Drunkard's Walk Forums

I promised Ran-san that I'd post what I consider to be the "anime proportions that I always apply to my female faces. Here's a comparison - first
the standard, then the custom. So you can see exactly the way the changes make things look.

neat!

those sliders are something I normally skip right over.

Now you make me want to spend a few hours and fiddle with all my characters.
-Terry
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"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy

I usually skip over them too, but sometimes they're essential for something I want to do just right.

Pity there isn't an "eye size" slider, though.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Excellent work.

As someone who fiddles with face sliders m'self, and seems to use a very similar baseline to Logan, I will note a couple things.

The key aspects here: fiddling with (iirc) the first and second brow sliders towards the right increases the eye size, effectively. 'course it messes with the hairline as well, but the eyes can increase dramatically in apparent size depending on the face texture you use.

Bumping the cheek sliders out to the right gives faces a more rounded look. But note that this works better on some face textures than others, though - some of the young faces take it well, but others have more clearly defined cheekbone hollows and such on the textures.

Pulling the first chin and first/second jaw sliders in to the left gives the more heart-shaped and sharp-pointed chin for anime faces. However, bear in mind that from some angles this can look strange, and again, how well it fits depends a lot on what face texture you're using. You may have better results on some faces using a less extreme jaw/chin ratio. Pulling it all the way like this also - essentially - puts the face more into a triangle shape. Consider pushing the second chin slider to the right - to make the face vertically taller, and thus turning it into more of a teardrop shape.

Also, note that adjusting the chin sliders will change the size and look of the lips. This is another consideration when making changes. Again your milage may vary depending on the face texture. Sometimes playing with the chin scales to alter the lips is good enough - eyes, mouth, and nose are the defining features for a face in my opinion; with hair framing the overall shape of chin may not be so noticable. Remember also that changing jaw sliders doesn't alter the lips, so you can pull that in for the anime effect and still play with the chin area for lip reasons.

Finally, Logan didn't play much with the nose, I noticed, beyond pulling the first nose slider to the left. This changes the width of the nose. This is generally a good start and the most important thing for an anime-scaled face - because anime noses tend to be less, shall we say, high profile.

You may also wish to alter the second nose slider, however, which changes the vertical height of the nose on the face. This is because of anime art conventions related to the age and look of the character. Generally speaking a younger character will have a nose placed higher on the face (move slider to left); on some face textures this may also create the illusion of a slightly upturned nose - which can be advantageous.
-- Acyl

Bob: as I mentioned in my last post, there IS effectively an eye slider - play with the brow sliders. This DOES stretch the eyes out. Pay careful attention to Atlantea/Logan's sample images - there IS a size difference, and it can be even greater if you max the brow sliders.
Mind...This has the unfortunate side effect of changing the character's hairline, however, or distorting the forehead. Generally you'd be raising the number two brow slider to the right, which then causes the hairline to, er, recede. The first brow slider to the right might cause the forehead to be too bulgy.
But that can be mitigated with use of the cranium sliders - if you then correspondingly push the middle cranium slider up, the hair gets taller. You can also pull the first cranium slider in or out... also consider pushing the third cranium slider (the z axis) in or out to either mitigate forehead bulge, or embrace it wholeheartedly. Why embrace it? Because some hairstyles have prominent bangs, and if you increase the prominence of said bangs, it hides the forehead distortion caused by playing with brow sliders for eye-size reasons.
Of course that might mean the head overall looks too big... which is when you pull in the middle head slider to the left. =D
It's all relative! 
(Yes I am insanely fussy about my character faces, why do you ask? =) ... in all seriousness, a lot of my early characters have pretty static faces. Syndesis, Space Mage. But my later characters - Glass Lass, Battery Acid, and so on, have very very tweaked faces slider-wise. Battery Acid in particular uses the 'faux eye slider' trick, as the narrow-eyed 'Asian' face has eyes a touch too slender for my tastes. I've also used the lip trick I mentioned to fair effect on her, or more notably Leading Lady, my Widow; but I suspect most folks haven't seen Lady.)
-- Acyl