Everything but the eyes are hard for me.

Actually, if i really think about it, the eyes are hard too. But .. .gahh. What's hardest, I think, is trying to imitate a mangaka. I've been trying to imitiate Hakase Mizuki's style for so long, but it ain't workin' out.

Quote from: rigelEverything but the eyes are hard for me.

Actually, if i really think about it, the eyes are hard too. But .. .gahh. What's hardest, I think, is trying to imitate a mangaka. I've been trying to imitiate Hakase Mizuki's style for so long, but it ain't workin' out.

(https://forums.fanime.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fv220%2Fkimalucifer%2FOroron_01.jpg&hash=47aed9814cb9f7138900d70eec1f869fb20b2bd5)

I personally don't like imitating. It's okay to imitate for a little bit but I'd prefer to branch off into my own individual art style. Mizuki Hakase happened to be one of the 10 people my style developed from so I can get rather close. Like around maybe 55%.

The thing in Anime/Manga/Cartoon/Comics is that it's so huge that you should be able to come up with originality. Not that I'm putting you down rigel, but it's just a personal opinion of mine that it's a lot harder to go original than imitating because any drawing I see that's claimed to be anime/manga is Generic and it gets rather tiring.

Sure, faces are on the harder end of the spectrum (only cause the body isn't a particular weak point for me), but nothing beats hands and feet.  It's so freakin' hard to draw those correctly.  And hell, I've taken a figure drawing class (which admitedly did help me improve).  If you think about it, they're just five little protrusions from a centralized point.  If only it were that easy.... -_-

I'm so bad a making hands and feet that I've retired from drawing a normal scale person to "chibi-fying" them instead. Of course at that point, the people have a mitten look instead of a real hand.

I always try to draw a good anime-manga-ish body, but it always turns into something.....cute or chibi-ish. Looks like it is my developed style, but I still would lke to draw well-proportioned bodies correctly. So the hardest thing for me to draw is the body because proportions are usually off.

bodies.... ><


eyes are easy. because, if you cant draw anime eyes...you arent really drawing anime.

Pick up a basic drawing people book and remember some of the proportion hints they give you.  Although anime bodies are almost always distorted to some extent, the vast majority of things will still hold true.  Some quick tips:

Bodies:
-The average human body is 7 1/2 head-lengths tall.  You often see people play around with that for style.  For example, the Greeks used 8 head-lengths for their statues of idealized people and gods.

-From the sternum (for those not well-versed in anatomy, the center of the chest) to the end of the arm is half the total height of the figure

-With arms hanging down, the hands should go down to about mid-thigh with fingers extended

Heads:
-Eyes are in the middle of the head.  That may seem low to some, but wait until you draw in the hair.

-Eyes should have about one eye-length (width-wise) between them

-The nose is in the middle of the eyes and chin

-The mouth is in the middle of the nose and the chin

-Ears are about on level with the eyes

I wish I could remember more of this stuff.  If anyone wants more, I'll try to dig up some of my old papers from basic and intermediate drawing.

Quote from: TsubasaPick up a basic drawing people book and remember some of the proportion hints they give you.  Although anime bodies are almost always distorted to some extent, the vast majority of things will still hold true.  

Not all basic drawing books are good though Tsubasa. There was one book in which a "standard" teenage girl had the boobs of a playboy model. X_X

Another thing: How to draw Manga books are useless. Never buy em cause they don't teach you anything.

Faces are still the hardest thing for me ;_; *punches her art*

Quote from: KimaLucifer

Quote from: TsubasaPick up a basic drawing people book and remember some of the proportion hints they give you.  Although anime bodies are almost always distorted to some extent, the vast majority of things will still hold true.  

Not all basic drawing books are good though Tsubasa. There was one book in which a "standard" teenage girl had the boobs of a playboy model. X_X

Another thing: How to draw Manga books are useless. Never buy em cause they don't teach you anything.

Faces are still the hardest thing for me ;_; *punches her art*

I have some of the how to draw manga books. I really only used it most to draw faces...even though I know how already. I guess I use it as templates.

I'm best at faces, probably because I draw them most often. But by the time I get to the chest and legs, everything gets all disproportional. The head is the biggest, and the legs end up being really rather small! I'm not a very serious artist for the most part, I just make little sketches and such.

Quote from: KimaLucifer

Quote from: TsubasaPick up a basic drawing people book and remember some of the proportion hints they give you.  Although anime bodies are almost always distorted to some extent, the vast majority of things will still hold true.  

Another thing: How to draw Manga books are useless. Never buy em cause they don't teach you anything.

not ALL of them....just most of them. like that one by katy coope. *swears to kill her* i just dont trust american how-to-draw-manga books. they SUCK.

but that other series...how-to-draw-manga...the translated one from japan, is pretty good.

Personally, I have the HARDEST time with feet and hands.. =/ My faces, in my opinion, come out okay...as with the body...but..Oo; yeah. >_>; T3h hands are t3h suck.  I'm taking a Figure and Composition class at my college though, so hopefully that'll help me out a bit.  :shock:

Definitely the hardest for me are hands and feet. But that's where creative positioning  (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y188/redcomet15/Drawings/CielRocks1.jpg)comes into play. Still, I can't always get away with creative positioning. When that's the case, I can draw hands and feet relatively well. They're just a little tricky to do.

I've been working on drawing faces for a long time so that's not so bad, either is the hair. But the body can be problematic for me if the pose is odd, then I'll need my trusty mannequin. Feet is the biggest challenge for me since it's kind of odd to stare at your own feet and try to practice from looking in a mirrow.

The frickin face! RAWR

I think the over-all composition is more difficult to draw than the anatomy. If it has to be related to anatomy, I'd say the face for I sometimes have trouble getting the type of face I want. (ex. a cute face for a cute character.) I pretty confident on the anatomy for the body, hands, and feet for I have had extensive classes that beat proper structure into me. The hair isn't difficult at all...>.>

hands are harder to do than feet because toes tend to bunch together and overlap or something like that unless theyre in some crazy dramatic pose. Something helpful that my teacher suggested in relation to hands and can be applied to other things is make everything like boxy-2d-90 degree then just fine tune the values from just 2 values to 039840234. able for a while i had trouble getting believable realistic knees. XD they look funny but owell. the face is pretty hard too but not really :). yeah id have to agree that the composition and the use of negative space in relation of the feeling that you want to give the viewer is. or something like that XD. DRAW DRAW DRAW,
sorry if parts dont make sense theres true meaning underlying there somewhere its just that its late :) gnite

wah. hands and feet... it's kinda sad, really... because the hands are always behind their back, and i draw funky shoes or feet buried under something... haha. ninja skillz? XD