Twenty-five kinds of cartoon styles

There are many styles and types of cartoons that you cannot learn from and be inspired by! There is no end from simple cartoon styles to famous techniques you keep seeing in shirts, TV, and YouTube! I’ve listed the best cartoon styles with some examples for you to check out, so let’s get started! Cartoon drawing styles

Cartoon old style

Let’s start with the really old cartoon styles from many years ago. Most of the time, people call this type of cartoon “Fleischer Cartoons” because Fleischer Studios widely used the art style. These art styles are black and white and with high contrast body parts most of the time. Generally, short bodies and long limbs also characterize this style. Some people call this style of drawing (then animation) noodle drawings. Starting from the arms and legs, the whole movement of the character would move a lot as if there existed no bones in his body.

Here are some examples of this cartoon style:

• Mickey Mouse

• Betty Bop

Here are some better photos of this exact comic art style!

By the way, some recent video games have managed to bring this art style back into the modern realm. For instance, in the tape play Cup head, the skill class is VERY transmitted by cartoons such as Betty Boop.

Modern cartoon style

This is one of the numerous standard art types you can see on a channel like Cartoon Network. Generally speaking, the main characteristics of this artistic style are thick outlines, very geometric shapes, and colorful colors. One of the leading causes for creating skills this way is that using simple shapes with little detail speeds up the overall animation process and saves studios money. Still, it’s a very beautiful cartoon style! Several modern cartoons have popularized this art style; here are some examples:

• Gravity Falls

• The Power puff Girls

• Codename: Kids Next Door

• Dexter’s Laboratory

Here are some sample images of a modern cartoon art style

Realistic cartoon style

A rarer cartoon style, because cartoon drawing generally tends to simplify shapes, realistic cartoon art style tends to add detail and keep bodies very true to life. This art class is largely visited by artists accomplishing factorizations of photographs of people. To some time, you can also contain parodies in this class. The jokes are usually very practical, complementing the growth and shrinkage of specific body parts!

Some examples of real comic types:

• Archer

• Ugly Americans

• General Cartoons

Japanese cartoon styles

The art styles of Japanese anime tend to be quite different from their combined counterparts. I chose to break this into three different specific art styles as they are quite different. I feel like I could even break this up into several parts, but I don’t want to fill this post just with Japanese anime cartoon art styles!

Classic manga

Aged Japanese manga personalities manage to keep very human proportions when it comes to their bodies instead of having very large looks most of the moment. In public, this art class also focuses on more feminine bodies, with very angular chins and slim bodies. Some types would even embellish specific body parts, for instance, very lengthy portions, reached to the remainder of the body! Here are some examples of manga that have this art style:

• Sailor Moon
• GTO (Grand Master Onizuka)
• Unused Matura
• Helsingor
• Oh my God

Current anime

The current anime style manages to have better complexity, mostly seen in the moving character designs. These days, this art style also has a lot of shadows and reflections in their feelings and conditions, providing it a new class of complexness. Here are some examples of current anime that maintain this art class:

• Full-metal Alchemist Brotherhood
• The attack of the Titans
• Online Sword Art
• My Hero Academia

Chili Drawings

Finally, here is a style that I love to work with. the chili drawing style is what you see in my pieces; I manage to use a “mini” personality as a mascot to show a process, like in my article on art composition for beginners! This art style mainly focuses on turning your characters into a small version of them. As if you were compacting them into a very small container. Here are some examples of series that use this chili drawing style:

• Him to! Umaru-chan
• Good star
• Bottle Fairy

Minimalist Cartoon Art Styles

The minimalist cartoon style is mostly used in video games and tends to be used either to like the overall tone or save time! As these also tend to be more simplistic, they tend to be faster to create and, importantly, faster to animate. Often this style of cartoon art is done with vector art. It’s also mostly geometric and with pure colors without much detail. As you can notice, there can always be some level of detail in this art style while still keeping it pretty minimalistic. Another example of a minimalist comic book style is, for example, the use of stickmen! It’s a very basic art style, but it can work well if done correctly. It’s also one of the top items people pull when learning to draw.

Unique Cartoon Art Styles

Now let’s very briefly review some pretty unique cartoon art styles! Most of them are very popular and very recognizable right away.

Tim Burton

Tim Burton has a distinctive dark art style that always carries a lot of emotion. It’s not unclear to be dark; you can see its characters on multiple layers of emotions presented in it. Tim Burton’s career has evolved so prevalently that many artists have emulated this art style. For example, here are some Pokémon made in an art style by Tim Burton, created by Vaughn Pippin.

The Simpsons

This cartoon style is so popular that there are even many websites you can use to create a version of yourself—for example, the Simpson Maker. The style itself has evolved gradually over the years, but the main characteristics have always remained! The yellow bodies and the big white sphere-shaped eyes were still there.