Why does this look fine....



But this is just staring into the face of an insane nightmare sent to punish you for your anime obsession?

...I think it has something to do with the first picture having eyes that are actually in proportion with her head. Also, her eyes are drawn to look like they're bulging out of her head (we can't see the entire iris/pupil), whereas on the second, they are both visible and makes it pretty creepy. If her eyes were closed a bit more, she might look alright.

xD Sorry for the overly analytic answer. But yeah, I agree. Somehow when you make anime characters real, they never look as good as they did in animated form...

(And on a side note, the color of the second girl's lips is really pretty).

~ Esa

Actually, Esana, the eyes are on the same scale in both shots. It's just what our brains have come to expect from that art style. There is a notable difference in that even on the anime girl, the iris and pupils are still bigger. On a different note, this could make for a pretty kick-ass optical illusion, similar to how we're used to seeing italics slanted a particular direction to the point that when they're slanted the other way, it looks like a more drastic angle.

To answer your question, Lukisod, the reason anime eyes are drawn so large is because of the Japanese belief that the eyes are the windows to the soul and are capable of the most expression, and to an extent this is true. For example, you can tell genuine happiness from a fake smile by looking for crow's feet in the outer corners of the eyes. Exaggerating eye size to this extent allows for a greater variety of expression in the art style, especially given the proportionately smaller nose and mouth. (Note also how eyebrows are drawn over the bangs.) There's also less sclera--the white of the eye--on the anime girl. Thus, someone in anime can literally get a twinkle in their eye.

Other differences can be seen in head and face shape. The trend in most anime and manga is to lean towards a wider face in proportion to its height (the better to incorporate those eyes), and even this rule can be bent or broken depending on the desired feel of the character.

Manga is a popular enough art style by this point that guides on how to draw it are popping up in most bookstores and/or libraries, so for a detailed study of the differences between this medium and reality, I suggest picking up a couple of those for further insights.

Thanks for the detailed description for the purpose. My question though had much less depth than that. I meant, physically why I see the drawing as normal and reasonably attractive and the real life version so abnormal as to be repulsive?

Is the difference really in the context in which your mind places these things? I could suppose that your brain when recognizing faces on people expects a certain dimension to them and exaggerations like that stand out, while when looking at anime you're unconsciously placing it in a category of a cartoon and thus, the normally expected proportions are not considered.

That's exactly what I'm saying, Lukisod. :)

I shall be the first one to say this.

>2012
>still watching kawaii uguu animes.

Most any cartoon character would look fantastically creepy in reality, such as Spongebob. His eyes are large to show expressiveness as well.

I think the main reason would be the fact that we expect things to be disproportionate in drawings for the most part, but there's also the level of the shape of the actual eyes and face. It would probably look less odd if the real girl's eyes were shaped more like the anime girl's eyes.

The more I think about this question, the deeper it goes. I can tell you assuredly that the reason the second one is disturbing is because it lies in the uncanny valley.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... annyValley

Somehow the anime version uses the same head eye proportion but dodges the uncanny valley. My guess is because anime is a drawing it slides to the left of the slope becoming more symbolic and therefore less human. This places it far enough to the left to avoid the dip in the positive-response curve that characterizes the valley.

As for the reason the proportions of the face elicit a positive response at all this relates to parental instinct. Observe any baby animal and you will note an increased size of the head with relation to the body and an increased size of the eyes in relation to the head. This is where Puppy Eyes derive their infamous clout.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PuppyDogEyes

We are hard wired to respond positively to these stimuli because we are social mammals who need to take care of our offspring. Anime borrows this response to instantly make characters appear kawaeeeeeee and illicit a similar positive response.

Yes, tv-tropes can explain everything.

I must say that, that picture is creepy. But, on a side note, I think that the anime is in perportion, and the other picture is just an emphasis on the eyes. It's almost got to do with how the artist wants the anime to look.

Wow that second pic is soo creepy. I see what you mean.

It's all because of a little thing called the uncanny valley. When you take something that has just a few human-like qualities, those qualities can look quite attractive and sometimes cute. But, when you take something that mostly has human-like qualities to it, but with a few nonhuman qualities, it can be quite creepy, even uncomfortable to look at. Anime tends to have very exaggerated qualities, but gives you a sense that the characters you see on the screen are human (just a cartoonized version). However, take a picture of an actual person and photoshop the eyes to look bigger, and you have an abomination on your hands.

I've been wondering the answer to why anime drawings are so much better than any doll for quite a while... Wow, there are so many opinions as to why it is... One of my thoughts is that first-hand objects are always better than the ones trying to replicate it. Anime started with drawing, so it's so normal for us to see the drawing and think of it as human-like, and definitely more surreal and perfect than the actual human race usually.

The doll is replicating the anime, which is so surreal, it will probably never look right as a doll. It was meant to stay a drawing. I would advise the maker of those dolls to stop their abomination (whoa, sounds harsh... I APOLOGIZE TO THOSE THAT MANUFACTURE ABOMINATION DOLLS)

Dolls are creepy anyways. They're going to scare more people than drawings and animation. It's like clowns. Clowns scare the...umm... out of some people, along with those wax figures (which I always seem to mistake for people at first).

Btw: When I tried to look up a logical answer for this, it gave me some pretty awkward results...