Big Eye
- large eyes
- doe eye
- big eye style
Eyes drawn far larger than life, with everything else on the face reduced to make room.
Opens an image model with the prompt in it. The price is on the page before you sign in.
What it is for
The eye is where a viewer looks first and longest, so making it bigger gives a face more to say with less drawing. It also reads as young, because a child's eyes really are larger relative to the head, which is why the style reads as gentle before it reads as anything else.
How it works
Eyes are drawn at around twice their natural size and set low, which pushes the forehead up. The iris is large and glossy and carries several separate highlights. The nose shrinks to a mark or disappears. The mouth stays small. Nothing else on the face is allowed to carry detail.
When to use it
Use it wherever a character has to be liked quickly, especially at small sizes. Avoid it for authority or menace, because large eyes read as young and open.
Told apart from its neighbours
Chibi changes the whole body, not just the face. Shojo Ink is this face inside a full ink tradition. Anime Cel is the paint treatment usually laid over it.
Where it is used
It carries an avatar, a sticker, a mascot and any character that has to be read and liked in a small circle.
- Japanese comics and animation
- Toy design, avatars and mascots
The prompt
Replace the blanks with your own character, keep the rest. Then run it on an image model.
<character>, big eye style, the eyes drawn at roughly twice their natural size and set slightly low on the face, a large glossy iris with several separate white highlights inside it, the nose reduced to a small mark or removed entirely and the mouth kept small, the forehead enlarged to hold the eyes, everything else on the face simplified so nothing competes with them, soft even light on the face
What goes wrong
A photorealistic face with slightly enlarged eyes comes back, which lands in an uncanny place. Shrink the nose and the mouth in the same sentence and the face resolves.
Leave out
a realistic nose, a wide mouth, realistic eye proportions, heavy brow shadow, a busy face
Watch for
Enlarging the eyes is only half of it. The nose and the mouth have to shrink in the same clause, because a realistic nose beside a huge eye reads as a mistake rather than as a style.
Questions
Draw it
Pay for the one run. No subscription, and the price is on the model page before you sign in.
Next to it in how the body is built
