
How To Draw Manga Scenes – Drawing anime expressions comes down to a lot of practice and memorizing certain patterns in facial features. Once we master how the elements of expression – the eyes, eyebrows, nose and mouth – work, we can adapt to convey a variety of different expressions. By understanding how facial features form expressions such as laughter, confusion, anger, happiness, sadness, excitement, and so on, we can become confident and comfortable in retrieving anime expressions from our memory.
This tutorial is less about drawing technique and more about how facial features fit different facial expressions.
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Let’s start by studying the most common facial expressions in Anime and Manga art. We’ll use a classic Neon Genesis Evangelion example, as well as a few others.
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For each redraw frame in this guide, we’ll go over the compositional analysis of facial features that provide a specific expression.
Without further ado, let’s then begin our important work of identifying how the features are adjusted to achieve the desired emotion in an anime drawing.
Before we get into specific expressions and how to draw them, it’s important to discuss exactly what we’ll be working with. When developing a new expression for your Anime characters, understand that you are working with specific elements. Here they are:
This means that while evaluating expressions, pay attention to the eyes and lips first. How were they drawn to express happiness, anger, sadness, excitement, surprise, and so on? Try to identify them separately. First, segment the features and look at them separately and also look at them in that order: eyes and lips, eyebrows, nose, then the silhouette of the face.
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Next, when we start redrawing some expressions, or designing our own expressions, try this approach of designing the elements in a sequence:
Excitement, happiness, laughter are all related emotions and very closely represented in anime art. Laughter and a general feeling of happiness are usually accompanied by an open mouth, closed eyes following the roundness of the eyebrows and an indication of emotional peak on the cheeks – usually a cross shape or color change is used to indicate blushing.
Feelings of happiness and contentment are similarly represented, mostly with closed lips. The lips are drawn in a bowed bow communicating that the character is pleased or pleased.
Look closely at the line representing the mouth in the drawing above, the line is thicker at the edges and disappears in the middle. Where the line ceases to exist is an area where the lips are pressed closer together, resulting in less opening to show shadows.
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One of the ways to draw a contented or happy face when drawing anime expressions is to create a careful half smile with closed lips and draw the eyes open not too wide, and make the eyebrows follow the shape of the eye .
To show laughter or joy, we can further manipulate facial features. Remember, we are working with the eyebrows, eyes, nose, lips and cheek/jaw shape to orchestrate our emotions in the Anime characters. In the example above, the eyes are closed, the jaw is open (except in many angles, instead of moving the jaw down, the nose moves up the face to make room for the open mouth, note that this is not In reality, the lower part of the jaw moves down, and the upper part (above the upper lip) and the nose remain stationary). Teeth are showing.
In the example above, a female character is drawn in a similar way: the eyes are closed and the teeth are exposed. Feelings of joy are mainly expressed by the eyebrows and the corners of the mouth. Also, notice the head tilt, she is tilting her head back, as people often do when they laugh or smile.
Sadness is usually represented with the eyes shown as staring into the distance, as if looking at something beyond the tangible material objects nearby. The frame above can express sadness or worry. The lines that develop the lips are carefully designed and drawn to show displeasure. The eyebrow sits close to the eye. The two work together to create a foreboding feeling.
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In Anime, expressions of sadness are visualized through closed eyes and some small lip marks. Note that the edge of the mouth is pointing down.
Anger is perhaps easiest to represent in Anime and Manga art. The defining characteristics of this emotion are easy to identify: the eyebrows are lowered and slanted in the center of the face. The mouth is open – the character often screams in anger. The whites of the eyes are visible as the eyes are open.
Really intense and emotional points of anger are highlighted by a mouth that screams in Anime, probably just like in real life. In this expression, the jaw will move substantially in real life, but not so much in Anime and Manga art. The silhouette of the head remains the same in most examples. However, many of the faces that show anger in Anime are drawn with the nose higher on the face, leaving room for the mouth to scream open.

A drawing of a character yelling at another, or a character jumping into a fight with a battle cry is characterized by forward motion. Notice how in the image just above, the head is drawn to indicate forward motion. Inevitably, if this drawing were to appear in the Anime frames, we would see the character moving forward (to our right) on the screen.
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The jaw drops down at this angle (unlike the two examples above). We are looking down on this character – as indicated by us looking at the bottom of the nose and the bottom of the chin, and not seeing the top of the hair/head.
This is a good time to talk about the angle from which the face is drawn (or served to the viewer). It is unusual to see emotions of happiness or joy drawn from this angle of looking up at the character. This tells us that anime artists carefully choose the camera for each frame, using the camera angle to work for them in conveying emotion.
In the example above, the eyebrows are drawn down to the center of the face, indicating displeasure. The eyes are wide open, focused on the object of displeasure (often another character in the story).
In the example above, anger is described in a different way. Here, there is no visible anger being shouted, instead, the character is quiet and focused, yet we feel the anger digging into their mind. Pay attention to the lines of the mouth. That single dash of a line between the lips represents lips tightly pressed together. It is very subtle to the eye, but our mind understands it immediately.
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Pay attention to the distance between the eyes and eyebrows, the distance is shortened in faces that show anger, hostility, etc.
Finally, take a look at the shape of the eyes. In each eye, the iris is seen from below the upper eyelid. The upper eyelid is manipulated to generally follow the downward sloping curve towards the nose. While we may not find eyes shaped this way in real life, we can find examples of this expression when looking at eyebrows with an angry face.
Above is another example that can be staged to describe rage, anger or alarm. A lot also depends on how the rest of the body is drawn. This character may try to attract the attention of others and the face may be described as expressing alarm.
Alternatively, the face may depict anger or rage. The ambiguity in this example is shown through the eyebrows. If the eyebrows were drawn slightly higher, the resulting expression would imply a certain alarm, if the eyebrows were drawn pointing down from the nose, the expression would imply a certain anger.
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It is worth noting that when expressions of anger are taken to the extreme, as in the example above, we end up with a face that expresses anger or rage. In this case, Asuka’s mouth is open even wider, the eyes are also open wider, and the eyebrows are further slanted.
Bushy faces in Anime are expressed by cheeks turning pinkish red. When the artist wants to show that someone is really shy, he can extend this pink blush over the bridge of the nose. Blushing can be added to expressions of surprise, shyness, worry, or if someone is upset or angry until they are “red in the face.” A character who is shown to be an extreme introvert will often be drawn with a blush in many scenes.
Drawing a bored anime character comes down to manipulating the same features: the corners of the mouth are down, the eyebrows are low in the eyes. A crying character can be depicted in many different ways, usually,
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