A side profile holds together when you block in the head as a circle with a cross through the center, place the eye on the horizontal line of the cross, put the ear just behind the center at about the same height as the eye, and set the tip of the chin on a line dropped straight down from the eye. When you're turning your own character's front view into a profile, run horizontal lines out from the front view at the eyes, the base of the nose, and the chin, and build the profile on those lines so the two views don't end up looking like different people.
This guide walks through the proportions of a profile, the line from nose to chin, how to handle anime-style eyes and hair, a step-by-step method for deriving a profile from your front view, and fixes for the mismatches that come up most often. At the end, it covers checking the profile by turning a 3D model of your own character to the side.
Note: Figmee currently provides figurine-style images made from your drawings, 3D model data (GLB / 3MF) and turntable videos of the model. Ordering physical 3D prints is Coming Soon. Photographs and images that look like photographs are not supported as input.
What proportions should you start a side profile with?
Start a profile by treating the head as a ball and blocking it in with a circle and a cross. Celsys, the company behind CLIP STUDIO PAINT, runs a Japanese drawing-guide site with a profile tutorial that puts the center of the circle at roughly the ear (just below the temple), sets the eye on the horizontal line of the cross about a third of the radius in from the edge, and says that keeping the eye and ear at about the same height gives the face a balanced look.
For vertical placement, another tutorial on the same site uses five horizontal guides. Divide the head from the crown down to the chin with five lines; from the top, they mark the crown, the hairline, the eyes, the base of the nose, and the chin.
| Guide | What sits at that height | What it decides in profile |
|---|---|---|
| Line 1 | Crown of the head | How round the back of the head is, the volume of the hair |
| Line 2 | Hairline | The slope of the forehead, where the bangs start |
| Line 3 | Eyes | The eye position, the top of the ear |
| Line 4 | Base of the nose | The height of the nose tip, the bottom of the ear |
| Line 5 | Chin | How far forward the chin sits, how it joins the neck |
That tutorial has the ear sprout from the cross line and fits it between the eye line and the nose line. Treat these proportions as a starting point and adjust them for your character's age and style. MediBang Paint's profile tutorial notes that a lower eye line reads as younger and a higher one as more mature.
How do you place the nose, mouth, and chin?
Set the nose, mouth, and chin front to back from the eye, connect the tip of the nose to the tip of the chin with a diagonal line, and let the lips sit just slightly in front of that line. If the chin juts out past the lips, the profile can easily stop looking like your character.
- Nose: the Celsys tutorial starts the nose just in front of the eye, at the point where the outline of the face dips in the most. Line up the base of the nose with line 4.
- Mouth: place the lips between the base of the nose and the chin, sticking out slightly past the line from the nose tip to the chin. Only about half the mouth is visible from the side, so don't draw past the corner. MediBang lists drawing the mouth as it looks from the front as a common mistake.
- Chin: put the tip of the chin on a vertical line dropped from the eye. In the Celsys tutorial, the point where that line meets the circle is the guide, and a character with a long jaw can sit forward of it.
- Neck: start the front of the neck a little above the chin, and the nape between the base of the ear and the back of the head, at about lip height. That way the head sits naturally on the neck.
In a front view, the nose can be a dot or a short stroke, but in profile the height of the nose and the shape of the chin become the outline itself. They shape your character's look more than almost anything else, so decide them here ("low nose, small chin," for example) and write it down so your next drawing doesn't drift.
Why do eyes fall apart when you draw them from the side?
Profile eyes usually go wrong because the front-view eye shape gets pasted onto a face that's turned to the side. According to MediBang's tutorial, an eye seen from the side becomes a ">"-shaped wedge about half as wide as in a front view, and the pupil turns into a long, thin oval rather than a circle.
Large anime-style eyes are a flat design made to look appealing from the front. If you try to keep them the same size in profile, they look stuck onto the side of the face. Let the size go in profile, and keep the character recognizable through other cues:
- Make the upper lashes darker and the lower lashes thinner (as MediBang suggests)
- Keep the iris color and the placement of the highlight the same as in your front view
- Keep the eyebrow shape, and its distance from the eye, the same as in your front view
The same thing happens in 3D. When a character with big eyes becomes a 3D model and is seen from the side, the eyes can look off because they don't follow the curve of an eyeball. That isn't an AI error; it's the flat-only design of the original drawing becoming visible. The reasons, and what you can change in the drawing, are covered in Why People Say Illustrations Can't Be Turned into 3D.
How does hair change in a side profile?
Hair reads right in profile when you set it on the outside of the head circle (the skull) with real thickness. The thickness of the bangs, the swell at the back of the head, and the flow from the sideburns around the ear are all hidden in a front view; the profile is where you decide them.
The Celsys tutorial follows the skull with the hair but lifts it slightly off the head instead of gluing it on, and splits the bangs from the back hair around the crown. MediBang's tutorial likewise draws the hair like a wig placed on the head, with the bangs given thickness as they rest on the forehead. A CLIP STUDIO tutorial for the 3D modeling software Metasequoia recommends sketching some of the bangs' volume into the profile, because it's surprisingly easy to second-guess later when you build the head in 3D.
If the amount of hair looks different between your front view and your profile, redecide the thickness of the bangs and back hair in the profile and check that it doesn't contradict the width of the hair in the front view. Lining up side and back views on a turnaround is covered in How to Draw a Character Turnaround Sheet, and hair seen from behind in How to Draw a Character from Behind.
How do you derive a profile from your front view, step by step?
If you already have a front view of your character, the most reliable method is to run horizontal lines out from the front view and draw the profile on those lines. The CLIP STUDIO Metasequoia tutorial works the same way: it takes horizontal guides for the head size, eye height, and mouth position from the front face it drew first, and draws the profile to them. Plan on about 30–45 minutes to reach a rough sketch.
First, map what you settled in the front view to where it goes in profile.
| Settled in the front view | Where it goes in profile |
|---|---|
| Eye height | On the same horizontal line; draw it as a ">" wedge about half the front-view width |
| Ear | Between the eye line and the nose line, just behind the center of the head |
| Height of the nose base, mouth, and chin | On the same horizontal lines; decide in the profile how far forward each one sits |
| Bangs and back hair | Decide their thickness as a layer on the outside of the head circle |
| Hair clips and accessories | Check which side they're on in the front view, and draw them on the profile that shows that side |
| Neck width | Same as the front view; front edge from just above the chin, nape from behind the base of the ear |
- Run lines out from the front view (about 5 minutes): next to the front view, draw horizontal lines across the canvas at the top of the head, the eyes, the base of the nose, and the chin.
- Draw the head circle and cross (about 5 minutes): draw the circle so the eye line becomes the horizontal line of the cross, then add the vertical line through the center. The center lands just below the temple, around the ear.
- Place the eye and ear (5–10 minutes): set the eye as a ">" wedge on the horizontal line, about a third of the radius in from the edge of the circle. Draw the ear just behind the center, between the eye line and the nose line.
- Connect the nose, mouth, and chin (about 10 minutes): bring the nose out from the dip in front of the eye and line up its base with the guide. Put the chin tip on the line dropped from the eye, and draw the lips so they sit slightly past the line from the nose tip to the chin.
- Add the hair and neck, then compare with the front view (10–15 minutes): give the hair its thickness on the outside of the circle, draw the neck, and set the profile next to the front view to check that the eyes, ear, chin, and amount of hair all line up.
How do you fix a nose or chin that looks off?
When a profile feels "not quite right," check it against the horizontal lines from your front view and the vertical line dropped from the eye. Between those two sets of guides, you can usually see what moved. These are the mismatches that come up most often, and how to fix them.
| Mismatch | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| The chin juts forward | The pointed chin from the front view was simply extended forward | Move the chin tip back onto the vertical line from the eye, so the lips sit in front of the chin |
| The nose is too high or too long | The nose was a dot in the front view, and its length was never decided | Line up its base with the guide, and redecide how far the tip sticks out so it matches the look of your front view |
| The face looks too big | The ear sits too far back | Move the ear forward to just behind the center of the head (MediBang lists this as a common mistake) |
| The eye seems to float off the face | The front-view eye shape was simply turned sideways | Redraw it as a ">" wedge with a long, thin oval pupil |
| The mouth still looks front-on | The whole mouth was drawn | Draw only the half you can see from the side |
| The back of the head is flat, or the head looks small | Only the face outline was drawn, without the head circle | Take the back of the head from the circle, and set the hair slightly off it |
| The eyes or mouth sit at different heights than in the front view | No horizontal guidelines | Redraw the lines from the front view and move the features onto them |
Fix the biggest shapes first: the head circle and the position of the chin. If you start with the eyes or mouth, they'll drift again as soon as you move the outline.
How can you check your character's profile in 3D?
If you make a 3D model from a single front view in Figmee, you can stop the browser viewer at an exact side view, or zoom in to a close-up of the face, to check your character's profile. How to make the model and use it as a drawing reference is covered in A Drawing Mannequin Alternative: a 3D Model of Your Own Character. The side of the model is inferred by AI from your one front view, so treat it as a reference to compare with your own drawing, not as the answer. The viewer's perspective gets stronger the closer you zoom, making whatever is nearest look bigger, so step back a little when you're judging the line of the nose and chin.
Besides turning the model to a side view in the viewer, if you want to save the right and left sides together as one image, press "Save reference sheet (4 views)" below the 360° video button on the page of a work that has a 3D model. It saves a single PNG showing the front, right side, back and left side, and it doesn't use any tokens. The views are rendered without perspective distortion, which makes it easier to compare where the nose and chin sit in profile with the front view. What the sheet shows is the 3D model itself, with the sides and back filled in by AI during 3D conversion. Also, if your original drawing faces slightly to one side, the two side views may not come out cleanly side-on.
Frequently asked questions
My character looks like someone else only in profile. What should I match?
First, check with horizontal lines that the eyes, base of the nose, and chin sit at the same heights in both views. If they do and the profile still looks off, the parts only the profile decides (the height of the nose, the shape of the chin, the thickness of the bangs) may not match the impression your front view gives. Put the two side by side and match the hair silhouette and the way you color the eyes, and the profile will read as the same character more easily.
Can I upload a profile drawing to Figmee and turn it into 3D?
You can upload one, but drawings at an angle close to the front work best as input. We recommend making the 3D model from a front view, turning it to the side in the viewer, and comparing it with the profile you drew. Photos of real people's profiles, and images that look like photos, can't be turned into 3D. If an image is judged to be a photo, generation stops and the tokens you used are refunded automatically.
How many tokens does it take to check a profile in 3D?
To stop the model at an exact side view, you need one figurine-style image (1–3 tokens depending on quality) and one 3D model. Your first 3D model per account is free, so the 5 free tokens you get when you sign up (valid for 3 months from registration, granted on first registration only) are enough to check your first character's profile. After that, a model costs 5 tokens, and extra tokens cost $5.99 for 5. If a generation fails, the tokens you used are refunded automatically. The whole process of turning a drawing into 3D is covered in How to Turn an Illustration into 3D.
Summary
A side profile holds together when you lock down three things: the head circle and cross, the eye and ear at the same height, and the chin on the line dropped from the eye. For your own character, derive the profile from horizontal lines run out of your front view, then decide the nose height, chin shape, and bang thickness in profile and write them down so the next drawing doesn't drift. Faces seen from above and below are covered in How to Draw Characters from High and Low Angles.
Sources
- CLIP STUDIO drawing guide (Celsys): "How to Draw a Side Profile: Placing and Balancing Facial Features" (in Japanese): treating the head as a ball, the circle's center and the ear, placement of the eye, ear, nose, lips, and chin
- CLIP STUDIO drawing guide (Celsys): "How to Draw Profile and Three-Quarter Faces" (in Japanese): the five guide lines, ear height, neck and nape, how the hair sits on the head
- MediBang Paint: "Let's learn how to draw a profile face!": eye and pupil shape in profile, eye height and age, the mouth, the line from nose to chin, common mistakes
- CLIP STUDIO: "Preparing guide drawings," Metasequoia tutorial by Celsys (in Japanese): horizontal guides from the front face for the profile, the volume of the bangs
