Anatomy Advice - Tumblr Posts

Quick art tip - child proportions

Ok this is a real quick one but let me show you how to get more-or-less accurate sizes for child characters. Kids are tricky to draw, they are - from toddler up to about teens people change radically almost every year so pinpointing character’s size during those years is pure hell.

What you need to do to make everything super easy for yourself is to check their Head Proportion. What makes kids look like - well, kids, is that their heads are proportionally large in comparison to their body.

Average adult is about 7,5 heads tall in comparison to their own body, however with children under 10 that number is just under 6 heads with about 1 head shorter the younger you go down to 3 heads as an infant.

Easiest way to figure the so-so head-height of a certain age is to find images of said age group and do a quick count on them

at which after you can replicate it in your own works - don’t mind if it’s not 1:1 with reference, finding images that are actually of the age you need is tricky and kids in general vary a lot so someone might be a lot taller than others. You have a bout  0,5 -1 heads of wiggle room before it starts to look way older.

Proportions are super important in art and i lovingly recommend everyone to figure out basics of them - it’s the easiest way to get notifically better with art. I could go on about proportions but let’s wrap this up. Need to note however that head proportion is not same as character height - a character can be 15 feet tall but still have head-height of 6, HH is simply a way to scale out the body.