I’m working on an anime style head, preferably the type with the really big eyes and irises, and I can’t seem to find the correct relation of the eye size to the head! Can you show me an anatomical chart or something, so I can accurately see their relation, or give me a modelling trick I can use? My eyes keep on getting too big and unbalanced.
In general the edges of the face (from front view) should be about half an eye apart, and both eyes should be about one eye apart. The outer corner of the eyes should be level with the top of the ear. The inner corner should be in line with the outside corners of the lips. These are general human proportions, but since you want anime they need to be distorted some, but still retain their general guidelines.
As for creating a chart, try to find an anime character in the style you like from a front view, and then just analyze the proportions off of that.
If your in doubt go slightly smaller, and adjust later, as I find it easier to make things bigger than to shrink them down later, but its just a personal preference. Also don’t forget that when rendered, perspective is going to allow for some distortion as well.
For more on anime style proportions try applying some of the face drawing principles presented at Polykarbon.
thank you for the reply, but I know that the eyes from the front are 1 eye apart. I forgot to elaborate on the sphere itself. How large is it in relation to the head?
How large the sphere needs to be depends on how big you want the proportions to turn out. For a larger eye, you need a larger sphere, or you can expose more of a smaller sphere for a slightly bugged out look.
In general pick out your sphere before you start on the eyes if you don’t have a reference to go by, and even if you do, although its more important without a reference. From a sphere already in place, you can go ahead and model the eye around the sphere, making the eye as small or large as the sphere is.
As for proportions to the head, I’ve never seen anything on the sphere’s proportions to the head, its just something that has to be gained with practice and trial and error for every model until you just kind of learn how big its going to need to be. However, it will help to have the sphere in place to go about doing this.