I can't bring myself to make the eyes any bigger.
Okay, there is a reason. A few weeks ago I wrote a blog about the visual novel. It's a simple story-telling device—so simple that someone recently released an affordable VN creator tool on Steam. So I thought, why not? It might be fun!
Well, there is a why not, and it's because tools like TyranoBuilder don't come with art assets. This isn't unexpected; some time ago I bought RPGMaker DX with similar intentions, and while it did come with some basic assets, they were fairly generic, not to mention ubiquitous in the RPGMaker community. If you want to stand out, then you have to work with someone in the community, pay an artist, or create your own. Since I'm just playing around, I'm going for option three.
You may notice that I am not an experienced artist. Oh, I can whip together the occasional dino-ninja/robot-ghost fight, but I've never tried for much more. That's where the anime art-style comes in. If you just want something basic, it's simple, straightforward and flexible. Just draw a circle and come up with different eye and hair combinations! It also meshes with the video games I grew up with; I was (and am) a big JRPG fan, so I've seen plenty of art like this.
So here are my first few attempts at drawing heads and faces. There are...mixed results. I even got crazy and decided to try some profiles. You be the judge.
A lot of unhappy people on this sheet for some reason.
I figure that I can put together something good enough to at least serve as a placeholder while playing with the tool. Of course, I also have to figure out how to draw bodies. That can't be hard, right?