How come older folks look more realistic?

[calitart]

Hi there!
I notice that both cartoons and anime share the same trait: the older the person, the more realistic and human-like they are. Why is that? :/
It's not a bad thing... It's just that it's kind of odd looking at a big eyes character grown up to look so realistic... If that even make any sense.

[VermillionWorks]

I've kind of noticed that...I think it's because if they skimp on the details of older people, then they just look like young people with an extra line or two on their face...or they'd look haggard and weird instead of aged. XD Kind of hard to explain...but if you stick wrinkle lines on any given anime character's face, it'd look odd. It looks better if they're done in a more realistic fashion.

Kind of the same thing with the eye size getting smaller - big anime/cartoony eyes on an older face might look a little creepy. (Not always, but it kind of depends on the style.)

[stephanielopez]

shrugs I don't know. But i have noticed that kids as in babies have huge eyes and they adjust as they continue growing. Some still have big eyes, but on average they become... normal size?? By the way when you talk about realistic is it their facial features, like all of them or just their eyes in general?

[calitart]

Yes, both.
In my opinion, I think it is a representation that they have matured and grown out of their youth, and becomes an individual, i.e. "human". Idk, I think I'm reading too much into this, but it's fun to just interpret the meanings and such.

[UzukiCheverie]

Animator here. Allow me to elaborate.

The biggest reason is presentation. Despite it being cartoons, animators still have to strive for it being realistic in the real world type of way. It still has to be believable, even if the show is about a bunch of super humans fighting against a ruthless villain who's going to blow up the planet.

Much like cartoon characters, real life babies have much more exaggerated proportions. Bigger eyes, bigger ears, bigger heads, smaller bodies, etc etc. The eyes and ears and head you're born with are the eyes and ears and head you're stuck with for life (they will not grow!) so that's why they're exaggerated so much on young cartoon characters (ex. Timmy Turner from Fairly Odd Parents). So no, it's not your eyes "adjusting their size", it's literally just the rest of you growing and so your eyes look smaller in comparison (same for your head and ears).

Same being for adult characters and real life adults. As you get older, the size of your body stretches out, and then what was once considered big eyes and big ears and a big head now look smaller by comparison because of the way the body has grown. It's easy to see this if you compare a baby to an adult.

Real life Child Vs. Adult:

Cartoon Child Vs. Adult:

When you're presenting a character in a new light, grown up, you have to make people understand with only pictures that they have grown up. If you keep those big baby eyes and ears and head on a body that has grown, the proportions are now off, and in that sense, the character hasn't even "grown up" - they've just somehow grown an extra 5-6 feet. I mean, looking at an adult character with the same big features they had as children would be the same as looking as an adult person in real life with the same big features they had as children, if they grew with their bodies. It would be disturbing and even weirder than your original point in the OP.

So that's why. There's also other reasons, like portraying innocence and hardships and all that, but most of it is the literal, stemming to keeping proportions and making it realistic and make sense, which I can't stress enough, is so so important, even if you're drawing weird alien creatures or cartoon boy scouts. I think because it's a cartoon show, most viewers just shove that stuff aside because they don't think it's important in the grand scheme of things, but it's so ridiculously important, I can't even cover all the importance of it in this one post.

You'll have a hard time finding an actual, real animator (not a freelancer who doesn't have experience and doesn't even know what they're getting themselves into) who can't draw realism and bodies to proportion, and that's because of this. In fact, pretty much all animators are required to have at least one full year of life drawing classes under their belt, and all the famous and master animators (cough Glen Keane, Richard Williams cough) have even more (not just 2D either; 3D as well.) And this goes far beyond just animation - it applies to comics as well.

Yeeep. That's pretty much it.

[atlas]

I have also noticed how older characters will often have different shaped heads as well.

[TAMAnnoying]

Because babies figments of adults imaginations until they take on a life of their own and become real people.

[AnnaLandin]

To add to @UzukiCheverie's excellent answer:

Younger characters, both in manga/anime and in other comics/ani,ation-traditions - tend to have less detailed faces; that is, all the necessary features are there, but there are no wrinkles, few scars, etc., etc. They have... well, they have face-shaped faces. Most of them have the same facial shape, similarly shaped eyes, etc., etc. And the fewer details a face as, the more likely we are to read it as a symbol for a face - and the more likely we are to be able to identify ourselves as readers with it. The more generic a face is, the more likely we are able to imagine ourselves as that character.

But the more details a face as, the more distinct and individual it becomes. For every wrinkle, scar, crooked tooth and distinct eyebrow you add to a face, the more you form a specific visual identity to it - and the readers naturally begin to see them as particular individuals, and therefore more "realistic" than those characters with fewer details.

[punkarsenic]

in anime, this is to do with A cuteness and B the exaggeration of features. kids naturally have bigger eyes proportionally than adults, and anime exaggerates this. also, because babies have big eyes, were programmed to see big eyed things as cute, so if they want a character to be cute, the bigger the eyes. hence moe characters have the biggest eyes, and villains have more realistic eyes.

i just realised its literally the same thing in western cartoons too, but im not gonna edit that paragraph bc its well constructed anyway. but yeah, cartoons exaggerate features, including big eyes.

[maximumthemokona]

I seem to remember some Marvel editor said something along the lines of, "every line you add to a character's face adds 1 year to their age". Obviously exaggerated but adding detail to faces is an easy way to convey aging. Only babies have perfectly smooth faces; wrinkles, moles and age spots accumulate as the years go by (sigh) so we're wired to associate a "busier" face with a more advanced age.

[Doubtcent]

A big reason is that unless you find a way to cartoon an old person properly, it's really hard to portray them as "old". I've had trouble doing so and I've had to make a caricature of one just so I can draw it properly (wrinkles are hard). To me, to really nail an older person is to actually draw a semi-realistic one.

As for children, they can be drawn in many ways. In some sense, as long as you draw a shorter, smaller, bigger-headed version of your character, you've got a kid. As for adults and forward, you need some sense of proportion.