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Everything I have to say about eyes relate to character design so that’s what I’ll talk about.

Eye shapes are important. We’re programmed to always seek out eyes as the first thing to look at and study. It’s powerful enough we can recognize someone by just the eyes, so don’t let that power go to waste.

The larger and rounder the eye, the friendlier and more inviting it seems. The more angular and beadier the eye, the more on guard and distrustful we get. Also consider how your eye shape compliments or contrasts your character design: Does a square-face have square eyes, or round friendly eyes? Both evoke different messages, which lead to my next point:

We assume like CRAZY by what we see, because we humans are shallow as hell, so that’s something you can take advantage of too. Starting assumptions are important to keep in mind. Eyes can make you assume someone is a certain way, or expressing something a certain way, which can change by the expression of personality. Take for example someone with large innocent eyes being angry and cranky or outright nasty – eyes are all about personality, so never forget how personality interacts with features.

A couple of examples:

- This fanart I did of Muramasa Rebirth shows how much expression/personality can change by how you tweak the same basic eyeshape. The character in the drawing shares her body with another soul, so I approached the change of personality between the two souls come from the eyes.

- This original character from my project That Which Wills is a shapeshifter and has no default form, so I made his most recognizable feature the eyes and I build his designs around it, that way no matter how drastically he changes form, his personality is always visible.

Now, as how to work with your eyeshape…

From the set of eye shapes at the top of this post, I took the top left design and the bottom right design and did a quick set of expressions with them. When you have your eye shape it’s important to familiarize yourself with the flexibility of the construction of it.

The rounder the eye, the easier it is to pull and stretch, but the more angular and strict the eye shape, the more limited you are in flexible expression – it’s not a disadvantage, it can easily serve as a character trait.

As for the construction itself…

Here’s an example of how perspective of the eye works (I’m not going to break down the construction of the eye in detail – there are 5000 tutorials available that do a better job than I will!). The eye itself is always an ORB and the lids and all the anatomy of it rests around that. I don’t think I can say a lot here other than study study study.

Limit yourself to exercises of just drawing the eye and the eyebrow. You’ll be surprised how much personality and expression can be shown by just those two qualities.

If you go through my art sketches, you’ll notice a lot of floating eyes in the page somewhere. I spend a lot of time finding the character in it, because so much is translated through them.

As Glen Keane said: “If you’re going to make a mistake, don’t make it in the eyes.“