My First Attempt at anime, how to make look older?

[jeshii]

Hi everyone,

So currently working on my first visual novel (at least trying to lol), and so far everything has been going smoothly until I hit this roadbump. I am creating an anime girl, but unfortunately she just looks too young and I cant pinpoint what exactly is causing this.

I want her to look like in her early 20's, but I feel like she looks like in her early teens.

Its my first time attempting to do anything with anime, so bear with me if its an obvious fix lol Any advice or help with how to achieve making her look older?

[MaiMai]

So right now, the character you've drawn here is more in the 12-16 year old range. Here's what's making her look young:

a) Slender body with not quite developed hips and bust.
b) Short height (there are short adults though, but it's prominent enough to mention here)
c) Large eyes that make her look more childish
d) Clothing; a character's clothing, regardless of gender is a very important way to establish their age and sense of taste/personality/and in this case, age. She's wearing a white and delicate looking sundress of a short length which makes her look fairly young.

I find that using the Anime Character Database is a good way to find anime characters that fit approximated features including age. You can input "Adult," "Female," and you'll get over 400 pages to compare and contrast (granted I personally don't think many of them are very good examples of well drawn young adults, but you can be the judge of that):

https://www.animecharactersdatabase.com ... therchar=0

Let's narrow it down to two examples, the first one being a character that shares some features with yours, but you can at least tell is older. Here's Irisviel from Fate/Zero:



She has white hair and large eyes, and a decidedly slender body just like the person you've drawn, but you can clearly tell she has an adult body (we're going to be ignoring the technicalities of her actual age and focus on her design as an adult).

a) More developed body in terms of hips and bust, limbs are longer as well.
b) Her clothing shows a sense of mature style, it's not very cutesy and ruffly, but rather elegant and appropriate for the place and time she's in.

Here's this character from Infinite Stratos to give some more ideas on how to draw an adult woman:



a) Smaller more narrow eyes.
b) More pronounced bust and hips.
c) Take note of her limbs again, especially the legs. They're longer and width is also larger compared to someone that is younger.

My disclaimer here is that I'm only showing you what barely counts as finite examples of 20-year oldish women so take it with the awareness that everyone comes in different shapes and sizes no matter what their age. Some people DO look younger than their apparent age, but there are ways to indicate their age and not just through visuals (don't forget the writing! Visual novel after all).

[jeshii]

wow thank you maimai!

That was exactly the information I was hoping to learn. I agree with adding width to the legs, and I never thought that the dress would effect it so much, but now that you mention it I definitely should change it a bit more.

edit: And I didnt want to change the eyes lol but after I double checked that, I see what you mean now. Great input thank you again maimai

[jeshii]

I didnt have time to fix the dress, but is this better? I think shes looking a bit older now, but would like to give her a few more years to the look, hmm

[morg]

Hmm..maybe you could try making her body more hourglass like? Dont necessarily overdo it, just make her look like she has hit puberty.

[jeshii]

thank you for the advice morg. I actually did try to make it more hourglass, but the dress was hiding it. Heres an update with new clothing, I was trying to accentuate the figure of the body with this one.

How old do you think she looks now?

[Green Glasses Girl]

For me, it's not so much the body (for example, I have a pretty boyish figure, absolutely no curves, and I'm nowhere near my teens ) - it's the face shape, placement of the eyes, and facial proportion that can set apart age. So first, determine what age you think the girl should be. Here's a brief anime-styled rundown of what I mean by DeeJuusan@DA:


Another example is from my favorite manga, Hikaru no Go by Yumi Hotta & Takeshi Obata (the latter who would later go on to be the artist Death Note). Compare the beginning of the series (the protagonist in childhood, left) to the end of the series (in his teenage years, right):

In the image on the left, Hikaru's eyes, nose, and mouth are all in close proximity to each other, showing a more childlike appearance. He has a rounder face and large eyes.To the right, the distance between Hikaru's eyes and nose lengthen. His chin his more defined and his eyes are smaller.

Now is this to say that all of these rules must be 100% applied throughout the board? Not at all! It's a general rule, but taking one aspect while applying others still fits as a rule of thumb. For example, look at Disney's Tangled Baby!Rapunzel and her parents:


I'd venture to say that the parents' eyes are even bigger than their daughter's own! But why do they still look like adults? The answer is that they still follow the more-defined facial shape and lengthened facial proportion similar to the Hikaru no Go example.

Now, drawing from an example from Disney's UP:

Ask yourself, what makes this character look younger in the first picture? What details make him look older in the second one? And that's where you'll find your answer. He's no taller than a child, so why does he still look older? Even with a small body frame and facial proportions that stay the same in both ages, you'll find that the eyes are less pronounced, the face shape is more defined, and of course the products of age are more apparent in the second picture (receding hairline, crow's feet, eye bags, wrinkles, posture, etc.).

So deciding on your character's age group and either playing all the rules straight or taking one aspect and rearranging them from there is one way to start on defining your character's age by appearance.

[jeshii]

holy! Thank you so much Green Glasses Girl! I really appreciate the link to the chart and images, great visuals.

Thanks all for the tremendous help, I feel pretty overwhelmed with what I learned, but it really changed my perspective on how I view anime now. Never realized all the fine detail that went into achieving a desired look.

[jeshii]

Alright! I think its very close now to what I wanted. I extended her neck, narrowed the face even more, made the eyes smaller.

[YonYonYon]

Her irises are still huge and sparkly, you can change them too to make her more adult-like.

[jeshii]

Ah, her iris unfortunately is like that due to her story, so dont want to touch that, but thank you for the input!

[Green Glasses Girl]

Wow, you made great improvement over a short amount of time! She definitely looks older since the original post. Although YonYonYon does have a point about the eyes. You character can still have big eyes, just slightly smaller (but you said it was for plot reasons, so that's understandable). So here's an example I did in a quick edit:

(Also note the light reflection in her eyes...I made it look like the light is coming from one direction rather than two)