Thick-Line Animation - Television Tropes & Idioms

Clearly not a lineart to be trifled with.

Animation style characterized by visible heavy black borders around characters and objects. This style began being used by a few animation companies in the early 1950s (mostly UPA, of Gerald McBoingBoing and Mr. Magoo fame), and became dominant in American TV animation during the 60's and 70's, eclipsing the more naturalistic style used in most animation during earlier decades. It was phased out during the early 80s, when more naturalistic styles again became dominant in American animation, but then became the standard yet again (on television at least) during the late 90s, and so it remains to this day. Shows animated in Flash tend to look really good in this style.

This is sometimes considered to be among the most defining traits of modern day American animation, mostly when contrasted with the similar "anime=big eyes" notion to emphasize the differences between U.S. and Japanese animation.

Compare and contrast Limited Animation, Web Animation, Super-Deformed.

Examples

Anime and Manga

Used in the Dragon Ball Z film Fusion Reborn. Especially apparent during Goten and Trunks' fight with Hitler.
Applied at times on the character designs in Samurai Champloo.
Other anime include Kaiji and Akagi both the works of Nobuyuki Fukumoto and both animated by Madhouse.
The western animation-like anime Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt by Gainax
Fullmetal Alchemist has done a couple Art Shifts to this type of style for some comical moments.
Koe de Oshigoto!! uses this as an artistic direction; it's used to emulate the look of Eroge CG's.
Appears in episode 7 of the Katanagatari anime.
Some episodes of Digimon Savers animate the child-level mons in this style, particularly in the series' tail end. It's very inconsistently done and is probably a product of the Off Model Art Shifts which plague the series.

Film

A Scanner Darkly
The Secret of Kells, though it was invoked purposely to resemble medieval illustrations.

Web Animation

Pucca is a non-American example.
Homestar Runner
Happy Tree Friends

Western Animation - Television

Hanna-Barbera's resurrection after several years in the wilderness in the 90s led to the renaissance of the style and its increased use in modern animated series.
- Two Stupid Dogs
- Dexters Laboratory
- Powerpuff Girls
- Johnny Bravo
Clerks: The Animated Series
Duck Dodgers
Star Wars: Clone Wars
The Fairly OddParents
The Venture Bros.
Danny Phantom
Atomic Betty
Kappa Mikey: Played with, where only Mikey is drawn this way; his Japanese costars have thin outlines and are Animesque.
The Henry and June shorts on KaBlam!! (though more often in later seasons)
Xiaolin Showdown
Yin Yang Yo
Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!.
Class of 3000
The Replacements
SpongeBob SquarePants (Normally only Squidward)
Wayside School
¡Mucha Lucha!
My Life as a Teenage Robot went out of its way to look like 1940s animation as much as freakishly possible.
Kim Possible
King Arthur's Disasters
Daria
Teamo Supremo
Total Drama Island/ Action/ World Tour/ Reloaded
Batman The Brave And The Bold
Blazing Dragons (The cartoon not the video game) Season 2 had thick lines (along with some radical changes in character design) that was a sharp contrast to the cleaner look of season 1.
WordGirl
The Secret Saturdays
Jimmy Two-Shoes
Trollz
All of the marine animals from Fish Hooks.
My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic uses a variation with colored outlines instead of plain black.
Symbionic Titan
Invader Zim, uses this in a few episodes; Zim's antennae are noticeably thicker than usual in them.
The Looney Tunes Show
Phineas and Ferb
Almost Naked Animals
Some of the cel-animated characters from The Amazing Worldof Gumball
Clone High almost looks like it shares the same character designers as Dexters Laboratory and Powerpuff Girls.
Any season one episode of Tiny Toon Adventures animated by Wang Film Productions and -due to inconsistency- Kennedy Cartoons.
Good Vibes
''101 Dalmatians: The Series''

Video Games

Cel Shading tends to look like this
Due to Capcom porting her sprite straight from Vampire Savior/Darkstalkers 3, Morrigan was this in Capcom vs. SNK 2 and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 in comparison to the other newer sprites.
Borderlands uses this effectively for comic like graphics.
A majority of sprites from video games made specifically for the NES, such as Super Mario Bros 3.
Angry Birds
Rayman Origins

Inversions

Commercials

Esurance insurance commercials.

Web Comics

Ditto for later installments of the webcomic Mac Hall.
Faye's flashbacks in Questionable Content.
The entire run of Garanos.
Cast of Homestuck is normally represented by chibi-like "sprites" with outline, but lose it and gain normal human proportions when in Hero Mode.

Western Animation - Television

Samurai Jack sported no outlines. Genndy Tartakovsky once mentioned how this contrasted with his last work, Dexters Laboratory.
Same with Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends.
The X's
6teen
Stoked