Non-Standard Character Design: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* The Admirals Akainu, Kizaru, and Aokiji from ''[[One Piece]]'', who, mostly because they are based on actual actors, are drawn in a style more realistic than most others (especially Akainu), almost to the point of falling in the [[Uncanny Valley]].

** [[Mad Scientist|Caesar Clown]]'s design is remarkably different from most of the characters in the series, to the point of many fans thinking he looks like somebody out of [[Naruto]].

* Not unlike the ''[[South Park]]'' celebrities example are the monkey and dog in ''[[Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan|Bludgeoning Angel Dokurochan]]'', who look like people with photographed heads.

* In ''[[Cromartie High School]]'', whenever Kamiyama encounters one of his former middle school classmates, they're always depicted in a simplistic cartoony style that contrast the series' semi-realistic style.

** Guu herself has more simplistic style than the rest of the cast, lacking fingers and toes in most situations, and moves with boneless flops.

* Done intentionally in ''[[Darker than Black]]''. The [[Plucky Comic Relief]], [[Clueless Detective|Gai Kurasawa]] and his assistant [[Cosplay Otaku Girl|Kiko]], don't look like they even belong in the same series, which is appropriate given that generally the only reason they ''are'' involved is chance.

 

 

* The Bone cousins in ''[[Bone]]'' are drawn in a simpler, more cartoony style than the other characters. Unlike the other characters they also obey cartoon physics, most notably in a scene where Phoney Bone tries to hide a partly-eaten pie by shoving it into Fone Bone's mouth and Fone Bone's head assumes the shape of the pie, complete with missing segment.

** They are also the ''first'' characters shown—Thorn, the first human character, doesn't appear until chapter 2.

* The aardvarks in ''[[Cerebus the Aardvark]]'' are drawn in a cartoony style, with liberal use of zip-a-tone. Everything else, especially as the [[Art Evolution|art gets better]], is much more realistic and hard-edged, and zip-a-tone is used nowhere else.

* In ''[[Mortadelo Y Filemon]]'', whenever real people (or [[Superman]]) show up, they're drawn with realistic faces, which contrasts with the usual characters looking cartoony. Then there's also the [[Crossover]] with ''[[El Capitan Trueno]]'', where the Trueno characters get sometimes drawn in their original realistic style and sometimes look cartoony... and sometimes it's a mix... you can see why we don't like talking about that.

 

== Films -- Animation ==

* The Fairy Prince's pet bumblebee from ''[[Thumbelina]]'' is for some reason drawn very realistically compared to the otherwise cartoonish-looking animals that appear in the film.

* In the ''[[Cars]]'' series films, all of the characters' eyes are drawn on their windshields. In the sequel, a background salescar has, for some reason, her eyes on her headlights instead, thus looking like she wandered out of the set of ''[[A Car's Life: Sparky's Big Adventure|A Cars Life Sparkys Big Adventure]]''.

* In ''[[The Princess and the Frog]]'', while all of the other characters are drawn realistically and tend to be somewhat fleshy, Dr. Facilier is unusually tall and [[Noodle People]] thin.

** Same with Jafar from ''[[Aladdin (Disney film)|Aladdin]]''. Everyone else is drawn with curves, Jafar is drawn with straight lines!

* Watch "[[The Great Mouse Detective]]". Professor Ratigan, unlike ALL the other "mice", has five fingers.

** Justified, because in the film, at least, he is a rat.

* [[Everything's Better with Princesses|Kidagakash]] from ''[[Atlantis: The Lost Empire]]'' for some reason despite being an Atlantean actually looks more like a Caucasian woman with tanned skin and [[White-Haired Pretty Girl|white hair]], while the other Atlanteans (including [[Leonard Nimoy|her father, King Kashekhim Nedakh)]] have more ethnic designs. She is also the only character in the film to have [[Blue Eyes]], something no one else in the film has.

* Every character from the animated film adaptation of ''[[Animal Farm]]'' has a cartoony appearance, except for the farmer who's cutting the skin off of a tree branch who's rotoscoped.

* Every character including Dot from ''[[Dot and The Kangaroo]]'' has a cartoony appearance, except for the kangaroo, Dot's parents, Dot's granduncle, the aborigines and the dingoes who are rotoscoped.

* Unusually for a highbrow live-action film, [[Akira Kurosawa]]'s ''[[Ran]]'' includes two characters (Lord Ichimonji Hidetora and Lady Kaede) who are set apart by their ''Noh''-inspired costume and makeup.

* The villains in the French film Immortel are realistic CGI—all other characters are played by live actors.

 

== Literature ==

* The eponymous character of ''The Little Engine that Could'', for some reason, has her face drawn on her funnel instead of the smokebox unlike all the other locomotives in the book. Averted in the film adaptation however, where the "Shiny New Engine"'s face is drawn on his cockpit, the "Broken Down Engine"'s and the "Big Strong Engine"'s faces are both drawn on their smokeboxes, and the "Rusty Old Engine"'s face is also drawn on his funnel.

* The title character of ''[[Clifford the Big Red Dog]]'', in both the books and the cartoon, is the only character in the series that has visible sclerae.

 

== Music Videos ==

* Cherry, lead singer of the animated band Studio Killers is CG animated, while the rest of the band and other characters are all 2D.

 

 

== Video Games ==

** Asagi was originally from [[Makai Kingdom]] before she started making appearances in the Disgaea series, so she had slightly different proportions than the rest of the cast. But this trope ''really'' came into play in [[Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten]], where every character gets nice looking HD sprites...and Asagi's still pixilated! If you speak to her, a few of her quotes [[Lampshade Hanging|draw attention to this fact]]. A high-res version of her is free DLC, however. And the new Asagi will even talk about how nice it feels to be HD.

* ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'', by virtue of being a crossover, features many different types of character designs in one universe. The toony [[Funny Animal]]s from the [[Classic Disney Shorts]], the less toony [[Disney Animated Canon]] characters, the cast of ''[[The Nightmare Before Christmas]]'' who have more detailed textures due to their [[Stop Motion]] roots, the Anime-like [[Original Generation|Original]] and ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' characters, and the ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]'' and ''[[Tron]]'' casts, who are as close to photo-realistic depictions of their actors as the game engine will allow. The first four groups mesh pretty well, but the addition of the last group makes things [[Roger Rabbit Effect|pretty]] [[Uncanny Valley|jarring]].

* ''[[Parajump (Darth Wiki)|Parajump]]'', a video game in pre-production, has this as its main gimmick. Overlaps with [[Mars Needs Women]] in that the main character has a fetish for anime-eque characters.

* Thanks to [[Lazy Artist|constantly reusing the same outdated sprites]], Morrigan looks completely out-of-place in [[Marvel vs. Capcom|all of her 2D non-]]''[[Darkstalkers]]'' [[Capcom vs. SNK Millennium Fight 2000|appearances]].

* By ''[[Mega Man 6]]'', the bosses have become more detailed (tricks are used to keep the same colors), while the hero still has the simplistic design he had in the first game. Once the series got off the NES, though, everyone got new sprites, and this was no longer the case.

* While most of ''[[Borderlands]]'' is done in a [[Thick Line Animation]] style, the Guardian Angel is represented by live-action. Even with the heavy post-processing, it stands out rather starkly.

 

== Web Comics ==

* In ''[[Tsunami Channel|Experimental Comic Kotone]]'', the author had difficulty drawing a convincing middle-aged father... so he based [http://www.tsunamichannel.com/index.php?date=2006-03-27&comic=ExCoKo Laika's dad] on a character from ''[[The Lord of the Rings (film)|The Lord of the Rings]]'', making stand out next everyone else, who are drawn in a simplified [[Moe Moe]] style.

* Gharsena, the [[Big Bad]] of ''[[Garanos]]'', is the only character who's drawn [[Black Eyes|without any light reflections in her eyes]], no doubt to emphasize her [[Complete Monster]]dom.

 

== Web Original ==

* The title character of ''[[Blockhead]]'' is drawn in a rather simplistic and cartoonish style while all other characters are drawn in a comparatively more realistic style.

* The characters of ''[[Potter Puppet Pals]]'' are naturally [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|hand puppets]]. Except for Neville, who's a butternut squash on a stick, and Cedric Diggory, who is a face drawn on a foot.

 

== Western Animation ==

** The occasionally seen news reporter/anchor fish is [[Medium Blending|a photograph of an actual fish.]]

** In the later seasons there are plenty of characters who pretty much look like humans with odd skin colors and no noses.

* [[Word of God]] states that Jet and his gang in ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' were a stylistic departure compared to the other characters, much more closely resembling the style of ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'', but were kept because the creators loved the designs too much.

* Penny on ''[[Inspector Gadget]]'' looked ridiculously more realistic than everyone else on the show, who had exaggerated cartoony features.

** Averted in ''[[Gadget and the Gadgetinis]]'', where her design is closer to how everyone else in the show looks.

* ''[[Twipsy]]'' draws a sharp distinction between humans, who're drawn in a style vaguely reminiscent of ''[[Rugrats]]'', and AIs like the title character, who resemble nothing so much as Cubist portraits.

* The title duo from ''[[Fanboy and Chum Chum]]'' are constructed more realistically and carefully than the rest of the characters. [http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3474/3789426538_b445375f9a_z.jpg Especially prominent in this shot].

** The Space Coyote in Homer's hallucination from "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (voiced by [[Johnny Cash]]) is drawn in a boxier style partially to resemble the style of coyotes in American Southwestern sand paintings.

* ''[[Star Wars: The Clone Wars]]''. Ahsoka Tano's facial markings for some reason look ''absolutely'' nothing like that of a normal Togruta's (compare her to Shaak Ti's).

* Similar to ''The Little Engine That Could'' example mentioned above, Jeremy Jet from ''[[Thomas the Tank Engine]]'', for some reason, unlike all of the other mechanical characters in the show, has his face drawn on his cockpit while everyone else's are drawn either on their smokeboxes (most of the steam locomotives, Trevor, George, and Buster), their front panels (Toby, Spencer, Cranky, Colin, Kevin, Rocky, Harold, Daisy, Boco, Diesel 10, Elizabeth, Isabella, Madge, Derek, "the Diesel", Bulstrode, Thumper, Scruff, 199, and most of the rolling stock), or their grilles (Salty, Rusty, Diesel, 'Arry and Bert, Mavis, Splatter and Dodge, Den, Dart, Sidney, Norman, Paxton, Dennis, and most of the non-rail vehicles).

** An earlier example would be the bee that stings James in the episode "Buzz Buzz." Just compare it with James.

* In ''[[El Tigre]]'', Frida's [[You Gotta Have Blue Hair|blue hair]] and [[The Goggles Do Nothing|goggles]] look like they would fit better on an [[Anime]] character...

** [[Princesses Rule|Princesses]] Celestia and Luna have longer legs, necks and snouts than normal (also more closely resembling real life horses), are ''[[Large and In Charge|huge]]'' compared to everypony else (Luna is easily twice the height of other mares, and Celestia is even larger with an appropriately enormous wingspan), and their manes are long, constantly flowing and contain thematically-relevant patterns (aurora and stars, respectively). All of this is to illustrate their nature as [[Physical God]]desses.

*** A background pony in "Sweet and Elite" is based off of Princess Celestia's body model rather than a regular pony's. [[Wild Mass Guessing]] ensued.

* Unlike the other ''[[Animaniacs]]'' characters (even Slappy Squirrel), the Warner Sibs from have designs that look rather like those of inkblot style characters of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Their eyes look more [[Animesque]]/inkblot-esque than other character's eyes and their [[Furry Ear Dissonance|ears look more like]] [[Kingdom Hearts|less crooked Shadow Heartless antennae]] [[Furry Ear Dissonance|with rounded tips than like cat or dog ears of any sort]]. This because [[Backstory|they were first drawn around that era, but proved too wild for audiences of the time, so they had to be locked away in the water tower]].

* The Loparts in ''[[Handy Manny]]'' have smaller pupils than the other human characters in the show.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Graphical Tropes]]