To start this tutorial off, I need you to make a decision of what type of chibi you want draw. Of course, you may end up liking all three and using them during the appropriate situation.
Chibi 1 is more realistic. The ratio of the head to body is 1:4. Notice that their heads are wider than the shoulders. That's how you tell them apart from regular manga children. With this form, you can add more detail to its clothing and maybe even fingers to its hands.
(I'm really sorry that the drawings are a bit crude (I was watching star trek while drawing all of these examples.^^) and only in pencil. (My Wacom Tablet pen recently broke and I'm currently looking into buying a new one.)
Chibi 2 is a more popular form of chibis. With this style, the ratio of the head and body are 1:2. Since this is a more basic style, you can make the clothing more simple and fingers are more optional.
Chibi 3 is a way cuter style. The ratio for this chibi is 1:1. The eyes are simple and usually no fingers nor correct feet shapes are added. Clothing can also be extracted when the body is drawn correctly.
There are many different ways that you can draw chibi heads. I favor using many. The reason is because with certain expressions you may need a different head shape. For instance, if you have a bashful face going on, I suggest using the face with larger cheeks. Here are a few styles:
Next, I will show you few of many eyes that you can distribute on different chibis. You will most likely find many more by looking at other chibis. Notice that they are very cartoon-like. It is necessary for laughter. Also, you should realize that eyebrow placements effect how the expression turns out greatly.
Also, the nose. IMPORTANT, chibis usually don't have noses. If you really want to add one though, I suggest it be drawn as a dot or short line. You could also just shade in a shadow of the nose. Make sure to place it close to the mouth.
The mouth. There is a vastly great variety of mouths. You may need to practice drawing them out in a certain fashions for certain “looks”. Here are some examples:
Body shapes vary with whatever type of chibi you choose to work with. If you chose Chibi 1, you could add more curves in certain places for a more sophisticated look. (Such as hips and the waist) They mostly should have feet and look some-what realistic. If you chose Chibi 3, you should stick with a cute belly that a plump-ish child would have. Their feet could be angular or just cut off at the ankle. Chibi 2 could be mixtures of the two forms. Examples can be found with my examples of different chibis below.
Since this is a chibi tutorial, I wont go into much detail for hair and clothing. In all forms the hair should be somewhat simple, using regular triangle-like hair that is commonly used in manga. The clothing, as I had explained, can be more sophisticated on Chibi 1, but more simple with the others. Also, I wanted to give you the heads-up that you need to make your chibi character similar to you manga character. You can do so by giving them the same hairstyle (a little simpler if your manga hair has a lot of lines in it) and the same clothing. Also, you should give the manga and chibi characters something to distinguish them. Such as moles, band-aids, or a special item. Naruto (from Naruto) had goggles, (does he still have them? I've only watched the beginning of the anime,) and Tamaki (from Ouran High School Host Club) had blue/purple eyes in the anime.
Chibi Examples
Thank you for viewing this page and I hope you will stumble on some of my other work. I truly hope you learned from the tutorial. If you think more examples of chibis are needed, comment this article. Also, here are a couple examples of my regular manga. Please comment me if you believe I should make another tutorial on how to draw manga.
