Looksmaxing is a stupid made-up concept designed to be used to market appearance based scams at young people, mainly males, the way the beauty industry has been doing to women for decades. What it actually consists of is immature, undeveloped young people using plastic surgery, cosmetics, and digital filters to fake the features of a 30-40 something adult: prominent jaws, brows and cheekbones, thin cheeks, narrow eyes etc, basically just crudely ageing themselves up prematurely and ruining their faces for life. Young men are known for doing it but women are doing it just as much.

This keen awareness of age and facial structure brings me to our comicing skills… So what's the age of your characters and does that change? Depicting the ages of characters is something that all us comicers do. We pick ages that fit the characters and the stories and then we try and make them appear convincing somewhat. Sometimes our comics even call for us to show them at multiple ages as they age over time or show up in flashbacks or flash forwards.

Age mainly shows up in a character's face, but we see it in their body-shapes too: Children have proportionately much bigger heads and slimmer frames generally, with narrower hips and shoulders, adults have normally proportioned heads that are smaller, their bodies are thicker, wider shoulders and hips, while older people tend to stoop and bit more and their shoulders droop. Male figures develop more muscle as they age and lose all of it later. Female figures change proportions markedly with maturity as busts and hips widen and then wastes thicken and busts fall. -This is a simplification and doesn't account for weight gain/loss, exercise, or gender fluidity etc.

Faces change much more: eyes start off bigger and narrow over time as there's more flesh around them and cheek bones come forward as they accrete bone. Cheeks start off quite round and full, then thin and hollow out over time. Cheek, jaw, and brow bones became harder, more angular and prominent, on men more than women. Lips are small and full initially, they become wider with the mouth with age, and then thinner. Ears and noses increase in size with age. Teeth start off tiny, become bigger, then appear longer as gums recede, and even fall out. Jowls grow on cheeks and droop at the sides of jaws, fatty eye bags grow, expression lines around eyes, mouth, and forehead become permanent. On men, faces become hairier, foreheads grow as hair recedes, eyebrows and noses become bushier. Hair colour fades, and necks thicken and then thin and wrinkle.

Realistic teenagers and young adults are rarely depicted in comics, animation or even live action: People in that weird transition between childhood and adulthood with disproportionately long limbs, huge feet on skinny legs, long noses that don't fit their faces, stick thin limbs, bad patchy facial hair etc. For live action they typically either pick people who look too young or too old for their age to avoid those awkward looks, and unfortunately that gives real young adults an unrealistic impression of how they're "supposed" to appear.

So what are your tricks for looksmaxing your characters? haha!

This week our best-off from Gunwallace is: Old Dogs - The burning of an old fire, glowing red hot amongst the black coals and charred, ashen, grey wood. This is a gritty ode to grizzled, aged, experience and time. It's prickly, with a taste of rock and bourbon, like a good BBQ sauce. Originally from Quackcast 685, 30th of April, 2024.

Topics and shownotes

Featured comic: Turtle - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2026/jun/16/featured-comic-turtle/

Featured music: Old Dogs - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Old_Dogs/ - by JCorrachComics, rated A.

Special thanks to: Gunwallace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/ Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/ Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

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