Basic Cartoon Proportions I put together the following tips for another artist and thought I'd share it with all. Most of this is pretty basic stuff, but you might find it interesting. • The main element of measurement is the head. Once you've drawn that, everything else follows. • The older the character, the more "heads" tall they are. • Teens are about the same proportions as adults. Maybe they are a bit thinner or the *eye-level line is lower. (*Eye-level line is a horizontal guideline drawn on the face to indicate the placement of the eyes. On younger characters, the line is at or below the middle of the face. For older characters, the line moves up to above the middle.) • Proportions should remain consistent for each character throughout a comic or publication. Just use the head size to determine the size of the body and limbs for each character.

• You also need to establish relative sizes between each character, i.e., Adults are one head taller than a ten-year-old, almost two heads taller than a six-year-old, etc. It's helpful to do a character sheet with all your characters on the same page to show comparative sizes. • Of course, a lot of these proportions are relative. For example, lots of cute kids in cartoons are three heads tall. This gives them almost a "toddler" look—big head, small body.