Why Eyes Are So Important in Comics

Copyright © Walt Disney Studios

Glen Keane once said in an interview when discussing his process of animating the Beast in "Beauty & the Beast" that the most important thing to get right with the character design was his eyes. "Because that's where the audience is going to be looking," he pointed out. "So if you mess up, you don't want to mess up with the eyes."

As an Oscar-winning Disney animator, Glen Keane is someone you want to listen to when seeking advice for drawing animation.  He not only animated the Beast, but he also was the main animator behind Tarzan, Ariel, and Aladdin.  He knows his stuff and I found his quote about eyes useful when writing this blog post because eyes are essential to great comic art...maybe even more so than it is in animation.  A few weeks ago Scott Kurtz decided to do a reboot of his hit comic "PvP," in which the strip would jump ahead into the future and how us where the characters are going to wind up one day.  I've written about the reboot a couple of times before and felt that there would be no reason to do another one so soon, however Kurtz has been open that he didn't plan this all out before going ahead with it.  He decided to shoot from the hip and develop it as it went along.  While I personally feel this is playing with creative fire, the end results have largely been positive so I don't feel the need to rag on the man for poor planning or anything.

PvP's 5/27/2020 comic as originally published. Copyright © Scott Kurtz

PvP's 5/27/2020 comic as originally published after glasses redesign. Copyright © Scott Kurtz

One thing he did decide after working on this for a couple of weeks is that Francis's redesign didn't look right.  It wasn't working and he realized why: his glasses made his eyes look different.  Francis has always had big eyes, so to shrink them suddenly made the character not look like himself.

Francis 2003 Copyright © Scott Kurtz

Francis in 2017 Copyright © Scott Kurtz

Francis in 2020 before second redesign. Copyright © Scott Kurtz

As you can see, the new glasses DID change a huge aspect of his character design!  Now, Kurtz did essentially do a redesign of the characters entire head.  As you can see in the comic comparisons at the top, Francis's new head is slightly rounder with a lighter goatee, but the major difference that stands out are the eyes.  By giving him bigger glasses, he not only makes the character more recognizable to his past self but it also makes him more expressive.  Whether he looks more like the olden days I could care less about, the fact that he is more expressive is what makes the re-redesign work even more!  The real reason I can get behind a late to the game change like this is because it improves on something that already worked.  Believe it or not, there are characters whose designs get WORSE precisely BECAUSE they ignore the rule about not messing up the eyes!  I mean, of these two drawings of Mickey Mouse, which is more expressive?

Copyright © Walt Disney Studios

The original classic design where his eyes are big and cover most of the face?  Or...

Copyright © Walt Disney Studios

...the post-"Fantasia" design where for some reason animators thought it would idea for some reason to (as Fred Ward said) "put pupils into the pupils?"

I mean, sure, the second one looks more 'anatomically correct,' however the original design has so much emotion beaming from the face that it's practically glowing.  It's not just established characters with redesigns you need to look at to understand why eyes are the most important part of a characters design.  To illustrate my point, I grabbed some facial expressions of some very popular comic and manga characters - taken completely out of context - and am sharing them below.

Copyright © Warner Bros.

Copyright © Kodansha Comics

Copyright © Shueisha

Copyright © ViacomCBS

Copyright © Akira Toriyama

The thing to note is that even without knowing the context of what these scenes are from, the eyes give you a pretty good idea about what the character is feeling, thinking, and emitting.  The fact that the eyes on all these images almost tell a story amongst themselves is what makes everything work that much better when you have the dialog and background to compliment the experience!  Kurtz's original redesign of Francis (there's a mouthful) was not terrible.  It wasn't bad.  It did everything right to make for a compelling drawing.  However by tweaking the eyes just a little bit it made an already good design even better.  It's yet another reminder of why eyes are so important to a drawing (while also illustrating how minor tweaks to them can make major differences).

P.S. It should be noted I am AWARE that the revised comic above is missing a block of dialog!  Since it changes the scene from an explanatory one to almost a shocked reaction, I have to wonder if that was intentional.  I'll update this if I get confirmation.

Your Comic Book Guy - Kevin

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