Farewell, Kakavasha.

Farewell, Kakavasha.

Toshiya x Die

Because sameface syndrome is so common especially depicting Asians, I put together a quick and small reference for how to draw different types of faces.

Remember that "Asian" includes Southeast Asia, India, and west Asia as well! We're all not held to the beauty standards marketed by westernised Asian media exports! Even "mainstream" north eastern Asians do not always have the long face and white skin that you see in movies.

The opening image is a more photographic depiction of some different face shapes, but for a simpler image, eyebrow fashion is actually a good place to find face shapes. (Apparently styling the eyebrows to compliment the face shape is a thing. Who knew)

Averages of faces over a few countries. I do NOT recommend using these averages to reference characters, because every individual is unique. If you point at the "Filipino" square to say, "This is the faceclaim for my Filipino character!", you're once again in the Asian sameface hole. However, it's just a reminder that there are many, many different ethnicities that fall under the "Asian" category.

This eye shapes chart is quite simplified, and the appearance will change slightly depending if the eye is double or single lid. However, these are classic archetypes that are commonly identified in Chinese culture.

Translation, left -> right

Row 1:

Zuifeng eye (or fox eye) rarely seen

Danfeng eye (or phoenix eye) rarely seen

Peach flower

Row 2:

Apricot eye

Round eye

Hanging eye

Row 3:

Upper tilt eye

Willow leaf eye

Thin eye

I feel it's really important to note that the first two eye types, Fox and Phoenix, are the ones most commonly portrayed on Asian characters. However, they are actually the LEAST commonly seen in real life. Most people have some combination of the two lower rows.

Last but not least, people are not all lily white like in commerical ads. Makeup foundation swatches are a good place to reference skin tones in general, but I grabbed this image from Shiseido, a popular beauty store chain in Asia. Look at those variety of tones.

(And for the love of god please do not make your asian characters literally yellow. I will manifest on your doorstep with a pickaxe)

And that's all I have for now. Obviously not a comprehensive guide, because my cultural knowledge is limited to my own demographic, (and because nothing can comprehensively cover the wonderful variety of humans), but hopefully it can help a bit.

And very importantly, I don't advocate for any one feature over another, we are beautiful because of our differences.

FYI I just came across a thread on twitter which says that an author shared on google docs an explicit story with a friend for beta reading and google removed the file due to violation of TOS (apparently it has been updated where you are not allowed to share anything with sexual content). Not sure if it’s just this instance or if it’s going to become a widespread thing but if you guys write in google docs MAKE BACK UPS!!

(Instagram link to the screenshots)

Edit: also wanted to add that it seems that Microsoft word has the same language in their TOS so onedrive is not a safe alternative!

as of yesterday I am officially on my transition journey. my second birthday is on the ides of march and I cannot be happier about this

Something I try to keep in mind when making art that looks vintage is keeping a limited color pallette. Digital art gives you a very wide, Crisp scope of colors, whereas traditional art-- especially older traditional art-- had a very limited and sometimes dulled use of color.

This is a modern riso ink swatch, but still you find a similar and limited selection of colors to mix with. (Mixing digitally as to emulate the layering of ink riso would be coloring on Multiply, and layering on top of eachother 👉)

If you find some old prints, take a closer look and see if you can tell what colors they used and which ones they layered... a lot of the time you'll find yellow as a base!

Misprints can really reveal what colors were used and where, I love misprints...

Something else I keep in the back of my mind is: how the human eye perceives color on paper vs. a screen. Ink and paint soaks into paper, it bleeds, stains, fades over time, smears, ect... the history of a piece can show in physical wear. What kind of history do you want to emulate? Misprinted? Stained? Kept as clean as possible, but unable to escape the bluing damages of the sun? It's one of my favorite things about making vintage art. Making it imperfect!

You can see the bleed, the wobble of the lines on the rug, the fading, the dirt... beautiful!!

Thinking in terms of traditional-method art while drawing digital can help open avenues to achieving that genuine, vintage look!