Facial Expressions

The face conveys A LOT- and going even further than that, the eyes( and eyebrows) do most of the work. Yasuhiro Nightow, one of the co-authors of 'How to pen and Ink,' went so far as to say he started every drawing with the eyes because of their importance.

When drawing your character, you want them to express all kinds of things: Joy, hatred, grief- and you can't do that with one expression. Most tutorials always have smiling characters, but no one smiles all the time; not me, and probably not the star of your manga.

 This is Sam. Sam looks boring in the first one( and kinda paranoid... idk why). boring. But add some extra lines, change his eyebrows and he comes alive- a breathing, feeling character.

Every emotion has different levels. Is your character annoyed or is he full-blown furious?

This 'emotion gradient' (lol) shows different heights of 4 emotions. In the last one, the chibi goes from upset to despondent and in tears. Try varying your characters emotion palette to create a more captivating character. Neutral is BORING, but having your character running around screaming the entire time is too.

I created this chibi facial expression chart and tried to do a few unusual ones, like disgust and the second-to-last one which is kind of a secretive 'well, look who's here.'