Cartoon

art · animation · humor · drawing

Drawings with exaggeration. Cartoons use unrealistic or semi-realistic art styles where artists can make characters' features bigger, sillier, or more expressive than real life. This lets animators and cartoonists make jokes and tell funny stories in ways that wouldn't work in real photographs.

Stories told frame by frame. Animated cartoons are made by drawing many slightly different images in a sequence, then playing them quickly one after another, kind of like a flip book. When played fast enough, your eyes see it as smooth movement and action.

Two types of cartoonists. A cartoonist who makes single funny drawings for newspapers or magazines creates a different kind of cartoon than an animator who makes movies. Both use exaggeration and humor, but one is a still image and the other moves.

Built for laughs. Whether it's a quick comic strip or a full movie, cartoons are designed to make people smile and laugh through absurd characters, silly situations, and visual gags that wouldn't work in real life.

Anything can happen. Because cartoons are drawn and animated rather than filmed with real actors, characters can do impossible things like float through the air, change shape, or survive wild accidents, which makes the stories more fun and imaginative.