Appease the God of Proportions: Using bitty bits of face for measurement

The eyes are an awfully important part of the face. If they're off, people will notice and the god of proportions will smite you.

So how do you keep them from floating out of their sockets and killing you in your sleep? You nail them down with the parts of the face you never knew you cared about.



There's a nice little pizza slice of a plane that has always helped me link the shape of the orbit to the corner of the eye. Its shape varies a lot, but that makes it easier to find the differences in the face I'm looking at.



The first point of interest is at the corner of the eye. (A)

The upper line of the plane (B) is a place where the orbit looks like it sort of folds. The curve of this line depends on the amount of fat in the upper upper eyelid.

The lower line (C) may be less obvious, depending on the face. Being a place where a lot of action happens in facial personality land, it might be cut off by lower lid eyebags, or wrinkles. I just call as I see it per face.

The final, outer line (D) goes along the rim of the orbit. After this line, there's a big drop off into the side of the head.



Measuring the shape and angles of this plane against that of any other consistent shapes I see on the face (irises are always good for measuring against) makes it easier for me to place eyes proper.

Bowls of Soul and Whatever (Shiny things make people happy)

More bowls today!

Bowls are good for catching souls, apparently. That's what they say when I successfully perform shiny on an eye in realism. No offense to those who believe in that sort of thing, I find that puzzling. Eyes aren't a window to the soul, they're shiny balls of jelly. No one says anything about soul when there is no shiny. Which is not to say that shiny is the only thing you need to make "soul".



Did I ever mention that I hate manga?

The direction we're looking with our eyes is a strong kind of body language. There isn't a set of rules for what looking in a particular direction means. It's all in the context of expression and whatever else is going on.



The amount of white showing also plays a part in recognizing the intensity of an emotion.

I hate it, but eyes suck focus in pictures, and therefor need to be shaded and shinied properly.

Shiny is basically drawing in two layers. The iris is a concave bowl. The cornea is convex and is mostly invisible, except for reflections of the space around it, and distortions of anything behind or beneath it.

The iris is a shallow bowl, with a little raised part in the middle around the pupil. like a chips and dip platter. There's a kind of weird drop off out of the white jelly part into the iris. Depending on the light and the specific eye shape, that can make for a darker outline.



Ignore the cornea (the clear jelly over the top), it's invisible. What's not invisible are the reflections it shows across its surface. Brighter things, lamps and windows and explosions are more likely to cover the image of the iris. Where there are shadows, from eyelashes or other things, the reflections won't show.



The iris may be visually displaced by the cornea. I don't think it's that big of a deal unless we're looking from the side.



The shiny happens with hair, sweat, even within the layers of skin. When drawing layers of objects with low opacity, remember that you're not actually drawing one layer over another, you're NOT drawing the light spots of each layer.



Unless you've got Photoshop and you can cheat like me.

Potential Cure for your Ear Phobia

If you're the average person, you avoid ears like the guy on the bus with the tight pants and his legs spread too wide. They're arbitrary, awkward things to draw.

Never fear! I'm here to provide the proverbial spandex bus guy with proverbial Levis!

Ears are designed to funnel.



They're set up in a spiral pattern. A really lumpy pattern, but still. Medical people call these the "helix" and "antihelix". I usually call them "those swirly thingies", but I'll defer to the official terms for sanity.



Remember, these are funnels. They go in. So even with all this lumpiness, they're still basically shaped/shaded like bowls. (Don't forget, light direction shifts.)