Sphere Eyes
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Bertha: "Your eyes look like hard-boiled eggs." —No. 873 (2011-10-09), Square Root of Minus Garfield
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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. Sphere eyes, as well as oval-shaped ones, are often employed in certain cartoon and art styles - or else for specific moments or gags - as a means to allow for the widest or, rather, most exaggerated forms of expression possible. Often cartoon characters are given large (or small), round/bulging eyes shaped like a geometric sphere or oval, which are connected to each other and often use tiny little dots for pupils. Alternatively, if a character with separate eyes has excited or scared expressions, their eyes can then change into this style.
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.
Played straight
Fan Art
- When chibi (aka Super-Deformed) artwork is commissioned of more ordinarily drawn art, this type of eyes is a common choice because it fits the character design well and emphasizes the animation of the simplified face.
Newspaper Comics
- Garfield and most other characters in his strip have huge, oval-shaped eyes.
- Jim Davis frequently uses this trope, as seen in his other strips like U.S. Acres. Surprisingly, despite practically being a trademark, the sphere eyes in Garfieldwere a result of Art Evolution, as the characters originally had normal circular eyes.
- Most characters in Heathcliff have these too.
- Mother Goose, Grimm and Attila in Mother Goose and Grimm.
- Opus and Bill the Cat from Bloom County.
- Most of the characters in Buckles, such as the title character.
- Sherman's Lagoon is also an example of this.
- Several of the characters in Pearls Before Swine, usually the humans and crocodiles. The other characters, such as
- FoxTrot generally uses this for every character that isn't Jason. 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 and 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 used these eyes.
- Plus, it was used for characters in Matt Groening's comic strip Life in Hell.
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, such as Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64.
- 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
Web Comics
- 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 interchangeable.
- Bob from The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob
- Lampshaded in an October 9th comic of Square Root of Minus Garfield.
Western Animation
- Matt Groening uses this trope for the majority of characters in The Simpsons and Futurama.
- SpongeBob SquarePants has huge spherical 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
Western Animation
- 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.