Sphere Eyes

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Revision as of 18:19, 29 September 2019 by GethN7 (talk | contribs)
Oh yeah, his eyelids could move on his huge round eyes.

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

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 excited or scared expressions, 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.

Examples of Sphere Eyes include:

Played straight

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 interchangeable.
  • Bob from The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob

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.

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

Western Animation

Inversions