Why do we like cartoon and animal characters so much?
When I was seven, my family took a trip to Europe. As we travelled from country to country, I was delighted to see how so many of my favorite characters—Bart Simpson, Garfield, Donald Duck—were hugely popular wherever we went. Merchandise was everywhere.
To my childhood logic, it seemed perfectly natural that everyone in the world would like the same things that I did—obviously, I had great taste. But this feeling didn’t really hold up to closer scutiny. Where were the “Weird Al” t-shirts? Or ones with Leslie Nielsen from The Naked Gun? Why weren't they, too, global sensations?
People often observe that cartoon characters are able to cross cultures and languages in a way that live action characters can’t, but it wasn’t until much later in life that I really started to think about why this was—and how profound it really is.
In my first job out of college, I was asked to analyze video game sales data, especially for games based on movies and TV shows for kids. Over time, I noticed that, all things being roughly equal—the popularity of the movie or show, the review scores of the video game, etc.—games tended to sell better if they featured cartoon characters, or animals, or—ideally—both.
Around this time, the company released a game based on the movie Hotel for Dogs, and the game was a surprise hit—despite the modest success of the movie (and the poor quality of the game).
Given this unlikely success, I suggested we should make a game based on the upcoming movie Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. The game was greenlit, and ultimately sold well. Once again, the movie had only been a modest success.
In time, we had similar successes for our games based on properties with cartoons or animals—while our games based on much more popular live action properties struggled.
Obviously there were many factors at play—and some properties lend themselves more naturally to games than others—but it’s hard for me not to think that the cartoon and animal characters played a part. For whatever reason, these characters had a certain appeal.
What is Appeal?
In The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation, authors and Disney animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston codified the 12 Principles of Animation. Number twelve is “Appeal”:
Appeal is the pleasing and fascinating quality that makes a person enjoy looking at any drawing.
To be clear, “appeal” doesn’t only refer to cute, friendly things.
The word is often misinterpreted to suggest cuddly bunnies and soft kittens. To us, it meant anything that a person likes to see, a quality of charm, pleasing design, simplicity, communication, and magnetism.
Appeal is sort of the je ne sais quoi principle. “You know it when you see it.” Certain designs are, for whatever reason, more pleasing to people, and it can be hard to deconstruct why. But ultimately, of course, Thomas and Johnston are right: certain designs have “appeal”.
There are many ways an image can have appeal, but for characters in particular—especially ones who are intended to appeal to a broad audience that includes kids—I’ve come to believe that I really was onto something. There are certain qualities that are just uniquely powerful.
Cartoons
Obviously, Disney animators work with cartoon characters. And the specific power of cartoons is well explained by a series of panels in Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics that live in my head, rent-free, forever:
I think about this “universality” of cartoons, especially when animated, when I consider the global popularity of Disney, The Simpsons, or anime—even among groups who aren’t being explicitly represented (see: the “Black Bart” phenomenon, or “Why Black Men Love Dragon Ball Z”).
I also have a hunch—though it is admittedly just a hunch—that non-human skin tones (yellow, blue, green, etc.) can also make a character more universally accessible. We can more easily “step into their skin” because their skin is more abstract, and less specific.
Especially when animated, The Illusion of Life also highlights the unique, expressive power of cartoons:
Conveying a certain feeling is the essence of communication in any art form. The response of the viewer is an emotional one, because art speaks to the heart. This gives animation an almost magical ability to reach inside any audience and communicate with all peoples everywhere, regardless of language barriers. It is one of animation’s greatest strengths and certainly one of the most important aspects of this art…
Regardless, this isn’t to say that “more cartoony is always better”. There is some science suggesting that people gravitate to more realistic art as they get older. And as McCloud notes:
Basically, being “realistic” creates more of an aesthetic response in the audience, whereas being “cartoony” creates more emotional identification.
Being “realistic” or “cartoonish” is a spectrum, a tool, depending on your artistic goals and audience—and this can even vary within the same media, depending on the element.
McCloud observes another common technique: that some comics combine “cartoony” characters to create emotional identification with “realistic” backgrounds to create aesthetic appeal.
Disney animated films, likewise, followed this pattern of cartoony characters against more realistic and aesthetically rich backdrops:
The animators also found that in movies with both “realistic” characters and “cartoony” ones, that the cartoony ones were more suited to conveying the story:
Tell your story through the broad cartoon characters rather than the “straight” ones. There is no way to animate strong-enough attitudes, feelings, or expressions on realistic characters to get the communication you should have. The more real, the less latitude for clear communication. This is more easily done with the cartoon characters who can carry the story with more interest and spirit anyway. Snow White was told through the animals, the dwarfs, and the witch—not through the prince or the queen or the huntsman. They had vital roles, but their scenes were essentially situation.
It’s remarkable to think that the convention of the animal (or other cartoony) sidekick characters was established in the very first Disney feature film.
This pattern isn’t necessarily just true for animated films: Star Wars is also told from the perspective from its broadest, “most cartoonish” characters (who are, ironically, the least visually expressive): the droids.
Regardless, as many people have pointed out, Disney’s most cartoonish characters have a certain, specific quality.
Babylike
As imagineer John Hench observes in his book, Designing Disney:
The size of [Mickey and Minnie’s] heads relative to their faces is similar to the proportions of a human baby’s head and face, and much of the characters’ charm and innocence are expressed in these forms. Adult humans have an instinctual nurturing response to creatures with babylike proportions and features; we seem to respond to reassuringly curvilinear forms. I have often speculated that this may account for the appeal of the large-headed, small-bodied Disney characters to our guests, both adults and children.
Hench isn’t wrong; there’s a good amount of evidence backing up the idea that people are endeared by “babylike” features: large heads, big eyes, small nose and mouth. There are numerous examples of Walt intuitively guiding his animators toward these kinds of designs.
One of Disney’s greatest illustrators, Marc Davis, talks about how he used child behavior books during the production of Bambi; he’d look at the expressions of human babies and “interpret them into this little dear’s head” to give the character his childlike innocence.
These “babylike” proportions aren’t unique to Disney, of course. McCloud notes that the “childlike features” of many cartoon characters may be part of their universal appeal.
Manga and anime characters are iconic for these kinds of “babylike” proportions, with features sometimes dramatically changing in size (such as with “star eyes” or in “chibi” form) to express different, subjective levels of endearment or infantilization.
It’s no coincidence, of course, that the archetypal anime style was defined by Osamu Tezuka, who was himself trying to imitate Disney’s art style.
Disney and other early animators were, in turn, inspired by not only existing newspaper cartoons, but by the look of silent movie stars like Charlie Chaplin or (🤢) blackface vaudeville performers.
Their simplified, high-contrast makeup and costumes were effectively a form of “human cartooning” which, along with their wide-eyed expressions, aimed to create a childish endearment—and maximize the readability of their poses and expressions, in motion, under hot lights and at far distances.
Arguably, the goal of many beauty makeup techniques (mascara, foundation, contouring, etc.) is also, basically, a form of cartooning to create the impression of simplified, youthful features and proportions.
These patterns aren’t just for humans: there seems to be a recurring story where a movie production is designing a creature with whom the audience is supposed to emotionally identify—Yoda, E.T., Gollum—but the initial designs look creepy or offputting. The solution, inevitably, is to “make them more like a baby”.
Animals
Naturally, there are also studies supporting the idea that humans have a hard-wired affinity for animals. It might be evolutionary advantageous to prefer areas with wildlife, or to domesticate animals, etc.
There’s also, of course, a good amount of crossover with the previous categories: some animals inherently “look like cartoons”, and many “look like babies”. Some even sound like babies.
And some animals, like cats and dogs, may have evolved—or been bred—specifically to appeal to us. Big, expressive eyes. Affectionate hunting companions. Or literally breeding a dog just to turn a spit.
But from a media theory standpoint, I would also, humbly, make a minor addition to one of McCloud’s earlier panels:
I’m being cute, but my point is this: by making a character not even human—in this case, a rabbit—they potentially becomes even more universal. Anyone, in theory, can emotionally identify with an animal (especially a cartoony or babylike one).
Pixar, of course, has taught us to emotionally identify with just about anything: a car, a robot, an abstract representations of a feeling—but there’s just something about animals.
From The Illusion of Life:
There was another factor besides talent and ability that was to play a major part in Walt’s success. It was his background as a farmboy living close to the soil and working with animals which had given him a philosophy and approach to entertainment with a universal appeal.
Later:
Walt never outgrew his interest in farm animals and the human characteristics they seemed to possess.
Some of Disney’s first animated works were his Alice’s Wonderland short films, in which a live action girl is transported through trick photography into a world of cartoon animals. Kids, cartoons, and animals—the blueprint was already there.
This isn’t to say that the use of cartoon animals in animation was particularly groundbreaking; similar characters were already popular in comic strips, and watching trained animals perform was a common novelty or circus act.
The Alice shorts were also clearly modeled on another animated series, Aesop’s Fables — which also featured cartoon animals — as well the works of Winsor McCay, of Little Nemo in Slumberland fame. McCay drew some of the first animated films ever made, and several featured cartoon animals—most famously: Gertie the Dinosaur.
But as motion pictures evolved from nickelodeon gags to more sophisticated short stories, the distinct storytelling possibilities of animals became apparent. Per Thomas and Johnston:
Many animals have their attributes already defined by the legends and stories of various cultures… a rabbit is nervous and almost completely helpless; a wolf is all villain…
And as the Disney artists quickly discovered, the animated creatures were subject to the same spectrum of realism and cartooning—and the latter’s power for emotional identification:
[A] real animal cannot act or emote as broadly as animators require. The more an animator goes toward caricaturing the animal… the more he is creating possibilities for acting. For example, if we had drawn real deer in Bambi there would have been so little acting potential that no one would have believed the deer really existed as characters. But because we drew what people imagine a deer looks like, with a personality to match, the audience accepted our drawings as being completely real.
The feedback from viewers was clear:
It was the audiences who selected the cute, round, anthropomorphic animals with rich personalities as the type of characters they liked best.
Again: this is not to say that more cartoony animals are always better. In The Simpsons episode “Barts Get an Elephant”, a great deal of visual comedy comes from Bart’s effusive love for “Stampy” in contrast to the elephant’s realistic, indifferent design.
Or in The Emperor’s New Groove: at a low point, the emperor, who’s been transformed into a (cartoony) llama, tries to live amongst (more realistic, unimpressed) llamas.
What makes sense for some characters does not necessarily make sense for others.
But regardless, it’s hard not to observe the enduring and universal appeal of animal characters, especially with cartoony or babylike features.
Tools in the toolbox
Just to be unambiguously clear: I am not suggesting that all character designs should be cartoony, or babylike, or animals.
These are merely tools—albeit powerful ones—for creating broad appeal. But they’re among many in the toolbox. They don’t make sense for every situation, and, like all things, they can be done badly.
These kinds of cartoon, babylike, or animal designs can feel endearing and accessible—or cloying and childish. Sometimes the difference is a hair’s breadth. And, of course, the same design can be appealing to some people, and unappealing to others—or even change to the same person at different points in time.
There is power in the universality that cartooning can create, but there is also power in specific representation. There is power in abstraction; there is power in realism. There is power in emotional identification; there is power in aesthetic experience. It all depends on artistic intent—and the intended audience.
By examining our tools, and knowing how they work, we can better know when to apply them, and why.
But sometimes? Sometimes these are the right tools for the job.
