Hi, it’s Hye.

 

In Manga world, everything is possible. Let’s not be bound by reality starting from eye design!

We can always adapt eye from animals to character design based on our imagination.

In this article, I would like to talk about types of animal eyes which are so different to humans’ and to show you some examples of them. Please take this as a summary for eyes and use it in your character design for human, fantasy races or furries as well!

 

Eye Shape

Humans have longer and flatter eye frames when compared to other mammals.

It also shows more obviously visible sclera (the white area of the eyeball) in their normal expression. Other animals also have sclera but it can only be seen when they roll their eyes hard.

 

Pupil Shape

There are different pupil shapes in nature :

• Round

• Vertical (slit, beaded)

• Horizontal (rectengular, slit)

• Others (crescent, W-shape)

 

Other than humans, dogs, wolves, big cats (such as lions and tigers) and rabbits have round pupils. Please see below for some general ideas.

Please note there may be pupil shape differences within the same animal class. For example, frogs and snakes may have round, horizontal or vertical slit pupils depending on species. Lizards may also be in round or vertical beaded pupil shape.

 

Iris color

Just be free to choose any color for your manga character!

Nevertheless, in this section I will provide some reality color references of the animal's pupil for a quick guide.

 

• Common eye colors for Mammals:

• Eye colors for Albinos

• Eye colors for Reptile

The range of eye colors for reptiles is much wider when compared to mammals. Apart from the color range, the color mixture and pattern also varies which make their eyes stand out from all animals. Below are some drawings based on real reptiles for you to have a general impression on them.

Steps & Examples

Let's look into the steps of eye drawing together!

[1] <On the top layer> :

Draw the eye shape - the upper part should always be thicker than the bottom part.

[2] <On the bottom layer> :

Color the sclera - usually in very light grey, you may fine tune it by adding a little hue to make it more vivid. This step can be ignored if you are not going to draw human-like eyes.

 

[3] <On the middle layer> :

Fill the iris with base color.

 

[4] <On the top layer> :

Roughly draw the pupil.

 

[5] <Go back to the Iris layer> :

Add the iris pattern. Basically, the direction should radiate outward with the pupil as centre. You may also try imitating the reptiles’ eyes to have a distinct pattern on your eye design.

 

[6.1] Combine the layer of pupil with the layer of iris.

 

[6.2] Add a layer with property “multiple” on top of the iris layer with clipping onto it. Use a lighter color to draw along with the pattern. After that, you may add a layer with property “screen” and use a brighter color and do the same thing. Both actions can add more depth into the iris pattern.

You may also try using color with hue shifted on these 2 layers - for example, i have used Purple on the multiple layer while Turquoise on the screen layer. Both colors are the neighbor color of the iris base color which is blue.

 

[7] Add a Color Dodge Layer on top of the iris layer.

Add the spotlight on the eyes to make them more vivid.

[8] On the Eye Shape Layer, slightly add the reflection from iris and eyelashes.

Complete!

I hope this article is helpful to you :-)

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment for discussions.

 

Thank you and have fun!