Only Six Faces: Difference between revisions

** Young Zangetsu looks like the love-child of Aizen and Byakuya, and both the current manga villain and the Kubo-designed villain for the Hell movie basically look like Aizen with a haircut and different clothes. The trope is also in effect with the manga's final recent arc, most notable with {{spoiler|the Vandenreich's various members.}}

* Going back to his previous work, ''[[Zombie Powder]]'', you'll find most girls tend to have the exact same face, but with a different haircut.

* ''[[Dragon Ball]]'' uses this often, with about five or six major body types copied over and over again due to the large amount of alien and monstrous races; this results in bizarre circumstances when characters like Vegeta and Jeiice meet up, especially when they wear the same uniform. In contrast, Bulma is one of the series's only reoccurring females, so she's often given a different design.

** Here's an example of background extras who resemble main characters: [http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2hi4egp&s=7 It's something else]

* Ignoring the expy nature of most of the side characters from [[Sailor Moon]]—imported from Codename wa Sailor V--Takeuchi really only has about six faces for all her series: The deep male, the innocent male, the mature female, the innocent female, the cheery female, and the nondescript either.

** This is slightly subverted in that the main characters tend to have unique faces from the rest of their cast, but identical faces to main characters in other series.

* Lampshaded in a ''[[Gintama]]'' omake, where Ginpachi-sensei explains how to draw the characters.

{{quote|"Next I'll teach you how to draw Shinpachi and Kagura. Draw a normal guy; make him as bland as possible. Then give him glasses. You're done! Next, how to draw Kagura. Take off Shinpachi's glasses and change the hair to white. Then give her dumplings. You're done!"}}

* Tom Grummett's characters tend to all have the same face. This makes it awkward when drawing characters who are romantically involved, such as Superboy and Wonder Girl, or Mach-IV and Songbird.

* Mark Bagley is a major offender, especially in ''[[Ultimate Spider-Man]].'' He is often forgiven for this because he is an inhumanly fast penciller - in an era where comic fans are used to delays, Bagley has a habit of getting issues out early.

*** Similarly, the Ultimate Richard Parker was immediately recognizable as the 616 version of Peter Parker.

* [[Elf Quest]] was a rare aversion. Wendy Pini kept a concordance of the shapes of eyes, facial structure, etc., so that her elves definitely weren't the same faces with different (extremely elaborate) hairdos. Although elves are all slender and have bodies that are considered attractive in this culture, there was a lot of variation in that shapeliness, on the men and especially the women.

* It's an awfully common thing for the awfully generic products that fill 90% of the [[Dating Sim]] market. This is visible in almost everything, stock character designs, stock plots, stock character types, stock Photoshop glowing pink, etc. [http://japanisnotoriginalatanime.ytmnd.com/ This YTMND animation] gives a really good example.

** Note that the characters featured in that animation are all designed by Naru Nanao; a couple of them even come from the same game. Her later designs vary a bit more.

** Possibly the worst offender is Aoi Nishimata, possibly best known as one of the character designers for ''[[SHUFFLE!]]''. (Examples: [[media:nishimata-aoi-faces 8348.jpg|One]], [[media:marriage-royale-prism-story-character-comparison-001 8390.jpg|Two]], [[media:marriage-royale-prism-story-character-comparison-002 8767.jpg|Three]], [http://danbooru.donmai.us/post/show/50083/ Four].)

** Forget stock 'designs', the game [[Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru]] ''literally'' uses the same three character pictures for any random students who aren't part of the main cast. This includes several named characters who are part of the Student Council during Takako's plot.

== Webcomics ==

* ''[[Achewood]]'' falls into this trope at times. Since the introduction of Ray, Pat, and Roast Beef, it has been revealed that the majority of the animal population are cats (dogs have been established as typically non-anthropomorphic and excluded from the animal underground.) In keeping with Onstad's generally minimalist art style, most of the cats are interchangeable in terms of facial features. There are three or four body types, and a couple of heads to go with them, and generally the eyes, muzzle and ears of the cats are exactly the same (exceptions being Ray and his family, as well as his ex-current-ex-business partner-ex-girlfriend Tina, who have been identified as American Curls.)

* ''[[Real Life Comics]]'' does something similar.

* Everyone in ''[[Dominic Deegan]]'' would be almost indistinguishable from one another if they all shaved their heads if not for the eyelashes and occasional orc fangs.

*** Note that the skulls in question aren't the least bit similar in shape to the heads of living characters.

** Vaarsuvius, whose sex is deliberately ambiguous, is a hybrid, with features [[Bifauxnen|higher on his/her face than a woman's]] [[Bishounen|but lower than a man's]].

* Many of the characters in ''[[Jack (webcomic)|Jack]]'' are essentially the same model with different markings. It's very hard to tell what species some of them are meant to be without being told (Arloest is a panda; Farrago is a ferret; it's hard enough to tell them apart, let alone discern their respective species).

* ''[[Concession]]'' was originally like this, with cat, mouse, wolf and even ''pangolin'' looking almost exactly alike. After being called out on this several times, the artist initially excused it by saying that a more realistic pangolin face would look ugly, but later redesigned the characters to look more distinct from each other.

{{quote|'''Stan:''' Let's go!

'''Kyle:''' I'm not going anywhere!

'''Stan:''' Oh wait, who am I again? }}

*** For that matter, it's even possible to tell Supergirl apart from her clone Galatea due to the latter's bulkier muscles.

* ''[[Spider-Man: The New Animated Series]]'' had six background characters that were continuously reused in different contexts. Sometimes they even played different "roles" in the same episode.

** And used for effect within the show itself, where Krusty is just Homer with hair and a different voice. [[Word of God|Matt Groening said]] the idea was the irony that Bart had no respect for his father but worshipped a clown that looks just like him.

*** This gets a [[Lampshade Hanging]] in one episode where Homer becomes a licensed Krusty impersonator. When confronted by [[The Mafia]], Krusty plays a human [[Shell Game]], which results in the mobsters being unable to tell them apart until [[Too Dumb to Live|Homer says "Good one, Krusty!"]].

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[[Category:Lazy Artist]]