SAME FACE SYNDROME IN ART When every face looks the same

Hello guys! Today's video is going to be about the dreaded Same Face Syndrome, which is something that I have struggled with for a very, very long time and I feel like I'm only just now kind of coming out of it, but not completely. I feel like it is still, to a certain extent, very prevalent in my art and I do have some people point it out from time to time and that is one of the reasons I'm making this video because I just kind of want to talk about what Same Face Syndrome is, whether it really matters that much and also how you can overcome it if you yourself have it. So Same Face Syndrome is basically when you repeatedly draw the same face on every single character, even if they're different ages or different ethnicities, you're kind of going with the same features again and again. And according to Urban Dictionary, this usually stems from a lack of artistic ability or knowledge. Now you'll notice in this video I am drawing from a reference right now and what I've done is I've basically collected a load of different face references from Pinterest that were all quite different from one another. So what I'm doing is basically just some portrait practice of lots of different faces and facial features because I feel like that is one of the main ways, leading on from how you overcome Same Face Syndrome, one of the main ways is by studying lots of different faces from reference and using that as a way to work out how do I incorporate this into my style. So a lot of people will use the excuse of art style for Same Face Syndrome. I myself have used this excuse in the past and I've been posting videos to this channel since I was 14 and when I was 14 my Same Face Syndrome was very strong and I would always say, oh that's just my art style. Now that it's been a few years and I've had a lot more practice with drawing, I do think it is possible to have an art style but still be able to capture different faces within that same art style. So as someone who is working on a comic myself, it's very important to me that I can draw each of my character's faces differently so it's clear that they are all unique and different from one another. I've also designed them with a sort of subconscious shape language in mind. So my main protagonist, Ember, is made up of lots of round and circular shapes which is sort of, in a way, a reflection of her character. She's very kind and gentle. Even down to her face kind of represents that in a way. Whereas Akira has much more sharp and angular shapes in her design and that's one of the ways I've differentiated between the two of them. Akira's sharp angles also kind of reflect how she's very moody and standoffish as a character. These two are very much polar opposites and I wanted that to be very clear in their designs as well. However, if you were to look at some of my really really old Instagram posts, especially from around 2015-2016, that's when the Same Face Syndrome was especially bad and a lot of my old drawings of Ember and Akira, it kind of just looks like the same person again with a different eye colour and a different hair colour. So some of you may actually be wondering, why is this a bad thing? And actually, I had a lot of people tell me that they had the opposite problem. So they couldn't consistently draw the same character over and over again. So that is one instance where having Same Face Syndrome would be a good thing. When you're trying to draw the same character again and again, it's good to have a consistency there so you can tell it is the same character. I also used to have this problem of not being able to capture the same character over and over. The weird thing was, I had, at the same time, simultaneously, had Same Face Syndrome with characters that were different, but not with the characters that were the same. It was so annoying. One of the main ways that I've kind of got used to making sure I capture the same features for the same character is by having those set shapes that they are made up of. That makes it a lot easier to keep to those same features again and again, in the one case where it is desirable to do so. So for any of you guys out there who are struggling to actually capture the same face again and again for a character that you're trying to draw more than once, then that is probably my tip for you. Break that character down into their simple shapes and their simple proportions so you make sure you get those exact shapes and proportions the same every single time. So I also had someone ask me, what about if you have a more simplistic art style? And I think this is a really interesting point because with a more simplistic art style, it gets a little bit more difficult to capture the small little varieties between the faces. You often hear a lot of examples like, I don't know, a good example would be Adventure Time. A lot of the faces in Adventure Time are very similar but because it's a very simplistic art style and it's consistent throughout Adventure Time, you can kind of get away with it. That's kind of another instance where same face syndrome doesn't really matter. But this kind of leads onto my next point of, does same face syndrome really matter? Now I actually asked all my Instagram followers to kind of give me input and tell me what their opinions were on the matter of same face syndrome and I got such a big variety of different responses and I think it's really nice to have a discussion about this topic because clearly there are a lot of different opinions on it and that was another thing I wanted to say. If you guys do discuss this in the comments below, please be very kind and respectful to one another. This is just a very chilled discussion of the matter. I will read out to you some of the responses I got but one of the ones that I found most interesting and it kind of really resonated with me was, if someone is drawing for fun, who cares if they have same face syndrome? And I think that was a really good point and it kind of tied right into what Canary Witch was saying when I was asking her about her opinions on same face syndrome when I was doing a live stream on my second channel of me drawing all these portraits in this video and she kind of brought up the point of, if people are just having fun and drawing then it doesn't really matter at the end of the day. I really do believe it is kind of situational. It really depends what you're trying to do with your art. If you're trying to become a professional artist or a professional character designer or concept artist, it is within your interest to make sure you do create lots of different faces within your art and be able to capture it. Especially as a concept artist, you have to come up with concepts of different characters. So if you're coming up with the same kind of character every time, then that's the only kind of character that's going to be represented which is not a good thing. But if someone is just drawing for fun, I don't think it really matters if they have same face syndrome. So if you're watching this and you're freaking out because you're like, oh my god I have same face syndrome, I've got to fix this right now. It really depends on what you want to do with your art and how seriously you want to take it and whether or not you really care at the end of the day. Another really good point that was brought up was how same face syndrome often occurs when people have a fear of not making their characters pretty enough. And that was definitely the case for me in those earlier posts I was showing you where I was having the same face being shown again and again on Ember and Akira. But interestingly enough, as soon as I started drawing Akira a lot more differently to Ember with much more stronger features, with much stronger cheekbones and a much stronger jawline, people started criticising my drawings of Akira for looking too manly and not looking feminine enough. But I don't really think that's a viable criticism because a lot of girls will have features that are more typically associated with masculinity like a stronger jawline. That doesn't mean you can't draw a girl with a stronger jawline. And it's kind of weird because I was criticised when I was drawing them the same, but criticised when I was drawing them differently. And that's another point I have which is that I feel like as an artist sometimes you just can't win, you'll just get criticised whatever you do, so you might as well just do what you want to do at the end of the day. A few other responses that I got to my Instagram story was that there's also a thing called same body syndrome, which along the same lines is when you draw the same body type for all your female characters and the same body type for all of your male characters. Now I'm actually going to provide an example for you of an instance where I did two very different body types and this was in an old comic and I did this about a year ago, so if you haven't checked out that video there are two main protagonists of that comic and one is quite short and plump and the other one is very tall and slender and I wanted to have them look very different in their character designs because once again like Ember and Akira they are completely different characters and quite opposite of each other so their bodies reflect that too. You'll notice a lot of artists will draw the same kind of slim body type over and over again but because people do come in different shapes and sizes even if they are slim or bigger there's still so many different shapes and sizes and variety within the different categories of body type so it's just more interesting to play around with different body types and heights especially if you have a lineup of characters for a comic. So the final thing I wanted to talk about was that someone mentioned that once you like something you stick with it instead of trying something new. Another person mentioned that they feel like artists are afraid that exaggerating and I think that is very accurate. I feel like a lot of us are scared that if we stray too much from what we're currently doing it will look unappealing in a way and if you stray too much from that perfect pretty looking face then it's not going to look as good but in a way it will be way more interesting if you break away from drawing just the same kind of face every single time because there's a lot more variety and the other day I actually posted a cat drawing on my instagram and it was just a really nice change to draw a cat it made me think why don't I draw different things more often? This isn't really part of the same face syndrome thing this is more of like a subject matter thing but I think when you draw different things you break out of your comfort zone and you just get better at drawing in general so I think the real takeaway of this video is that it really depends what your art goals are and what you're aiming towards and whether you really mind that you have same face syndrome or if that's something you want to fix within your art. Someone asked me how do you know if you have same face syndrome and I guess one of the ways is just by asking people for constructive criticism a lot of the time people will point it out if you have same face syndrome and yeah that's kind of the real takeaway of this and personally I'm going to keep doing studies like the ones in this video in fact I really want to do the Ahmed Aldori's 100 face drawing challenge where you draw 100 faces in 10 days so you draw 10 faces per day and it's a pinterest board of 100 faces there are set ones for the challenge that you can draw and I really want to try that because I think this will really help me fully break out of the same face syndrome thing. So yeah it doesn't really matter it all just kind of depends on your personal preferences what your art goals are and whether you feel like you are limiting yourself or holding yourself back in any way by kind of consistently doing the same kind of faces it's really all about character appeal and it will make your characters a lot more interesting and appealing if they do look slightly different from each other and if you have a way of working their personality into their appearance as well that will also be a really cool thing you can do to push your characters a little bit further. I really hope this video was informative for you guys please let me know what your opinions are on the matter below whether or not you think you have same face syndrome whether or not you think it's a big deal and yeah I'll see you guys in the next video. Bye guys!