Written: 06.27.2003
Of the two and a half years that I've been drawing anime style, a lot of comments that I get are "oh, I love her eyes!" So I decided that I'm going to try to show people how I do it ^_^.
First we'll go a little bit over the structure of the eyes.
As you can see, like the human eye...the anime eye has the upper and lower eyelid, with eye between. For the lower eyelid, you can draw a "droopy" lower eyelid. Those eyes are drawn how they would be on a front view face. The droopy lower eyelid slants upward as it approaches the nose. Droopy eyelids look cuter, and bring out child-like or innocent characteristics on a character. For further example, look at the works of Koge Donbo (Di Gi Charat, Pita Ten). His cute characters make good use of droopy eyelids.
Another way to bring out a cute or childish look in a character is by drawing the eye so that it does not touch the upper eyelid. This effect creates a look of innocence, and is common in drawings of younger characters, though not required. Again, Koge Donbo's characters are a good example of this technique.
Now once you've created the outline of an eye, you'll want to add a pupil area and the shines. I took a large child-like eye here and outlined the pupil area. For the shines, the largest shine usually goes near the top of the eye, with any smaller in the main area of the eye. The shines are up to the artist, but keep in mind that they're located in the same area on both eyes. Also, the pupil is up to the artist. The area within the eye below the pupil is where the color will be located. I usually leave less space than I did for this when I hand color eyes...but like I said, it's up to the artist ^^;;
Now, if you would like to learn how to color the eyes on photoshop then you may proceed.
I hope this tutorial helps, and if you need more examples, Koge Donbo!!!!!!!!! ^^;;
(Note: My Photoshop eye coloring tutorial has been rewritten now ^_^)