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One of the “essential” sub-types of anime/manga-style art is something called “Super Deformed“, often shortened to SD and commonly called “chibi“, although the latter isn’t entirely the most accurate term, as it simply means “small”.

SD is often used for small little caricature drawings of key characters, usually in whimsical or humorous situations. Sometimes it’s used for short omake (”extra/bonus”) strips found in between chapters of an actual manga, or in bonus materials, such as source and art books. They are also used for title cards and small segments in anime.

Key features of SD are typically an extremely enlarged head, with features further exaggerated from the normal style, and a very small, stunted body with disproportionately shrunken limbs and oftentimes much less detail used in the character and its outfit, overall.

However, in my time as an artist, I’ve broken away from the anime/manga-derivative that is so commonplace nowadays and have meshed that with a more western comic book style, resulting in my own personal version of the SD character. Unlike the stereotypical form, my SD characters aren’t grossly exaggerated; they do indeed have smaller bodies, shorter limbs, a chunkier overall appearance, less detail overall and a somewhat larger than normal head, but that’s usually where it stops (Examples: one and two). Some have told me it’s hard to recognize this sub-style of mine as SD, but when you compare it to what I employ in “normal” full-body character studies, the differences become much more evident.

I’m reluctant to address this with something along the lines of, “It’s my style,” because while it’s true, I’ve seen that same line of logic used by people in all the wrong situations, where they employ it as some kind of defense against improving their ability and excusing laziness and a lack of dedication to their artwork. However, I guess it just goes to show, there’s more than one way to approach a style of artwork, even if it means bending the rules, so to speak.