Saturday, January 3, 2009

Cute Face Ratio

I think I was looking at my earrings in the mirror when I made a weird observation. The space immediately beneath the ear in relation to the lip line corresponds with what I call ultimate cute face. It's the vapid happy face of popular character merchandise(Hello Kitty and anime sidekicks). The eyes of the cute face should not be larger in diameter than would pass the outside edge of the ear. The top of the mouth line should not pass the line between the lips of the mouth.

I made a couple of examples from images I found online.



I haven't tested it out in images yet, but I believe the larger eyed version of the cute face follows this set of rules: The diameter of the eyes must fall between the outer edge of the face and the inner most corner of the eye white. The eyes must not fall lower than the bottom of the nose or higher than the top of the eye white. The mouth remains the same as in the small eye example. Like these guys:


I'm pretty sure there is some simple math going on in there, but I couldn't tell you.
Comments?

4 comments:

AndyVV said...

It may just be coincidence. Or that faces are more atheistically pleasing when drawn/depicted within set parameters.

You may be onto something but it's only something to investigate if you like drawing cute faces ;)

Unknown said...

Damn Katy you're intense! But I do think you have something going here ... your dragon piece down there is freaking awesome ...

Mortbane said...

Part of our hardwired instinct is to be attracted to large pupils. The psychology behind it is that when you see someone you find attractive, your own natural psychical response is your pupils dilate a bit. Then if that person looks at you, they find you a bit more attractive on a subconscious level. Their own pupils may respond the same.

Related to cute faces, eyes are key. The larger the pupil, the cuter the character seems.

Katy Hargrove said...

I agree with the large pupil thoery, this also relates to our parental instincts towards infants. Large eye to head ratio.

However, there is more to cuteness than just large eyes and big pupils. There are many really cute characters with very tiny eyes too and that's what I've been thinking about.