favorite designs among cartoon characters.

T

Teach31

New member
They say it's the inside that counts, but not in this thread it isn't! let's get superficial and swoon over our favorite designs in the cartoon medium (and since comic book/strip and video game characters oftan fall into the general category of "cartoon characters" design-wise, lets include those as well). If it's a character that few people might know about, then you might want to include a picture.

Some of my favorites (i'll probably post some more later):

Classic Mickey and Minnie
I love the basic, traditional "funny animal" design, with the big head, big eyes, short and chubby body and skinny arms and legs, and Mickey and his gurl are among my favorite examples of this type of character. And while they look mostly similar today as they did back in their heyday of the eraly 30's, there are certain differences that makes me want to specifically point out that it's the old designs that i prefer. Namely, they had bigger eyes back then, chalk white faces (other than the boring "human color" they would later get), a rounder lower body (which i consider to actually work best for Minnie, since the wide hip area can be percieved as vaugley feminine) and were often drawn with longer, "rubber hose"-like limbs. All of these things added to their charm.

The Powerpuff Girls
Minimalism at it's finest. No ears, noses, fingers or toes. When you look at a Powerpuff Girl, you more or less just see a face with a pair of enormous eyes (with the tiny body bellow the face not really being noticable). And there is just something appealing about that.

Pikachu
I'll be frank: Pikachu is the cutest thing ever. Ever. As we all know, the "aaah, that's sooooo cute!"-feelings that mother nature intended for us to direct towards young ones of our own species easily "spills over" to various animals. And Pikachu, being some kind of mixture between a bunch of such animals, is, at least as far as i am concerned, an absolute master at awakening these feelings.
 
My favorite character designs of cartoon characters would have to be ones in 6teen and Stoked. Come on, you gotta love the 6teen and Stoked animation.

My favorites are...

6TEEN (Caitlin): I love the way they designed her outfit, her personality, her character, and her dorky lemon hat.

6TEEN (Serena): I like the design of her. I think she has a nice personality and a nice hair style.

6TEEN (Jude): I love how they designed his personality, and I love how he always wears a hat.

STOKED (Reef): I love how they designed his dorky outfit for his job as a surf instructor.

STOKED (Lo): I love the way her hair is and the way they designed her personality.

STOKED (Johnny): I love the way they designed his personality and his character design, even if it has a sucky uniform for the hotel.
 
I really like the designs for Susan & Mary Test from Johnny Test. I like how they each have different styled hair, different shaped glasses and distinctive outfits, and yet are still undeniably twins. I like Mary's "girly tomboy" look and Susan's more traditional "girly-girl" look. I also like how each of them always wears her own identifying symbol (Susan = star, Mary = crescent moon). I also like the design of their mother, Lila Test, because I like her face (especially her big blue eyes) and also because a woman in a short-skirted dress suit is undeniably hot.

I like the design of teenage Trunks from Dragon Ball Z. The lavender hair and the purple Capsule Corps jacket make him look really cool and bad ice.

Caitlin (from 6Teen). I'm not a huge fan of the show, but I find her design to be very appealing. Her shortish blond hair and mini skirt et al. Caitlin is very, very cute.

Lo (from Stoked): I like her long reddish hair with the flower in it.

Chowder (from his own self titled show): For some reason, I really like this little guy's design. His big wide round head, his chubby body and his big purple hat and matching outfit. It might be because purple is my favorite color.

If video game characters count, then I'll say Sakura from the Street Fighter franchise. I can take or leave Sakura's short hair, but I can't resist a teenage girl in a Japanese schoolgirl uniform.

Rocko (from Rocko's Modern Life): Rocko's light blue pattern shirt with the triangles on it is one of the best character designs of all time.

Also, Daffy Duck: I like how his main color is black, one of my favorite colors. Daffy is the one toon who can the combination of black and orange (the color of his beak and feet) work.
 
Susan and Mary Test (Johnny Test): I've basically fallen in love with their designs. I like the stylized individualized hairstyle, eye color, glasses shape and outfit that each girl has, and I absolutely love the whole 'star and moon' motif that they have going in all of their outfits. The Test Twins are super-cute.

Kim Possible (from the show of the same name): Another cutie. I like the orange hair and the big blue eyes. KP is very appealing. Same deal with her mom.

Caitlin, Kirsten and Kristen (6Teen): The show itself isn't really made for 41-year-old cranks like me, but I do like the designs for these characters. I just like girly-girls, I guess.

Finn (Stoked): Not to be confused with the star of Adventure Time, I'm talking about the tomboyish surfer girl. Again, the show's not really for me (see above), but I find Finn's "girly tomboy" look very appealing.

Toph (Avatar): Another cute little tomboy. The fact that she's constantly covered in dirt is actually part of her appeal.

Katie and Sadie (the Total Drama series): Again, I'm not into the shows, but I love the BFFFL's designs. I thought making Katie thin and tan and Sadie overweight and pale was a nice touch.

Cheyenne Cinnamon: (As you can tell, I like a lot of female toons :sweat:) Once more, I wasn't thrilled by the "adult for the sake of being adult" turn that the creators opted to to go with for the pilot, having the title character go the typical drunk slutty trainwreck route and so forth, but despite those flaws, I find Cheyenne herself to be terribly cute.

Goku (Dragon Ball/Z/GT): Son's pointy hair and orange gi are very distinctive and cool looking.

Golden Eye Husky (Hero:108): The show itself left much to be desired, but I did like many of the stylized art deco designs for many of the various animal species on the show, most notably the pandas, the tigers, the lions and the ligers. I particularly like GEH's design; he manages to look fierce and cute at the same time.

Leonard Powers (Ugly Americans): It's a white-bearded wizard stuffed into a collared shirt and tie adorned with stars and moons to match his pointy wizard's hat. Simple yet brilliant.
 
Bonkers - Generally, I'd say he has extremely colorful fur. In the Lucky Piquel episodes, I especially like Bonker's appearances which include black spots on his whiskers and legs, and black stripes on his tail.

Edd - Largely because of his black cap. Double D's intention to keep the top of his head concealed truly makes his personality unique. Only three long hairs are seen.

Goofy - Of course, it's his buck teeth and big feet that make him look goofy. Also, that trademark "a-hyuck!" laugh I like is cheery.
 
Which Daffy? Theres a few different designs but they're all similar.
Whats your take on Felix?

Anyway, here are some of my favorites:
MGM Tom (Tom and Jerry): Functional and beleivable, no styling tricks aside from eyes and simplefied fur detail.

1940's Daffy: Aagain, appealing and functional, its capable of many facial expressions.

Nate the Dragon (a one shot Terrible Thunder lizards character): Same reasons but his designs more basic, its essentially a design that you could doodle and it would still look workable!
 
Yeah, I love classic Mickey and Minnie designs. I wish Disney would make a movie using them. I don't really care much for the more modern-looking versions. They look kind of blah and generic.

As for other character designs, I like the design for Gunther in Kick Buttowski. He's awesome, cute and funny. Classic Nordic nerd LOL.

I like the Sonic designs, especially in Sonic X. All the characters look really good in that show.

The designs for Spongebob are really good, although I don't much watch that show anymore (Spongebob is getting annoying and stupid. New writers please!)

I like Dukey's design on Johnny Test. It's very original looking, the opposite of Butch Hartman's Tuff Puppy, which just looks like another variation of Snoopy.

The monsters in Monsters Inc. are all great, especially Randall, Mike and Sully. Totally cool.

Maleficent the dragon in Sleeping Beauty. Most awesome dragon ever.

All of the characters in the Astro Boy movie are well designed. None of the humans look ugly and rubbery, which is unusual for CGI humans. Even some of Pixar's human characters look unpleasant sometimes. But that's not the case in Astro Boy.

The Pink Panther's original design, from the first movie. I wish it had stayed that way. He was more of a quadruped, and was fun and slinky. Now he's a boring bigfooted character, and really bland.

The character and creature designs in Avatar the Last Airbender are fantastic. I hope they translate well to the live-action film that's coming out this summer (can't wait!!!!)

That's all I can think of for now.
 
Love him as well. After all, as far as i know, that character is the originator of that standard "funny animal" form i mentioned. And what i really love about him is that, unlike Mickey, after all these years he still looks (pretty much) like he has ever since the 20's. The fact that a character with such an increadibly old-school look still occasionaly (much to rarely, but still) gets to show up in new animation is just to cool.
 
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