Cartoon Graphics & Illustrations

Cartoon clipart, the keyline, and what breaks when you scale

Almost all cartoon artwork has a thick dark line around everything in it. It is so normal that it rarely gets questioned, and it started not as a drawing decision, but as a production requirement.

In 1914, Earl Hurd patented a way of animating that put characters on clear celluloid sheets laid over a single painted background, so the background no longer had to be redrawn a thousand times. He and John Bray set up a company on the back of it and collected royalties until the patent lapsed in 1932. The method also determined how the artwork was made: the outline was drawn in ink on the front of the sheet, then the sheet was turned over, and the color was painted on the back, so the brushstrokes never showed. Outline and fill sat on opposite sides of the same piece of plastic.

The cels are long gone, and the line stayed, partly out of habit and partly because it does real work. It holds a character together at small sizes and lifts it off a busy background, which is why the style survives on packaging and merchandise. It is also the part of the file most likely to catch you out, since an outline left as a live stroke keeps its width while everything inside the character shrinks.

What cartoon clipart ends up on

• Craft beer, hot sauce and soda labels built around a character.
• Streetwear, skate decks and band merchandise.
• Children's products, party goods and birthday stationery.
• Arcade, bowling alley and diner signage.
• Mascots for local teams, small businesses and events.
• Comic-style social campaigns using panels, speech bubbles and impact bursts.

Keeping a cartoon character usable

Sort out the keyline first. It holds the drawing together, and if it's been left as a live stroke, it keeps its width while everything inside the character shrinks. Expand appearance, then scale, then look at the small shapes inside. Eyes and teeth usually close up first.

If it's going on merch, get the numbers from the manufacturer before you finish the artwork. Embroidery drops fine lines, screen printing closes small gaps between colors, and a patch uses fewer thread colors than your file has fills. Build a stripped-back version to those figures and keep the detailed drawing for digital.

Bear in mind how firmly this dates a piece. Rubber-hose reads pre-war; thick, flat vector reads current web; halftone panels read mid-century print. That's useful in a campaign and awkward in an identity meant to run for years, where one recurring character, with everything else kept plain, usually works better.

What turns up in cartoon clipart

• Sports mascots. Golf, baseball, pickleball, tennis. Drawn in three-quarter view with a heavy keyline, works well on a shirt.
• Animal characters. Cats, dogs, wildlife, usually as clipart with matching patterns.
• Badge and crest lockups. A character sitting inside a shield or a circle with arc text around it, ready to be used as a mark.
• Retro sticker sheets. Loose comic characters, faces and objects in a seventies or nineties accent, drawn as a set.
• Character creators. Modular kits with separate heads, bodies and props, where you assemble the figure yourself.
• Comic elements. Speech bubbles, bursts, motion lines and panel furniture, supplied without any characters attached.