An interesting thread I stole from another board: Anime faces

I feel this image is very biased against the higher number, or maybe anime style in general. Everything from 4 up is just too badly drawn to be taken seriously.

Well, ignoring that and focusing on the idea, I would say my personal favorites are 3 through 5. 1 and 2 are frequently more appropriate, depending of the story, however.

It's the opposite, I feel. 1 to 6 are mediocre, especially 1. It's laughable to compare 1 to the masterpiece that is Vagabond, honestly. Anime/manga styles are so much more than just eye size/facial proportion, which is basically the only thing this chart is measuring.

I wouldn't say the image is biased, it's simply making the proper exaggerations in order to help categorize different types of art styles. The artist isn't trying to say "do you like anime that looks exactly like #1 or #9?" The artist is trying to say "do you generally like anime with more realistic features, anime with exaggerated features, or one of these in between?"

Also, there's simply more features you have to notice than just the eyes and face, which admittedly, are also big concepts. Notice the hair. #1 begins off realistic, smooth and not notably attractive to the eye. In fact, there's little detail to draw you to it. As it goes down, it becomes more stylistic and unnatural. By #9 it becomes unrealistically sharp and crazy, drawing your eye to it as little details like "stray hairs" pop up. You begin to see the part in her hair a lot more, since so much detail is put in there.

Then, the nose. It begins big, then shrinks down over consecutive images. It's appropriately spaced away from the mouth and nose at #1, and it is progresses, the nose becomes sharper and smaller, until #8, where it's not even there.

In fact, generally speaking, as it goes from top to bottom, you notice a lot of more "unattractive" features disappear, or take less of a focus. You see this in the nose, chin, eyebrows, lips, and overall size. By #9, the nose is completely gone, there's no jaw at all much less a chin, the eyebrows go from thick to very thin, the lips become just big enough to tell she's still smiling, and you can see her body shrinking with every consecutive style. The head used to be fairly large and the face long, until it "shrinks" so that the eyes encompass most (if not all or more) of the entire head. The artist is taking away inherently "unattractive" details to focus more on the "attractive" ones, mostly the eyes and hair.

Also notice, the shading. At #1, there's no shading at all. The most it has is by the parting of the hair, but that's it. As it progresses, the shading becomes darker, sometimes using two different shades, until it shrinks with the other features and just becomes part of the lining of the face.

I really like this picture as a whole. It's not meant to include all anime - where does One Piece fit in here, then? - it's meant to exaggerate the core styles of anime and ask which ones people prefer. With some tweaking, I could imagine using this to describe anime much like you would use Super Weight to describe characters.

We should make our own chart of actual examples of these sizes and types like epic lashes and such. (Tareme and Tsurime tossed in there too.)

I think the best examples for #1 would be most of the characters in Paranoia Agent or Monster. Though, even those could end up being a #1.5 or something.

Thinking about it, however, most talented artists, as I've mentioned earlier, encompass a wide range of those styles within one series. One Piece may have a couple characters that hit #3 or #4, but Eyeshield 21 has characters that touch around #1 and go all the way through to #7.

2-4, 5-6 if it has a good enough story