Sphere Eyes



"Bertha: "Your eyes look like hard-boiled eggs." Jon: "You don't say!" Bertha: "No! Really!""

- Square Root of Minus Garfield, 2011-10-9

The nature of drawing and animation lends itself to exaggerated and unrealistic depictions of living creatures, due to the freedom that the artistic form affords. Often cartoon characters are given large (or small), round/bulging eyes shaped like a geometric sphere or oval, often with tiny little dots for pupils. Alternatively, if a character with separate eyes has an excited or scared expression, his/her eyes can then change into this style.

Note that these eyes are connected to each other. If you want to add examples that include separate eyes, then do so on the inversions list. Otherwise, they're People Sit on Chairs.

Compare Conjoined Eyes, which uses just one eyeball with two pupils.

Not to be confused with Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises.

Comic Books, Newspaper Comics and Web Comics

 * Garfield is an example, since he (and most other characters in the strip) has huge eyes.
 * Jim Davis always uses this trope on his strips like U.S. Acres.
 * Surprisingly, despite practically being a trademark of Jim Davis, the sphere eyes were gained through Art Evolution, as the characters originally had normal circle eyes.
 * Most characters in Heathcliff have these too.
 * Mother Goose, Grimm and Attila in Mother Goose and Grimm.
 * Opus from Bloom County.
 * And don't forget Bill the Cat.
 * Most of the characters in Buckles, such as the title character.
 * Sherman's Lagoon is also an example of this.
 * The characters in Pearls Before Swine usually have these too.
 * This is also used in FoxTrot. It was even parodied in one strip where Paige cuts ping-pong balls in half and puts them over her eyes to give the impression that she's not falling asleep in class.
 * Exactly the same happens in Calvin & Hobbes, but since the characters are not normally drawn with Sphere Eyes it looks a bit creepy.
 * Adam@Home is another example.
 * Citizen Dog also uses these eyes.
 * Plus, it was used for characters in Matt Groening's comic strip Life in Hell.
 * The Groening-inspired character designs of Isaac Baranoff's Horndog and Here Wolf.
 * Sergeant Schlock from Schlock Mercenary. Justified as he's a Blob Monster, and the eyes are both discontiguous with the rest of his body, and interchangable.
 * Bob from The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob

Video Games

 * Rayman and other characters in the game have sphere eyes.
 * Present in pretty much any Rareware-made game you could care to name.
 * And by extension, Donkey Kong and his pals in Nintendo's post-Rare games.
 * Human Peasants (as well as Sheep) in Warcraft 3 are rather conspicuous for this, in contrast to most other units whom are modeled with regular eyes.
 * Hero Smash
 * Bubsy
 * Omnom.

Web Animation

 * Simon's Cat

Western Animation

 * Matt Groening uses this trope often by doing this to the majority of characters in The Simpsons and Futurama.
 * SpongeBob SquarePants also has huge sphere eyes.
 * Most characters in South Park.
 * In the Disney Animated Canon, some of the comic relief/cartoony characters, most notably Sebastian in The Little Mermaid and Mushu in Mulan, have sphere eyes.
 * Even animal characters in some non-Disney hand-drawn animated films, such as Batty Koda from Fern Gully, have these too.
 * Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends
 * Chowder
 * Roger Rabbit.
 * The main cast of Veggie Tales.
 * Eek! The Cat also has huge eyes, similar to Garfield.
 * Human characters in Adventure Time, if an emotion calls for them.
 * Rocko's Modern Life (however, it is inverted with the title character)
 * Catscratch
 * Buddy from Animaniacs.
 * Norbert from The Angry Beavers.
 * Regular Show
 * Mr. Bogus

Inversions

 * Pokey the horse from Gumby.
 * Many of Seth McFarlane's works like Family Guy, American Dad, and The Cleveland Show.
 * The Fairly OddParents: The eyes on these characters are actually somewhat of an inversion. Their eyes are large ovals but they are not connected together.
 * Many of Aardman Animations' characters.