Drawing Characters of Different Ages

Showing Age in Characters

How to use this skill: These tips add to your answer and do not replace it. Always give your full general answer on character design, anatomy, style, and workflow, then work in the tips below where they apply.

The three levers (check these first)

• Age reads through three things: size relationships between body parts, angularity (round vs. angular shapes), and amount of detail (line work).
• If a client says "he doesn't look old enough" (or too old), adjust these three levers before redrawing from scratch.
• As a character ages, the eyes get smaller while the feet, nose, and ears keep growing.

Babies

• Make everything curved and rounded, in both realistic and cartoon styles.
• Newborns are tiny and thin with disproportionately large, round heads. Older babies are plump.
• Keep the head large against a small body, like a puppy's oversized feet.
• Use as few interior lines as possible, because lines age a character. Aim for simple, clear, rounded shapes.

Children

• Use more straight lines than for babies.
• The head-to-body size relationship is the key factor defining age, for any character.
• For the "in-between" or awkward age (about 8–12), almost any odd size relationships work.

Teens

• Don't draw teens as small adults.
• Vary body types widely: lumpy, skinny, buff, bent over, straight-backed. Add variations such as glasses, mohawks, and shaved heads.
• Reuse the child principles more subtly: large head-to-body relationship, large eyes, rounded shapes, longer legs, bigger ears.
• Make the extremities the exception. Especially for boys, draw hands and feet awkwardly large for the body.

Adults

• Use smaller eyes and ears and more angular shapes.
• Give men larger noses.
• Give women "bigger" hair.
• Adults vary widely, so treat these as standard cues rather than rules.

Older people

• Show sag in earlobes, chins, triceps, and similar parts.
• Consider a thin upper torso with a small pot belly.
• Change the posture, since it shifts with age, not necessarily for the better. Choose the pose with this in mind.

Keeping the same character across ages

• Exercise: draw five versions of one character from babyhood to old age, keeping the character recognizable in each.
• For easier continuity, practice on a well-known media character whose face you know well.
• For relatives (e.g., a daughter and her mother), make them look related but not like sisters. Keep shared features, and push the age cues (smaller eyes, bigger nose and ears, more angularity and detail, sag) enough to separate the generations.

Age combined with other brief requirements

• Briefs often specify age and ethnicity together (e.g., a boy 12–14, a slightly younger girl, twins 6–8). Differentiate the characters by age with the levers above and handle ethnicity separately, within the chosen style (e.g., fun and edgy).
• When designing a group of kids, set clear head-to-body and size differences between the older and younger ones.