Drawing Chibi Characters

When coming to the end of my Wangang Legends project, I decided I wanted to make some merchandising of my characters. I wanted this to be extremely personal, so I began to look into Japan’s merchandising industry for characters seen as the huge popularity of manga, anime, and gaming. There is a huge market for this, especially with my comic being set in Tokyo and taking so much influence from Japanese culture. This really just felt like the right direction to head in. I discovered the term “Chibi.” Now, what was this? A Chibi is a form of  caricature; this style in particular originates in Japan. Chibis are normally versions of pre-existing characters drawn in another way; their features include large heads that are almost one-to-one similar in size to their body, feet and hands that are simple and have minimal detail, and I’m mostly seen as a cuter, more childlike version of a character.  I had seen this style used before for merchandising products so felt it was a perfect fit.  When it came to the process of actually illustrating I found it really refreshing to draw in such a different style that I hadn’t really experienced before. I really wanted these versions of my characters to really give that cute feeling almost like an extreme cartoon version of themselves and after a few tries I felt like I really achieved this. I think a challenge for me personally was trying not to give these characters too much detail as Chibi characters are normally a lot more simple than the characters they are originally drawn from. In the end I felt my results were the best I could’ve achieved and would create great products for me to use as I created merchandise as this style is so commercial especially in Japan.