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Thick-Line Animation - TV Tropes

An animation style characterized by visible heavy black borders around characters and objects.

This style began being used by a few animation companies in the early 1950s (mostly UPA, of "Gerald McBoing-Boing" and Mr. Magoo fame), and became dominant in American TV animation during the '60s and '70s, eclipsing the more naturalistic style used in most animation during earlier decades. It was phased out during the early '80s, when more naturalistic styles again became dominant in American animation, but then became the standard yet again (on television at least) during the late '90s, and has remained in active use to this day — shows animated in Adobe Flash and Toon Boom tend to look especially good in this style. However, as of the The New '20s, most mainstream television animation in the US has switched to its less detailed, more expressive cousin: Thin-Line Animation.

This is sometimes considered to be among the most defining traits of modern day American animation, mostly when contrasted with the similar "anime=big eyes" notion to emphasize the differences between U.S. and Japanese animation. When this art style does show up in Japanese media, it tends to have uneven lines and crayon shading in imitation of children's doodles (rakugaki).

Compare and contrast Limited Animation, Web Animation, Super-Deformed, Mismatched Atomic Expressionism.

• Western Animation

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 

• A Jell-O commercial featuring Alice from Alice in Wonderland (1951) talking with the Griffin and the Mock Turtle used this. The animation recycled from Alice's movie even had the outlines thickened to match.
• Some Pokémon artwork on the newer Pokémon-related advertisements are depicted in this manner, with Pikachu being depicted with an oval head in this artstyle. ^note This style started during Generation 5 (the Black/White era), being used in both the Dream World and Global Link web applications. While both have gone out of service, the newer generations still get the thick-line treatment.

    Anime & Manga 

• Attack on Titan: It's not of uniform thickness, though, giving the impression of a brush pen.
• Aggretsuko used the thick-lining anime style.
• Close-up shots in Casshern Sins usually have this.
• Some episodes of Digimon Data Squad animate the child-level mons in this style, particularly in the series' tail end. It's very inconsistently done and is probably a product of the Off-Model Art Shifts which plague the series.
• Used in the Dragon Ball Z film Fusion Reborn during the comedic scenes set on Earth. It's particularly noticeable during Goten and Trunks' fight with The Dictator and his army. For all other scenes, such as those set within the Other World, the art style reverts to the standard used throughout the rest of the franchise.
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba often uses thick lines in some shots and comedic takes.
• Fullmetal Alchemist has done a couple Art Shifts to this type of style for some comical moments.
  • The first ending of Brotherhood is entirely animated in thick lines and crayon colors, representing drawings made by Ed and Al before they lost their bodies.
• Hellsing is different in how the anime and OVA series averts it when the manga has very noticeable thick line drawing.
• The mochi segments in the fifth season of Hetalia: Axis Powers use this.
• The anime adaption of Samurai Girls uses this in the character designs and weapons. The general art style resembles traditional ink painting.
• Kaiji and Akagi both the works of Nobuyuki Fukumoto and both animated by Madhouse.
• Appears in episode 7 of the Katanagatari anime, which is closer to the art style of the original light novels' illustrations.
• Koe de Oshigoto! uses this as an artistic direction; it's used to emulate the look of Eroge CG's.
• The western animation-like anime Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt by Gainax. In fact it uses the same art style as The Powerpuff Girls (1998).
• The western animation-like anime Space Patrol Luluco by Studio Trigger.
• Applied at times on the character designs in Samurai Champloo.
• Used in Super Milk Chan making it look a lot like a mix of Ren & Stimpy, Dr. Seuss, and The Powerpuff Girls (1998).
• The fourth episode of Dragon Ball Super is full of this, particularly the scenes with Emperor Pilaf.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! features this from time to time. Notably during closeups of the characters' faces.
• Any work of Kouta Hirano, where it's used to accentuate the angular, dynamic designs of his Noodle People characters, though it's less pronounced in the TV version of Hellsing. OVAs and Drifters, OTOH...
• The anime for Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun consistently depicts characters and objects with thick outlines.

    Asian Animation 

• The characters in Happy Friends have always been drawn with noticeable outlines, but the outlines become thicker in the art style from Season 10 onwards.

    Films — Animation 

• A Scanner Darkly
• The Secret of Kells, though it was invoked purposely to resemble medieval illustrations.
• Aladdin utilizes this sort of style to mimic the inking of Al Hirschfeld's drawings.
• In Fantasia 2000, the Rhapsody in Blue segment utilizes this to an even greater extent, being more directly based on Hirschfeld.

    Live-Action TV 

    Softwares 

• The Windows 10 emoji art since the Anniversary Update. Besides fitting with the flat Metro look, it also helps it show up better on backgrounds of any color.

    Video Games 

• Early cel-shaded games such as Jet Set Radio and Cel Damage utilized bold outlines.
• Alien Hominid, Castle Crashers, and Super Meat Boy, all made by the Newgrounds.
• Angry Birds (mainly from 2009 to 2012)
• Awesomenauts
• Among Us
• Battletoads (2020) And this is the part most criticized for this ugly and simplistic art style. everybody cross out this style as it were Thin-Line Animation, But it is actually not, because it has too angular shapes and outlines are thicker.
• Beastieball Has This in particular.
• Bendy and the Ink Machine gives most objects scratchy outlines of varying thickness to look like a black-and-white cartoon from the 30s. The characters notably have no outlines, although Bendy and the Dark Revival gave them thin glowing white outlines for a more convincingly hands drawn appearance.
• The Binding of Isaac uses this animation style to take the edge off of just how screwed up everything is.
• Borderlands uses this effectively for comic like graphics.
• Brawlhalla
• Clam Man
• Cookie Run (2013)
• CookieRun: OvenBreak
• CookieRun: Kingdom
• Cuphead used the 1930's cartoon-esque art style to make it look like the Mickey Mouse and Popeye cartoons.
• Champions Online has a graphics option for this.
• Friday Night Funkin', given its heavy inspiration from 2000s-era Flash games and animations, which also used thick-line animation.
• Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit
• Hollow Knight
• Ittle Dew, a twisted Zelda tribute game, utilizes an artstyle resembling Wind Waker's 2D artworks.
• The first three Mario & Luigi games had somewhat of a graffiti-style to it, with (you guessed it) thick outlines. It was dropped for the fourth game in favor of pseudo-3D sprites.
• Marvel vs. Capcom 3, as part of the game's comic book-inspired artstyle.
• Ninjabread Man The cover art of the game uses this. Along with the loading screen.
• Paper Mario
• PaRappa the Rapper
• Rakugakids has character sprites drawn this way, clashing with the realistically drawn backgrounds.
• Rayman Origins
• Rhythm Heaven
• Shantae
• The GBA game Sonic Battle, which sported a thick-lined graffiti style.
• Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS adds black borders around characters to make them more visually distinct on the handheld's relatively small screen, although the option to make them thin or remove them entirely is included.
• Skullgirls
• Scribblenauts
• WarioWare
• Yoshi's Island has this as a large part of the distinctive art style, though the thick lines are most noticeable on background objects.
• Yoshi's Story uses this in cutscenes.
• Zenless Zone Zero juggles a lot of artstyles to help flesh out it's world but the chibis used in the game's Special Programs◊ and elsewhere are in this style as fitting of the Turn of the Millennium-esque universe the game is set in.

    Web Animation 

    Webcomics 

• El Goonish Shive: As the artwork began to improve, the outlines became thicker.
• Penny Arcade used to have thick outlines (especially in the 2000-2003 strips), up until about 2008-2009, in which the outlines slowly became thinner.
• Most of the early VG Cats strips were depicted in this fashion (Mainly those from 2004-06). Thick lines are almost nowhere to be seen in later comics.
• Yume Hime
• Cyanide and Happiness

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