Facial Features
While the art can be incredibly realistic or cartoonish, characters often have large eyes (female characters usually have larger eyes than male characters), small noses, tiny mouths, and flat faces. Psychological and social research on facial attractiveness has pointed out that the presence of childlike facial features increases attractiveness. Manga artists often play on this to increase the appeal of protagonists. Large eyes have become a permanent fixture in manga and anime since the 1960s when Osamu Tezuka was inspired by Disney cartoons from the United States and started drawing them in this way.
Furthermore, inside the big eyes, the transparent feeling of pupils and the glares, or small reflections in the corners of the eyes are often exaggerated, regardless of surrounding lighting, although they are only present in living characters: the eyes of characters who have died are the colour of the iris, but darker. Sometimes this death effect is also used to indicate characters who are emotionless due to trauma or loss of conscious control because of possession (ghost, demon, zombie, magic, etc.). In characters with hair partially covering the face, the eyes that would otherwise be covered are often outlined to make them visible, even when the hair is particularly dense and dark.
Certain visual symbols have been developed over the years to become common methods of denoting emotions, physical conditions and mood:
Read more about this topic: Manga Iconography
Famous quotes containing the words facial and/or features:
“You must call up every strength you own
And you can rip off the whole facial mask.”
—William Dewitt Snodgrass (b. 1926)
“Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy his similes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)