Sure I can show you how to mimic various anime styles, but you still need to understand WHY it's stylized in those ways.

Anime 'style' is mearly taking reality, and distorting it a bit. But in order to distort reality, you have to first understand reality.

If you skip the basic study of anatomy, form, perspective, and 3-dimentionality, then all you're doing is trying to mimic someone else's lines, and you will never truely be able to create anything original and acurate from your mind, if that's all you know how to do.

To draw a believable human being (stylized or otherwise) you need to have an understanding of Human Anatomy. Do you need to be able to name each and every bone and muscle in the body? No. Learning a few might help you keep track of them in your mind, but it's totally unessecary to remember their names as long as you have an idea of their shape and purpose. You don't need a Doctor's knowledge of anatomy, but you do need a basic understanding of the larger masses, and the shape-defining bones and muscles.

The contour of the human form is created by the mases that exist under the skin. You can try to memorize every lump and bump, and how they change from different angles, but it still won't be as successful as knowing why those lumps and bumps are there. If you know why, what form underneath it causes it, then you'll be much more equiped to figure out, imagine in your mind, and successfuly put down on paper those lumps and bumps from any angle you can come up with in your mind.

If you understand the body's mass and volume, you'll be much better equiped to draw that mass from any angle you can imagine.

(Put you mouse over the image to switch between bone and muscle views) If your browser is preventing active content, the mouse-over will not function. You may need to tell your browser to allow active content to see this properly.

It may seem silly to draw out a skeleton. How can drawing a skeleton and trying to draw all these muscles help me? But I'm here to tell you that it helps a lot more than you'd expect. I'm not telling you that with every single drawing you make, you should be drawing out bones and muscles. In fact, you shouldn't. It's a waste of time and energy and is rarely a useful step in the process of creating a complex or foreshortened pose. It mearly adds to the detail and to the focus, only serving to confuse you further. What I'm proposing is a much earlier step than creating a full-body complex pose. This is Practice. View Large Imager with Skin | View Larger Image with Bones

I'm going to set you to a task. A study task. One that you should do over and over again as you continue to draw and learn. It may seem silly to some, but I garuntee that it honestly helps. After years of frustration, of trying over and over to memorize certain shapes, to understand why they were shaped the way they were, and thus be able to draw them whenever I wanted, straight from my mind, I finally did this thing I'm about to recommend, and it made an incredable difference. After I'd done it a few times, it was like a light switch had suddenly been turned on and it just worked. So what am I about to tell you to do? Collect as much reference of muscle anatomy as possible. (This is a decent reference site) If you can manage it, see if you can collect some artist anatomy books. While examining the reference images, try drawing them. Look at where the muscles attach to the bones. Where different muscles overlap other muscles. Just draw what you see, and do it again and again. At times it may seem like it's just a confusing jumble. Each time you'll find youself refering back to the images. Always having to look at another picture just to try and loosely duplicate some form that you don't even totally understand. Draw the body from the front, and from the side, and from the back. Duplicate the reference images as loosely or exact as you want. All that is important is that you do it. After you've tried the simple orthegraphic views (front, side, etc.) try doing something a little more relaxed. Try drawing out the form in a pose slightly different from that of the reference image, but try to apply those muscles to that original pose. Adapt what you observe to something slightly from your own mind, but never be afraid to refer to the reference images.

Never be afraid to look off a guide. In this early stage it is how you will begin to build a memory of the shapes. Before you even realize it's happened, your mind will have begun to catelog the familiar shapes and forms. It will store the information, and that information, at least in part, will be there to guide you.

The more complex the pose and angle, the far more difficult it becomes to draw the muslces on the form. Don't fret if you just can't seem to do it. You're still very early on, and this is only an exercise is learning. You can get to complicated angles and poses later.

Copying these muscle reference images, and using them to draw muscles on figures of your own builds a mental memory. Shapes and curves that you've drawn multiple times become familiar to you.

Pay attention to the angle of the curves you draw. There are two types of curves, Concave, and Convex. The true key to drawing a contour is learning to combine the concave and convex curves together in a pleasing manor. Convex lines provide the illustion of bulk, whiile concave lines make something feel as if it's sinking in itself. Of course, these are only lines. There is no real bulk there. The way you draw the lines, and the combination of their shapes creates the illusion that there is something with depth and mass where there is only flat paper or a flat computer screen. Concave curves can be a tool, but if used improperly, they can distroy the illustion of depth and make a form look flat and lifeless. Takes the knees for example: In the example to the left, the knee is only suggested by a concave curve on each side. There is no depth to these lines. No feeling of mass or bulk. That illusion is lost through use of these lines. In the left-hand example, overlapping forms is used to create an additonal illusion of depth. The impression that the knee comes out further towards you than the back of the calf muscles do. However the use of convex lines here must be subtle and combined with the concave curves directly above them. If you examine the larger, full image, you'll see that while the upper-leg is convex, and the knee itself is also convex, a small concave curve attaches them together. If the two convex curves came together at a hard edge, it would look unrealistic. It wouldn't feel right. It's learning to combine these subtle curves together to form the most pleasing contours that will help you to better create an acurate and real feeling to your illustrations.

Adjusting the way you use convex and concave lines is a stylistic choice, and there isn't nessecarily always a 'right or wrong' way to do it. As long as you understand why you're making that descision, you can use it to create something correct in it's own sense.

The leg on the left, isn't wrong. It's still based on human physiology. The general shapes are still acurate enough to be read as a human leg. It's simply been stylized in a different way from the leg on the right.

An important thing to learn is that some people use the word "Style" as an excuse to draw something inaccurate. A skilled artist can stretch reality far beyond any reasonable idea of 'realisitically possible' and still be anatomically acurate within reason. But to draw something that has no basis in anatomy, but that is purely inaccurate in every sense, and excuse this inaccuracy with 'Style' is to cheat yourself. It is not really your "style" to draw a curve or lump where there should be none, or should be something totally differnt. It is an error. A mistake. And it is a mistake that you need to learn to correct, if you are to ever grow and learn.

I've seen so many young artists who show an image to peers on message boards and gallery websites to get feedback, and when someone suggests that they correct a blatent anatomical error in the image, they lash out and insist it is 'their style' and that they did it on purpose.

While it may be true that these individuals did the thing on purpose, that doesn't nessecarily make it the right thing to have done.

Sometimes you stare at an image so long that you become blind to the problems in it. Or you think you're imitating a line or technique you've seen in some other image, but are only imitating it incorrectly. You can intentionally draw a line and that line can still be wrong. Some peers make suggestions that are useless, but there are those that manage to spot something that you didn't. And in these instances, it is important to move beyond the little voice in your mind that wants to defend you from anyone suggesting you've done something wrong, and take that advice in stride. Grow from it. Learn to blow the bad off your shoulder, and take what good you can from every critique and learn from it.

	I'm gonna do a step-by-step of a quick anatomical sketch of a male upper-torso (waist up), explain each of the parts, why I drew them, what they are and do, etc. Despite whatever instinctive desire you may have to start with the head and face, don't. Older tutorials on this site even recommend starting with the head, and I'm now here telling you not to do that. I'm older and I've got a lot more experience now, so this advice takes priority over older crappier advice. The first thing you should start with is the 'line of action'. Basically the spine, although it won't always nessecarily be the spine (in this case it is.) The Line of Action is always an S or a C curve. There shouldn't be more curves then you would find in an S.
	The rib cage isn't a very complicated object if you think of it as a single solid mass. It's also best to simplify the shape into something more egg like then trying to get an exact match for the shape of a real rib cage. Try to think of the rib cage as a hallow egg-like shape with the bottom cut open. The rib cage has a front and and back. The back is the flattest area. The rib cage is wider from the front then from the side, and if you look at some of the side-view examples above, earlier in this tutorial, you can see that the rib-cage is sort of tipped back at an angle from the side-view if the person is standing straight up.
	Along the top of the rib cage is the clavicle and shoulder blades. Find the two solid bones at the top of your chest, just at the base of your neck. In the very center are the solid ends and there is a gap in the middle. These are your clavicle bones. Many people don't entirely realize it, but your clavicles are connected to your shoulder blades. They sort of curve around the top of your rib cage, and they connect at your shoulders. This guide I've drawn to the left is a very simplified representation of the bones, but it is detailed enough to get the idea across. What's important to realize is that if you raise your shoulder up, your clavicle and shoulderblade are both moving in position. The shoulder blade rotates upwards along with the clavicle and your entire shoulder. The part of the clavicle that doesn't change location is the head of the bone at the very center of your front, at the base of the neck. Put one hand on your clavicle and move your arm and shoulder up and around and observe the way things change and move as you do this. Trace the clavicle towards your shoulder as you move your shoulder.
	Next I drew in a couple quick references for the arms. The top of the Humerous (the upper-arm bone) has a ball joint that allows for a large range of motion. The ball of the bone is just under-inside where the clavicle/shoulder blade come together at the shoulder, and extends outwards from the body a brief distance before going downwards.
	Here's where I started to flesh out the actual body, muscles, and skin. There is an important muscle mass called the Sternocleidomastoid (er... don't bother memorizing that), shown in the image to the left in yellow, that plays a large role in your ability to move your head around. Muscles work by connecting a point on one bone, to another point on another bone. the muscle can contract pulling the two bones towards each other. Other muscles exist to pull in opposite directions, this way, by pulling each of the needed muscles in varying degrees, you can control the movement of your parts in very small degrees for precision, etc. This muscle connects from the front-center of each of your clavicles to the base of your skull around the ear. The less defined you choose to make the muscles of the characters you draw, the less detail you will include, but this muscle is still often at least slighly visible. Especially in poses where the neck is strained at certain angles. The muscle mass I have highlighted in a greenish tint is the Trapezius muscle. The Trapezius is actually far more visible from the back view then from the front. From the back it is a very large, flat, triangular muscle that connects various parts of the back shoulders and neck. From the front and side it most obviously creates the gradual curve and lump that sits between the shoulders and the neck. The trapezius's job is to help with the movement of your neck and head, and additonally to pull your shoulders upwards. It connects to the neck and to the top of your clavicle and shoulder blades, and down along your back, connecting to your spine. The Trapezius serves to assist in a lot of the back and upper body's motions. The more muscular your character is, the more of an outer-curve/lump this muscle creates in this area. In less muscular characters it would be a more gradual curve. Just remember that this area is never a sharp angle The shoulders do not connect to the neck like a horizontal and verticle line meeting in a tiny bend. It is a gradual upwards curve.
	It is at this point that I added in the head. Sometimes I'll add in the head prior to drawing in any neck detail, other times I'll do it in this order. Sometimes it's easier to get the placement of the skull correct if I know where exactly the neck is leading, but other times I find it's much better to have the basic skull guide in first in order to get the neck twisting in the correct manor. It's important to remember that the jaw edge and the ear are located around the middle of the skull. The base of the ear basically connects right to where the jaw ends, the ear is not located in the center of the cheek, nor is it far behind the jaw towards the back of the head.
	Now I continue to add in more mass to the body. The muscles of our body are layers. Some muscles are over top of others, pulled under areas, etc. Like I said, all muscles connected to two or more bones, with the purpose of pulling them closer together when needed. The Pects (Pectoralis Major) connect to three primary bones. They connect to the Sternum (the bone mass in the center of your rib cage) the Clavicle, and to your Humerous bone (upper arm). It is the job of the pects to pull your arm inwards towards your body. The pects pull the arm inwards, just as the trapezius pulls it up wards. If you try to hold your arm straight out away from your body, your deltoid, trapezius, and pecks are all working together to hold it there.
	As I said, some muscles overlap other muscles. The pecks connect to the humerous bone, but they do it underneath the deltoid muscle. The deltoids make up the primary shape of our shoulders. They cover the point where the pects connect to the humerous. They connect to the outer edge of the clavicle and shoulderblades and then down to the center of your humerous bone. It is the deltoid that is primarily responsible for lifing your arm upwards.
	The biceps (yellow) are an important part of the overall shape of a muscular arm. Even when you simplify or smooth over the shape of the arms for a less muscular character, or a feminine character, understanding why the biceps are shaped the way they are will greatly improve the drawing. Just like the deltoid overlaps where the pects connect to the humerous, it also overlaps where the biceps connect to it. So the bicep actually comes out from under the deltoid. However the lower part of the deltoid (purple), where it goes down to connect to the middle of the humerous, is between and under the biceps and the triceps (blue). The lower arms are made up of a large number of muscles that all connect from various locations on the back of the humerous, down to different areas of the radius and ulna bones (the two bones that make up the forearm. These muscles all help to twist the arm back and forth, as well as provide tendons and muscles down to the wrist and hand. I go into further detail on the forearms later on during a discussion of the forearm twist.
	At this point I just fleshed out the main torso. The abdomin is made up mostly by the 'Rectus Abdominis muscle, which is a long flat muscle that extends vertically the lengh of the entire abdomen. While the 'Abs' appear to be a set of muscles, it is actually one continuous muscle that is seperated in itself by tendons, etc. What it mostly does is connect the base of the sternum and rib cage down to the pelvis. It's job is to pull the two major bone masses together. That's why doing sit-ups helps work your ab muscles. It's the job of your abs to pull your upper torso towards your pelvis. The term 'Six Pack' is often used to describ the Abs. The abdomin has three pairs of muscle groups, and then a fourth pair that is much longer and less defined. When a person has a well defined 'six-pack' the three upper pairs are very defined, while the lower one is less visable.

Back to full-body anatomy and what knowing it can do for you. You see, The body is made up of a ridig skeleton. Bones do not stretch and lengthen, or shrink in size. They do not bend or twist in the middle, they only blend at joints where two or more bones meet. Knowing the general shape and length of the bone masses will help you to know proportions and keep things the lengths they should be.

When discussing proportions, many people measure the body in 'heads'. This may help you if you're drawing a person from the perfect front or side view, but generally, trying to count how many heads tall your person is, isn't going to help an aweful lot.

Whether or not it's a good habit, my tendency is to "eyeball it" when it comes to height and porportions. When doing any type of perspective, length is entirely an illusion, and you're only guide is the image you can get into your mind, and your efforts to translate it properly to the paper.

But I will list the 'general standard' for proportions just the same. A realistic human representaion is usually about 5-6 heads tall. If you took the height of the head, and stacked it ontop of itself 5-6 times, that would equal the height the person should be.

With most anime figures the proportions are lengthened in order to make the person feel taller and slimmer. Less bulk and mass, and thus easier to see the shape and contour of the full figure. So in these cases, a character is usually 7-8 heads tall. What this means is that the head is smaller than it would be in a realistic person. However this does not mean that all you've done is shrink the head. Far from it. Another general rule of thumb is that the shoulders should be as wide as three heads (a little less for females, and maybe a bit more for most males). When you decrease the size of the head, you also decrease how wide the body is. Everything becomes less wide, but stays just as high. This small alteration in the shape and proportion of the general masses is enough to greatly alter the look and appeal of the entire body. Anime isn't the only style that does this, almost all stylized humans are exagerated in this way simply because it is more appealing to the eye. We like tall and slender things. You should notice that most characters that are overweight also appear shorter than those that are fit. It adds to the illusion. Another common exageration is to have a very tall character, with very wide shoulders, lots of muscle mass, and what appears to be a very small head. The head is not nessecarily much smaller than that of any of the characters around him, it's just the comparrison of the wide shoulders and all the mass that creates the appearance. Characters such as these will often have such exagerated proportions that they are even 9 heads tall. Experimenting with the shapes, width, height etc. of a characters proportions, but all still within the limits of plausable anatomical possiblity, is a great way to experiement with style. Creating an original and dynamic range of characters.

Now I'll cover some specific anatomical things that may help you to understand why things are shaped like they're shaped. I'll start with the arms. The arm is made up of three large bones. The upper-arm is made up of a single bone, the Humerous, and the forearm is made up of two bones, the Radius and the Ulna. And while it isn't really nessecary to know their names, knowing why they exist is helpful. The forearm is made up of two bones to serve a very important purpose. It twists. In situations like the hip, in order to provide more movement a ball joint is used. This allows for twisting all around in addtion to bending in one specific direction like a hinge joint, however, a ball joint wouldn't work for the wrist. Our body simply isn't setup that way, and a ball joint wouldn't provide us with the power and control that we need from our hands. So in order for us to get the dynamic range of motion in our hands and wrist, along with the strength and stability, it is nessecary for us to be able to twist our hand around. This twist is created by the two bones, the radis and the ulna, twisting around each other. As I've said before, the way our muscles work is by connection one bone to another. Our muscles connect and intertwine between each other, and pull in contrasting directions in order to give us the control we need in order to actually move and maneauver around as freely as we do.

Since muscles connect to our bones, and it is the muscles, along with certain fat collections that define the contour of our bodies, this twist determines the shape the forearm has depending on the position of the hand.

This detail will not always be visible, depending on how much you simplify or how detailed you get with your anatomy. A more muscular character may actually show this difference visable, while a more simplified form would show very little difference in shape. Just the same, knowing this detail can assist you in bettering your ability to draw an acurate and plausable human form.

Lets move onto the head, since it is, afterall, what so many of you like to jump to. Drawing an anime face is one of the earliest things most young artists aspiring to draw 'anime' do. Despite it's apparant lack of realisim, even the anime face is based on reality. It is a stylization of a real, and acurate part of human anatomy. In order to understand a face, you need to understand what's under it. The skull. One very common mistake a lot of young artists make is the location of the ears and jaw. So many fail to notice that the ear is not at the back of the head, but rather, smack dab in the middle.

The skull has a hole right in the middle of it's side that provides access to the hearing centers and all that fun stuff we don't care much about. What's important is that this solid mass of bone has a hole there, and that hole is where the ear is located.

Other noteworthy holes are the eye sockets and the hole permitting access to the nasal cavity.

The eye sockets are actually a fair size larger than our eyes are. There's lots of fatty tissue and nerts and muscles around this area that give additional shape to the area around our eyes, but the fact remains that they are located inside a cavity. This causes the eys to be set back into the head a bit.

The nose is made up mostly of cartilidge, so the shape of the ridge can vary a lot from person to person. This is why some noses are croked, some have a lump, some are smooth, etc. etc. You can vary the shape of the nose a lot for various stylized goals. Different shapes and sizes are often associated with different types of characters.

From a front view, and even a three-quarters perspective view, it is usually ideal to put very little detail into the nose. Many artists that work within the genre of 'anime' put almost no detail here at all. A shadow to show the underside of the nose, or a small mark, and verticle line, etc. The first sample on the left below shows a more 'western style' rendition. Western artist tend to show different details than most japanese artists choose to show, but the details are still limited. It's still important to choose your marks selectively.

The more detail you try to add in to define the shape of the nose, the more likely you are to make it look bad. A nose is a strange shaped object, and is often best left to the imagination. Subtle hints at it's shape and mass are all that's nessecary to define it's existance.

Suggested lines can often be far more successful than a full complete line. Leaving gaps in a lines that you would normally think to connect can sometimes make the difference between it looking good and.. not looking good.

A stylized image is simply an interpretation of reality. Taking what something really looks like it, and being selective on how you choose to represent that image with your drawing. If you completely ignore reality, it will show in your drawing. Below is a photo of a real person, a real face. Next to it is that image drawn with two different styles. First a more 'anime' inspired style, and second, a more western inspired style. They both represent the same face. Different artists choose to draw different parts of the face, and draw them in different ways. It's the method in which you choose to draw the elements that makes up the style.

Within the overly-generalized title of 'anime style' there are countless sub-styles. Practically every artist has their own style, and each artist chooses to draw different things in different ways. Some artists stick to a more 'realistic' anime style, keeping the facial proportions fairly acurate (smaller eyes, etc.) while others exagerate the sizes of various things more (very large eyes, very small or non-existant noses, etc.)

But the three-dimentionality of the face is still taken into consideration. In fact, thinking of it three-dimentionally is key to learning to draw the head and face from any angle you need or desire.

But lets start simplier. Straight on from the front. When drawing a head, I always start with a circle (no, it doesn't really matter if it's a perfect circle.) If you're going to spend all your time stressing about how round your circle is you'll never get anywhere, just try to get something as round-ish as you can manage and move on. You can always touch it up as you go.

Draw a line down the center of the circle, and draw in the jaw line. There are all sorts of different shapes for jaws, here I've used a prety basic quick sketch. Jaw and chin. The above image is a sample of how two very different faces can come from the exact same shape. The primary difference here is how I choose to stylize the eyes and nose.

Realistically speaking, no one has eyes that large, but that's not the point. They still represent eyes to us. There's a lower lid, an upper lid, the indication of eyelashes, and the iris/pupil. A small mark was made just above the eye to indicate the top of the upper eyelid. These are the components that are nessecaryto make it read as an eye. In fact you could include fewer details then that and it would still read as an eye. What you include and what you choose not to include is up to you. You can experiement with all sorts of variations in size, and components while discovering what you find most appealing, and what suits your needs for whatever character you're creating at the time.

Drawing these components from a straight-on front view is the simpliest view. When you get into angles, there are a few more things that you need to take into account.

All that's been changed with this head is that it's been rotated to a three-quarters view. It hasn't been tilted up or down, just turned a bit to the side. I'll get to drawing the eyes in perspective in a moment, first I want to cover some of the intricate differences between these samples.

The basic shape is shown with the circle-and-line guide on the far left. The jaw ends half-way through the side of the head, so once you determine where to end the jaw (I just eye-ball it) simply connect the bottom of the face-center-line to the jaw. Do the same on the other side.

This is the basic shape. From here you can adjust the small details that make the character unique. The size and shape of the forehead/brow. How high or low the cheekbone comes out from the face. The shape of the chin, and the curve of the jaw. All of these details can be tweaked in small ways to change the appearance of the character drastically.

In addition to fine tuning the contour of the face, the inward details can be adjusted a lot too. It's important to remember that our eyes are located inside our eyesockets. They sink back into the head a bit, so try to avoid touching the outside eye to the side of the head. This should only be nessecary in extream angles.

When drawing eyes on a head from different angles, it is important to remember that eyes have depth and perspective and need to be drawn with that taken into consideration. Many novice artists draw anime eyes as if they were simply the same eyes they would draw in the front view, projected at an angle. They aren't. If you truely want to acomplish the appearance of depth and believability in the eyes you draw, you need to learn how to picture them in 3D Space. First, the eye itself is sitting in an indent in your head. An inward curve with the brow extruding at the top, and the cheek coming out below. Second, you also need to realize that because of the spherical nature of the eyeball itself, the eyelids create a curve around that eyeball. An outward curve at the center of the top and bottom lids. Curving around the sphere eyeball.

The image to the right side, above, shows several sets of eyes, each drawn in a slightly different style, and each tilted at a different angle. To the ride side of each set is a simplified shape to help you understand the illustion created by the lines.

Once again, the careful use of concave and convex lines can be incredably useful in generating the illustion that there is depth and mass where there truely is only flat paper.

I think I'm going to bring this tutorial/rant session to an end. There are surely loads more that I could go on about, but I'm running dry on ideas, and I'm running out of time to work on this. Below is a list of other tutorials I've written in past years that I don't feel suck. tutorials that also have useful tips that I feel will help you to improve your skills.

Anatomy and drawing basics - This tutorial may briefly repeat some of the topics I covered here, but very few (and mostly just in the lecture at the top). There are a number of things in the tutorial linked to here, that I didn't cover in this tutorial, that are important. You would do good to read it as well.

Hands - this is an older tutorial, but it's basically still the same techniques I use even now.

Heads - This one is old enough to fall into my 'oh gawd, that looks horrible' category, but there are a number of mouth samples on the 2nd page you may find useful.

Digital Lineart with Photoshop - If all you've got is photoshop, and you want to make your lineart digitally, this is a good tut. And if you just want to learn how to use photoshop's pen tool, it's still a good tut.

Digital Lineart with Illustrator - If you've got adobe illustrator, this tut might interest you.

3dsmax - Anime Head Modeling tutorial - Level: beginner-intermediate. I explain just about every step in detail, so if you pay attention, even if you've never used 3dsmax you should be able to follow along. If you're using some other app, you'll have to improvise, but the techinques are still useable.

Maya - Intro for beginners / modeling a sword - Level: total beginner. The first page explains a lot of 3D fundementals and the 2nd page gets into actually modeling.