The Power of Colour in Anime Artwork

Anime is a visually evocative art form several levels above standard cartoon drawings. Consider some of the most popular animated series, perhaps the one about a family in the fictitious town of Springfield. Most of the artwork comes across as two-dimensional and the colour palette is basic. Seldom is there any shading but what there is of it tends to be bulky and overt.

By contrast, anime artists choose their colours with a mind towards depth, dimension and mood. Anime characters may show the delicate blush of first love or fury over an enemy’s action, all without saying a word. Their internal dialogues manifest through the judicious use of colour.

Choosing the right colour palette for the story your characters will tell is critical and applying it to achieve the desired effect takes lots of practice. So let’s go over two very different colour palettes and talk about how they’re used for maximum effect. And then, we’ll talk about colour applications’ technical elements.

Miyazaki v Takeuchi

Hayao Miyazaki is known around the world as much for his fantastic tales (Totoro, Spirited Away) as for his environmental statements (Nausicaä, Princess Mononoke). His films often feature strong female protagonists who live by a strict moral code. His career as an anime artist spans nearly 60 years.

He has been drawing anime for longer than Naoko Takeuchi has been alive. While still in secondary school, Takeuchi began drawing manga and intended to become a manga artist. The school uniform she wore influenced her most popular anime character’s appearance and colour palette.

Miyazaki’s colour palettes tend toward the natural because most of his stories revolve around real-world elements and concerns. He chooses to not let his artwork dominate the story. Rather, he mutes his colours to complement – not dominate the narrative.

By contrast, vibrant colours leap off the page during Sailor Moon’s transformation and epic battles. Takeuchi also uses colour to highlight plot points and emphasise the treasures Usagi Tsukino and the Sailor Guardians seek.

Both of these legendary artists use colour to make a point as they tell their stories. Miyazaki strives for an even, lush visual presentation throughout while Takeuchi periodically creates colour blasts to jolt the viewers. For each, the palette suits the story.

Choosing Your Colours

The colours you choose depend on the story you want to tell, the demographic you want to target and your artistic medium. If you draw digitally, you will have a greater selection of colours and more control over their tone, hue and saturation. If you draw on paper, you will have to account for everything from bleeding to absorbency rates.

Action anime and anime for young audiences tend to feature thicker lines and more vibrant colours. Romance anime colours are more delicate, contained in thin lines. The hues are often blended or smudged, and sometimes even coloured over with a pale, glossy layer to make them appear mystical.

Many anime artists use a technique called scumbling. They use a very fine point pencil to draw squiggly lines over already-coloured parts of the frame. Miyazaki uses scumbling to great effect to show grass rippling, for example. Scumbling is different from crosshatching, which many anime artists use to accent their characters’ hair and clothing, especially pockets.

Using Your Palette

Once you learn to draw and colour the effects your story calls for, you can start to storyboard your anime. From the first frame, you only need to draw your characters’ outlines but as you progress you will refine their form and introduce colour.

From the outline, colour any part that will remain black, such as the pupils and eyelashes. Don’t forget to leave the eyes’ reflection points white (if you’re paper-drawing). Next, colour in your character’s major areas. Often, that’s bare body parts but if your character is robed or otherwise dressed head to toe, colour their clothing first and then their visible skin.

Hair colour is usually a significant element in anime because it sets off the character’s delicate features. Leaving a highlight line across the upper forehead is the crucial step in colouring hair if you’re drawing on paper. Hair highlight for digitally-drawn characters can be added over the colour.
Now, colour in the eyes and mouth.

Next, we add shading. If your character is wearing a top that reveals its collarbones, a slight shade underneath them will make them stand out. If they have a prominent nose, you’ll shade one side of it. In all cases, you’ll shade the neck and you might consider adding small dashes of shade around the eyelids.

Finally, we shade the clothes, hair and facial features. Add shade to whichever part of the clothing folds, maybe at the elbows and knees. Be sure to shade overlaps, too. And if your character is a maturing female, shade just under each breast.

Whichever part of the hair’s underside is visible should also be shaded, as should the irises’ upper third, to mimic the brow casting a shade. As your final stroke, darken the inside of the mouth save for the tongue, which you should have coloured earlier.

Graphic designers and 3-D artists commonly use this Cel Shading technique to make their designs pop. Manga and anime creators excel at making their complex designs come to life with delicate shading applied to their carefully selected colour palettes. You will too, once you master these aspects of anime creation.

How You Can Start Drawing Anime

Some people get their introduction to anime through friends and others by stumbling across it on TV or their favorite streaming platform. I got mine by taking a college course on culture – specifically how anime reflects the Japanese culture.

To say the least, that introduction was an eye-opener. The class amounted to watching anime and talking about it. I admit it was kind of hard to grasp cultural elements when the visuals were so vibrant, the expressions so… expressive and the action so engaging.

In short, I was more into the artwork than the stories. For a while, tracing and copying others’ designs were good enough but, soon, I wanted to draw anime of my own. Don’t you?

These tips should get you started.

Think Big

Probably the most notable feature that sets anime apart from other comic book characters is their eyes. They’re so huge they nearly eat up the character’s whole face! And speaking of faces…

Have you ever noticed that anime faces are completely out of proportion? Huge foreheads – usually covered with bangs but sometimes some sort of headgear: a helmet, headdress or amulet. And, under that forehead-covering, a tiny face with huge eyes.

So, to get the right proportions for the faces you draw, start with an oval or, more precisely, an inverted egg shape with the narrow end pointing down.

Once you’ve got the shape to your liking, draw a light pencil line down the middle of it, from top to bottom and again, from the sides. You should now have an ovoid shape divided into four parts.

Your character’s eyes will go in the two lower panes and they should take up about ¼ of the space.

You probably know that anime characters’ eyes are overly large and very expressive so you should give them plenty of room to be that way. First, draw the top lash line – make it nice and thick, with a distinctive shape.

From the outer edge of that line, swing your pencil down in a gentle curve, something that looks like the hook on the letter J. That thinner line should end at the halfway mark of the thick lash line. You should now have an outline that looks like incomplete cat-eye glasses.

From there, you only need to draw a U off the top line, color in the pupils and add some shading.

That’s the basic formula for drawing anime eyes. With it, you can experiment: draw the pupils off-center, add a bit of shading around the pupil to make it look like a light reflection, add eyelashes and try different colors.

Gendering Anime Characters

Japanese culture is big on androgyny – the quality of being neither overly masculine nor feminine. Some would argue that female anime characters are distinctly feminine; this otaku says that’s not so.

Consider, for one, how pretty some male anime characters are. Howl, Light Yagami and Killua Zoldick, for instance. Just looking at their faces, nothing marks them as overtly masculine.

Also, think about their slim figures. Lelouch Lamperouge is a standout example of non-gendering: with his long, graceful neck and slim build, his image channels Audrey Hepburn more than any classic male hero form.

If you wanted to make your character a bit more gendered, you could draw males’ eyes smaller, narrower and maybe a bit more shaded. If you want your character to be female, you could add some lashes to the outer edges of the lash line.

Be sure to keep her eyes big, though. She should be the very picture of wide-eyed.

Another reason to think about gendering your character is that drawing anime bodies. Male or female, all start with the same basic stick figure.

Draw one horizontal line to represent the shoulders and another, slightly shorter one for the hips. Off either end of those lines, draw arms and legs. Join the shoulder and hip lines with one vertical line… and that’s your basic anime stick figure.

If your character is male, make the shoulder line a bit longer than the hip line and, if your character is female, her hip line should be a bit – only a bit! - longer than the shoulder line. But, if you want to keep the androgynous aspect so typical of authentic Japanese anime, there should not be too much difference in the basic figures.

Draping is how manga artists keep their characters’ body shapes secret. Flowing capes, long coats and full sleeves form the essential anime character shape so you don’t really need to master drawing an actual body so much as figure out how to drape the stick figure you created.

The Culture of Cute

We all love cute things: kittens, puppies, babies doing weird things… too bad our love of cute doesn’t come close to Japan’s. They have an entire culture of cute! It even has a name: kawaii.

Think about some of the darker anime you might have seen: Death Note or maybe Kino’s Journey. Despite their heavy themes, they and others like them don’t stint on cuteness. You may find it in the scenery – gentle bunnies or grazing sheep, or the characters themselves.

Death Note’s protagonist certainly doesn’t look like a serial killer, does he?

You can add cuteness to your character by accessorizing: add a flower bow to their hair or a whimsical piece of jewelry. If s/he carries any weapons, think about adding a comical feature – maybe a funny face or an absurd decoration.

Or, as was the case with Kino, make her guns much bigger than her tiny hands.

Now that you have the basics of drawing anime, you can practise drawing faces of various shapes and eyes of various colors. Start simple and work your way up.

Just remember that anime is a complex art form that will take you a long time to get good at. You may even consider taking drawing lessons so you can get all of the elements right, including background and effects.