How To Draw Chibi

Hi, my name is Laura Watton. My website is Pinkapplejam.com.

I am a co-founder of Sweatdrop studios and I've been illustrating in Manga for almost fifteen years. Okay, this tutorial is about chibi. Chibi actually comes from the Japanese pronunciation of CB, which stands for child bodied.

There is no C sound in Japanese, the closest would be Chi. So of course, if you put Chi and B together, it spells Chibi. There's also another one, that is even more squeezed than chibi and it's called SD.

It's the rather politically incorrect super deformed. But both, I think, can be classed as chibi. Basically, chibi proportions to possibly three spheres high.

I'm going to go with my safe bet of two and a half. Super deformed, the head is actually as big as the body! Let me have a go at fitting these proportions to explain a little bit further about what I mean. Okay, if I was going to draw a little girl character, I would use my cross section here.

Sometimes chibi characters don't even have noses, that's how cute they are. They don't need noses. SD proportions.

I think her eyes might be even bigger than chibi. Her nose, non-existent. I am going to draw her mouth a little bit higher.

Because I think the closer you get the mouth to the middle of the eyes, even cuter that character will look. Put the bow on the side of her head like so. Her dress is really short, but so are her feet.

Now you can see how all of the body proportions into this sphere below. There you go. Chibi and SD.