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Skintone Sclerae
Except for Scooby and Velma.

You may notice that some cartoon characters don't have to have whites to their eyes. Well, they're certainly not white.

Skintone Sclerae are just that: As opposed to the irises being surrounded by white space, a character's skin will apparently go on into the eyeball.

See also Black Bead Eyes.

Examples

    open/close all folders 

    General 
  • For some reason, Asian characters in western animation tend to be drawn like this despite other (non-Asian) characters having normal eyes.
  • Any character who wears Eye Glasses will have this kind of eye if his glasses are removed.
    • This is zigzagged with Milhouse Van Houten on The Simpsons. There are some episodes in which Milhouse has dots for eyes when his glasses are removed (making him look like Akbar and/or Jeff from Matt Groening's comic strip series, "Life in Hell") and other episodes (such as season 7's "Radioactive Man" and season 9's Lord of the Flies parody "Das Bus") where Milhouse has rounded cartoon eyes with whites around the sclerae.

    Anime & Manga 

    Comics 
  • The characters from Peanuts, human and animal alike. Particularly noticeable when they made a "troubled" face.
  • In Gaspard de la Nuit, an obscure French comic book series, all characters are drawn like this.

    Films — Animation 
  • In The Rescuers, the mouse characters have sclerae the same color as their fur, to give the illusion of having the black eyes of real mice without sacrificing the expressiveness of traditional Cartoony Eyes.
  • The automobile version of Hamm the piggy bank seen at the end of Cars, his windshield is colored pink like his paint instead of white like everyone elses.

    Live Action TV 

    Video Games 
  • Cilan of Pokemon Black And White is the only human in the Pokémon franchise to have them, although his very pale skin in official art means it's not immediately apparent. Not even his brothers have it.
    • This is appropriate, as he replaced Brock in the anime.
    • Togepi is born with sclerae that matches its skin. Its evolved forms just have beady black eyes.
  • You can make a Mii with this quality.

    Web Original 

    Western Animation 
  • This was common on Hanna Barbera shows of the 1960s and '70s. Most of the human characters in the various Scooby Doo shows, for instance. No doubt this was motivated by the low budgets of the shows, as not having to paint the eyes saved a bundle on paint.
    • Despite having a higher budget, coming after several series that did feature white sclerae, and it not really saving any money with digital coloration in use, Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated returns to the skintone look to make the cast look more like their 1969 selves.
    • Recent Scooby-Doo direct-to-DVD movies like Legend of the Phantosaur and Music of the Vampire followed the aforementioned show by giving the characters their original designs and giving them Skintone Sclerae.
    • Hanna-Barbera continued this practice into the early 1980s. In the animated series of The Little Rascals, only Buckwheat and Darla had white sclerae.
  • The characters in the Disney Winnie the Pooh films have button eyes, occasionally drawn with eyelids but no sclerae for the sake of an expression. This is justified in the case of the stuffed characters, but the same style was used on Christopher Robin as well, perhaps to match the simple pen-and-ink illustrations of the original books.note 
  • This trope sees plenty of use in The DCAU, most famously for Superman (except in closeups and in Static Shock) and Billy Batson/Captain Marvel (this also applies to non-DCAU production Batman The Brave And The Bold). It's also used just shy of consistently for Asian characters.
  • Mickey Mouse in his earlier appearances in the Classic Disney Shorts. Later depictions of him portray him as having normal-looking eyes.
  • Almost every character in Daria. The most notable exceptions were Brittany, Stacy, Jodie, Mr. O'Neill, and Mr. DeMartino.
    • Ms. Barch (the man-hating divorced science teacher) had Skintone Sclerae from seasons one to three. When the show's animation changed in seasons four and five, she was redesigned to have whites around her eyes.
  • The characters in Xiaolin Showdown.
  • Eileen from Regular Show.
    • Justified as she's a mole.
  • Miss Finster from Recess.
  • Star Trek The Animated Series. Most noticeable with Uhura, of course.
  • Monique from Kim Possible had these in the first season. In other seasons she has the same eyes as everyone else.

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