Thick Line Animation



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 60's and 70's, 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 so it remains to this day. Shows animated in Flash tend to look good in this style.

This is sometimes considered to be among the most defining traits of early 21st-Century American animation, mostly when contrasted with the similar "Anime=big eyes" notion to emphasize the differences between U.S. and Japanese animation.

Compare and contrast Limited Animation, Web Animation, Super-Deformed.

Anime and Manga

 * Used in the Dragonball Z film Fusion Reborn. Especially apparent during Goten and Trunks' fight with Hitler.
 * Applied at times on the character designs in Samurai Champloo.
 * Other anime include Kaiji and Akagi both the works of Nobuyuki Fukumoto and both animated by Madhouse.
 * The western animation-like anime Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt by Gainax
 * Fullmetal Alchemist has done a couple Art Shifts to this type of style for some comical moments.
 * Koe de Oshigoto!! uses this as an artistic direction; it's used to emulate the look of Eroge CG's.
 * Appears in episode 7 of the Katanagatari anime.
 * Some episodes of Digimon Savers 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.

Film

 * A Scanner Darkly
 * The Secret of Kells, though it was Invoked purposely to resemble medieval illustrations.

Web Animation

 * Pucca is a non-American example.
 * Homestar Runner
 * Happy Tree Friends

Western Animation

 * Hanna-Barbera's resurrection after several years in the wilderness in the 90s led to the renaissance of the style and its increased use in modern animated series.
 * Two Stupid Dogs
 * Dexter's Laboratory
 * The Powerpuff Girls
 * Johnny Bravo
 * Clerks the Animated Series
 * Duck Dodgers
 * Star Wars: Clone Wars
 * The Fairly OddParents
 * The Venture Bros
 * Danny Phantom
 * Atomic Betty
 * Kappa Mikey: Played with, where only Mikey is drawn this way; his Japanese costars have thin outlines and are Animesque.
 * The Henry and June shorts on KaBlam! (though more often in later seasons)
 * Xiaolin Showdown
 * Yin Yang Yo!
 * Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!.
 * Class of 3000
 * The Replacements
 * SpongeBob SquarePants (Normally only Squidward)
 * Wayside School
 * Mucha Lucha
 * My Life as a Teenage Robot went out of its way to look like 1940s animation as much as freakishly possible.
 * Kim Possible
 * King Arthur's Disasters
 * Daria
 * Teamo Supremo
 * Total Drama Island/ Action/ World Tour/ Reloaded
 * Batman: The Brave and the Bold
 * Blazing Dragons (The cartoon not the video game) Season 2 had thick lines (along with some radical changes in character design) that was a sharp contrast to the cleaner look of season 1.
 * Word Girl
 * The Secret Saturdays
 * Jimmy Two-Shoes
 * Trollz
 * All of the marine animals from Fish Hooks.
 * My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic uses a variation with colored outlines instead of plain black.
 * Sym-Bionic Titan
 * Invader Zim, uses this in a few episodes; Zim's antennae are noticeably thicker than usual in them.
 * The Looney Tunes Show
 * Phineas and Ferb
 * Almost Naked Animals
 * Some of the cel-animated characters from The Amazing World of Gumball
 * Clone High almost looks like it shares the same character designers as Dexter's Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls.
 * Any season one episode of Tiny Toon Adventures animated by Wang Film Productions and -due to inconsistency- Kennedy Cartoons.
 * Good Vibes
 * 101 Dalmatians: The Series
 * Eliot Kid
 * Boj
 * Doodlebops Rockin' Road Show
 * Oddballs: While the art style is usually thin-line, some of the characters and objects have thick black borders around them.

Video Games

 * Cel Shading tends to look like this
 * Due to Capcom porting her sprite straight from Vampire Savior/Darkstalkers 3, Morrigan was this in Capcom vs. SNK 2 and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 in comparison to the other newer sprites.
 * Borderlands uses this effectively for comic like graphics.
 * A majority of sprites from video games made specifically for the NES, such as Super Mario Bros 3.
 * Angry Birds
 * Rayman Origins

Advertising

 * Esurance insurance commercials.

Web Comics

 * Ditto for later installments of the web comic Mac Hall.
 * Faye's flashbacks in Questionable Content.
 * The entire run of Garanos.
 * Cast of Homestuck is normally represented by chibi-like "sprites" with outline, but lose it and gain normal human proportions when in Hero Mode.

Western Animation

 * Samurai Jack sported no outlines. Genndy Tartakovsky once mentioned how this contrasted with his last work, Dexter's Laboratory.
 * Same with Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends.
 * The X's
 * 6teen
 * Stoked