Video version:

Since the net is full of eye anatomy and anime style tutorials but not about eye expressions, I decided to make one :)

 

✨ Beginner-friendly! ✨

 

 

Hello!

 

I’m .avi. I work as a professional game illustrator and creating comics and webtoons is my hobby.

 

In modern animation, eye expressions are often simplified due to time constraints so changing expressions only with slight movements of the eyebrows and eyelids has become the standard.

But why limit yourself like that when drawing illustrations, manga or webtoons?

 

Set your imagination loose and have fun drawing expressive eyes! You can give so much life and emotion to your work with dynamically exaggerated expressions that your characters start popping out of the screen or paper!

No need to be afraid to deviate from the style and character design you’ve set for your work.

 

No matter your set style, as long as it doesn’t cause character confusion, there’s practically no limit to how you change the shape, size or proportions of your eyes to express the emotion!

 

Just give it a try and you’ll see how much fun it is to draw lively expressions in your illustrations or in each panel of your comic!

There are countless styles all over the world, however they all come from the specific characteristics of human communication through eye expressions.

 

In this tutorial, I’d like to share points on why we stylize eyes in certain ways, where the origin is and why it works.

Quick tip: Draw both eyes

Always draw both eyes, together with eyebrows.

 

By drawing one eye you will get a picture to show off but won’t learn anything. Only by practicing both eyes will you find how the face’s expressions and even anatomy work.

The white of the eye

Have you ever wondered why human eyes have prominent sclera (the white part of the eye) while other animals’ don’t?

As highly social animals we needed to understand one another, and together with other means of communication, our eyes evolved to clearly show expressions with facial muscles and visible sclera.

While people often think the eyebrows or pupils and iris are the basis of expressions, it’s actually the amount of sclera showing around the iris that makes the fundamentals.

In general, animals’ eyes only show the sclera when they are frightened or stressed to intimidate the opponent, take barking dogs for example.

That means that the more sclera you show in your character’s eyes, the stronger the impression of stress, and the less sclera there is, the more calming and friendly the character looks.

That’s why cute animals, kids and girls are often drawn with big eyes with irises taking most of the eyes’ size, with only little white shown on the sides.

Eyelids

In a neutral expression both eyelids reach to the iris, the upper tends to cover it more than the lower.

The more of the iris they cover, the more lost in thought the character appears:

By lifting the upper eyelid the face gains a surprised or excited expression. It’s a common expression for lively children, or attentive characters, for example.

On the contrary, by lowering the upper eyelid and making its area visible by drawing the crease above it, the character gets a relaxed or composed look.

If you add space between the iris and the lower eyelid, cover the upper half of the iris with the upper eyelid, the character becomes cool, bored, irritated or smug.

Lower eyelids rise when the facial muscles tense up, like when a character is nervous.

Both eyelids come closer together with a small iris to exaggerate the nervous or suspicious feeling:

Iris size

The size of the iris compared to the whole eye can change as well. It’s a secondary way to enlarge the amount of sclera visible to intensify the expression even more.

The smaller the iris is, the more sclera is visible and the more the character appears scared or surprised. You can add lines around the eyes, especially below and on the outer side, to help the white pop out more. It’s also common to darken the whole area around the eyes to make them shine.

 

That’s a standard way of escalating expressions.

However, you can have fun by exaggerating it even more, by enlarging the eyes, drawing shadows and disturbed lines on the face, changing the mouth, darkening even the background and even adding details like sweat drops and standing hair!

As you can see, the bottom character feels more alive than the upper!

Pupils

How prominent the pupils in the irises are also significantly contributes to the expression.

 

If the pupil is about the same color as the iris or only the bottom part is more contrasting, the character feels calm and friendly.

In comedic scenes, it’s common to omit the pupil altogether.

However, when the pupil is contrasting to the iris, especially if the iris is very light and has a dark outline, you can feel the intense focus of the character, be it excitement, determination or anger.

Eyebrows

Eyebrows are important for underlining the eyes’ expressions.

 

Their relaxed or tensed shape, asymmetry and the wrinkles they form help make the expression clearer.

Sometimes they can be omitted if the exaggeration of the eyes speaks for itself, and sometimes there are expressions that can’t be made clear without eyebrows.

Highlights

The more and the bigger highlights, the cuter or excited a character seems.

Typically the older or colder a character is, the less highlights they have. A serious person often has only a small highlight in the lower part of the iris or no highlight at all.

Highlights make the eyes come alive. Take advantage of that and leave out or minimize highlights when the character is exhausted or down in the dumps!

The position of the highlights should logically be from the direction of the light source.

 

However, as a kid I noticed that when I draw the main highlights from the direction the characters aren’t looking, they look unfocused…

That’s why, when I want the character to sharply look at something or at the camera, I draw the highlights from that direction, even if the light comes from the other side.

I haven’t found anything about this phenomena, but the characters look better focused to me that way.

Hidden eyes

A cool comic invention I love is not drawing eyes in certain situations. It’s a great device that helps add the feeling of anticipation!

Line of sight

Unless you’re going for hyper-realism, it’s always better to have the eyes slightly converging, meaning that the white of the inner part is smaller than of the outer part:

You may have noticed in some earlier 3D animations the characters looked a bit scary because their eyes were set to have strictly parallel lines of sight:

In reality, the lines of sight always converge at one point, and the closer the eyes look, the more they converge:

Notice how the width of the white parts on both sides of the iris vary in each eye to make the line of sight converge:

Converging eyes are also a way to make a character look cuter.

Moreover, the more you exaggerate an expression, the close the irises can get to each other:

The whole face works together

If you practice drawing eyes, sketch the rest of the face along with them.

 

By doing that you’ll get familiar with how the mouth and all the facial muscles work together to create an expression.

 

For example if you smirk to one side, the cheek and the corresponding eyelid go up as well.

Even with expressions that seem symmetrical it’s interesting to add a little difference to each side, be it one corner of the mouth or an eyebrow going up.

 

If your character looks to the side, the lines of the mouth, eyes and eyebrows tend to form a shape that opens to the direction they look:

Similarly, when they’re grinning our shouting in intense emotion, the facial muscles follow a set of curves that you can use to exaggerate the expression even more!

Extra exaggeration

The general rule is that the gap between the eyes should be the width of one eye, and can be applied up to semi-realistic style.

But don’t let that limit you in exaggerating expressions! Eyes can even merge together if a character is totally perplexed!

 

While pursuing the best expression, don’t be afraid to completely disregard the anatomy!

If your character gets so angry that their eyes start burning, just draw the flame! If they’re excited, use sparkles or hearts!

Give life to animals and inanimate objects

For comedic purposes I love drawing expressive eyes of animals and objects, like the car. Even though they don’t talk, they comment on the scene with their eyes!

Conclusion

While creating my webtoon, I always have a blast drawing the characters’ expressive eyes, so I wanted to pass it down.

 

Thanks for watching and have loads of fun drawing eyes too!

🌟⭐✨ If you enjoyed this tip, it will make me happy if you give a like so that I know I’m doing things right, eventually leave a comment on where I could improve :) ✨⭐🌟