Essentially, I was bored and decided to make a tutorial series. This series will contain multiple sections (Over 10, I believe), most of them with their own sub-sections. I will submit them as I go, going from smaller parts (eyes, nose, lips) to bigger and more advanced parts (full body, clothes, animation). Hopefully by the end of all this, I may have helped some of you in creating your own AA fanart, or better yet, original characters!


This series was made to help those who want to achieve the AA-style in their work and should not be considered as an end-all be-all for drawing anything. If you wish to go further with your art, you are encouraged to seek out more information and learn the basics of the human anatomy.


When someone sees a character, the first thing they would look at is their face. The character's eyes make a big impact on their appearance. It can make an evil man look fierce or a bubbly girl more adorable. Making the eyes just right can make a big difference.








As I've said in the Eyes category, the first thing someone sees is the face. Not only do you have to make the eyes fit, but the rest of their face has to fit as well!




More to come!

Last edited by AABattery on Thu Feb 16, 2012 6:44 am, edited 3 times in total.

It's not a bad tutorial, but It might be just easier to base everything of a circle and say that the eye makes the impression of a certain shape. You seem to be contradicting your sketch marks in the final lines :( The final lines all follow a circle contour.

Keep it up though. Alot of people seem to want to draw in the ace attorney style. I'm interested to see your version of how it's all made up. If you know alot about it, a section purely on expression might help alot too :) Your eye shapes are the beginning of a expression like tutorial there. :) Good luck!

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Sure, it may be easier to those with experience, but I'm trying to cater to complete beginners, and just using a circle isn't helpful enough. And how am I contradicting myself? Though smooth, they still follow the shape I made.

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Hmmm... How do I explain this... perhaps contradiction is too strong of a word, but explaining eyes with circles IS the easiest way of doing it cause eye balls are spheres essentially. It's nothing to do with experience level. Eye lids are all slits of skin in front of the eyeball.

I see what you're doing with the shapes, some tutorials I've read do the same thing with ovals, but they don't do it in this way- they build a lopsided oval based on specific measurements (and it's VERY complex >.<) . I just thought it was worth mentioning- that's all. The shape thing you're using isn't wrong. Using simple 3D objects to simplify a complex one is a good idea- it's basically the only way to simplify the shape of the human figure enough to draw it in proportion. You're just using some strange shapes to explain it approximately cause you're cutting these geometric shapes back up into circles. That's what I meant with contradiction. IT was a bad choice of words, sorry ^^; I'm commenting in between lunch breaks so it's what I came up with at the time (Blame it on RP XD ).

Besides, alot of the shapes you're using as examples are pretty much circles anyway with straight edges :) I didn't know if knowing that helped you explain things better ^^; If it doesn't then that's cool :) I was just trying to help out :nods: Sorry for causing offence.

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You know, I think the best model would be life drawing, and then tweaking what you learn from that to match the PW style.

Of course, that's probably not what people are going to be looking for in a thread like this, and life drawing can take awhile, so what I was going to suggest about the eyes is that people learn about the shape the eyelids take when you're looking at the face from different angles. Because it seems you are only talking about eyes from the front view, which is fine and good, but it won't look the same from a different angle--so now you can draw PW styled eyes from the front, but now you're completely at a loss for what they should look like from the side, from above or below, or any other angle in between (the possibilities are limitless!) We only have snapshots of what these eyes might look like, given the screenshots and character artwork the original artists from Capcom have given us; the rest we have to extrapolate ourselves.

I tend to think of this from an algorithmic approach--if you understand the context under which the eyes should look like from a 3D perspective, it all makes sense. I can see an oval-shaped eye from the front, and realize it will not look the same when I view it from the side--it may look strange, and I may have to throw away the part of my symbolic thinking that says an eye doesn't look like that, but when you study these objects from a 3D perspective, you just learn to accept that it looks that way for good reason. And that's why life drawings are a good way of getting into doing this. There isn't really a "it has to look like this..." sort of approach for it; it's more of a "it looks like this when I look at it this way...". Anything else, I have to fill in, based on my understanding of this one 2D slice. It may be limiting, and I may have absolutely no clue how else to fill it in, but understanding the basics of anatomy through life drawing helps tremendously.

I tend not to draw in other people's styles a lot anyways. I prefer just taking fandom characters and redoing them in my own style. It's more interesting in my opinion.

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I agree with Jay on going from life drawing to stylization. Think of life drawing as the root of all things- once you have the basics down with anatomy you can branch out and try many other things while still making it all look natural. However, I do like to experiment with different styles because it really requires you to analyze the differences in lighting, lines, and shapes to the extreme; it's also a good exercise to do plus you'll be more versatile.

The majority of Ace Attorney characters are pretty grounded in life drawing though it does have a bit of anime stylization to it (compare Pearl to someone more realistic looking like Gumshoe, or even *looks at avatar*) so there's going to be a pretty wide spectrum of things you'll need to cover unless you're focusing more on the Phoenix, Mia, Maya, Apollo kinda look. More views (side, front, top, three quarters) would be good for reference as well.

I hear you guys, but I thing the idea of this tutorial is to simplify it right back. Life drawing is a powerful tool, but alot of new artists just want to have fun with art before they get serious with the discipline :) I know I did 7 years of having fun with art before I did the study crack down. There's nothing wrong with that. If you're going to learn something though, it's essential to learn right, that's all. No point learning a method that's wrong, or incompatible with how you think. Some people learn better with shapes, some with construction to the wazzo, and some with life drawing. Life drawing I believe is something you try when you've learnt a bit already cause flattening a 3D object is actually a very hard task.

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I think the problem isn't drawing a 3D object onto a 2D canvas, but making a 2D object look 3D.

I will be doing a bit of anatomy, but just enough so that beginners won't be overwhelmed and still help them make figures as anatomically correct as they can. I'm not gonna bombard them with pages worth of info and tell them "YOU HAVE TO LEARN THIS BEFORE DRAWING YOUR FIRST CHARACTER!" I find it unfair to make someone learn anatomy just to find out later on that they don't want to pursue art. If they want to go serious, then yes, they should study anatomy and develop their own style, but if it's just a hobby (like some people are in any fanbase), I don't think it's necessary.

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That's cool :) I think basically, this is a style tutorial rather than a how to draw one, so you're probably wanting peopel to know how to draw a face before they learn to draw it in ace attorney style. I think that this is what you're wanting. You wouldn't need a huge amount of knowledge to put it into practise. Maybe make a note that this tutorial relies on there being some basic knowledge of anatomy first? There's heaps of tutorials out there for basic anatomy out there :) Not ones for drawing in a famous art style though *nods*

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Ja, that was basically my concern about making a style tutorial, so it was actually kind of hard to get around suggesting it without making it sound like I'm poo-pooing everyone who wants to make a style tutorial. There's nothing wrong with it; it's just that some people who are serious about art don't know that style is something you might consider after anatomy and the basics; it's something you develop as you get better and practice more anyways. I feel sorry for those people who stumble upon tutorials like those and those How to Draw Anime books and get disappointed when their work doesn't look the way they think it should.
And of course there are the people who don't care at all, and are just doing it for fun.

So it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to add a disclaimer.

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Don't worry about it, Jay. I knew it was that you were only concerned. You're a great artist, and if you think a disclaimer would help, then I'll add one. I just hope I can write it well enough...


I actually know that feel... Curse you, Katy Coope, naming all my favorite animes! How was a 9 year old to know that your art is complete crap?!

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Thanks. I think something simple is fine. You can gently encourage people to look up on the basics because it will help them tremendously, and anyone who's willing to put the effort into doing better will probably go ahead and look into it, and anyone who's just here for the fun of it won't bother, and it won't be a big deal.

Are you referring to this person?

ktcoope.com

Seems her work suffers from some stiffness and bad feet angles. And it is heavily styled. Certainly not a good starting point for people who want to be serious about art.

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I added a disclaimer. I hope it's good enough, otherwise I could revise it later.

There's something that's driving me nuts. I've had this problem once where I copied some forum code from one forum to another and, although I saw no difference, other members couldn't read what I posted because the letters were too small. I copied the OP of this thread over from AAO, and the sizing there is different than it is here. So I gotta know, do the headings look freakishly huge?

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I think the disclaimer is fine as it is. I once had to write a disclaimer about an art related tutorial because some people were of the mentality that I'm not allowed to use the word "never" when I'm teaching people about art--this is only true when it pertains to artistic creativity and imagination, but not when you're talking about something as concrete and precise as anatomy, perspective or lighting, which are all respectively extensions of biology, geometry and physics; sciences in general.

Well, the headings are bigger, but I wouldn't consider them freakishly large. They don't bother me anyways.

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This looks very promising.

Keep it up, this is potential sticky material.

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I like this tutorial :) I'm usually stuck with a couple of styles for eyes, but I never really realized that there were that much combination in PW :P Maybe I'll draw a fanart eventually, but we'll see. I definitely think it would help out as basics and to expand on once it's comfortable enough to do by heart or something :)

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This is an great tutorial, AABattery! Especially for someone that knows very little about drawing, like me.

I really hope that you add more parts soon! :D

I will certainly utilize these tutorials. Every time I try to do a fanart, it always ends up more anime style than anything. Which isn't a bad thing (it is an anime style after all), but some of my pictures I would prefer to look more like the actual AA style.

If you can, facial shape would be a nice addition. Keep up the good work!

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