Inkblot Cartoon Style

Merrie Melodies presents Foxy!

Inkblot Cartoon Style is the cartoon style most prevalent from the mid-1920s to the mid-1930s.

Most historians refer to this as Rubber Hose Animation because characters' arms, legs and pretty much everything else are usually animated as if they were made of rubber tubing and without elbows or knees.

In many cartoons in the very late Twenties and early and mid-Thirties, not only does everyone dance to the background music, everything dances to it as well.

The style is widely considered Nightmare Fuel because of the genre's tendency toward surrealist humor.

Characteristics of Characters of the Inkblot Cartoon Style:

• Black or, less commonly, grey bodies
• White facial masks or muzzles
• Eyes are often conjoined if it's just their muzzle that is white.
• Black noses
• White Gloves, which make the hands show up more easily.
• White paws, typically both back paws/feet and front paws/hands, if not a human. They have a function very similar to that of White Gloves.
• Pie eyes, eyes that look like a piece has been cut out, or simply Black Bead Eyes.
• Often a Captain Ersatz or an Expy.
• Often a Cartoon Creature.
• Often an Informed Species if the character is a mouse, dog or rabbit, and especially if it's a cat.
• Often has Rubber Hose Limbs

If this style is used in a cartoon that was made after the 1920s/1930s, it results in Retreaux. It often, but not always, goes hand-in-hand with Rubber Hose Limbs, which originated from this style.

Examples from the 1920s/1930s:

• Felix the Cat. He was created in 1919, but still.
• The earliest Disney characters are, or at least were, this.
  • The characters in the Laugh O Grams.
  • All the cartoon characters from the Alice Comedies.
  • Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Fanny, Homer, and Sadie/Ortensia
  • Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Pete, Clarabelle Cow, Horace Horsecollar, and Goofy (known as Dippy Dawg back then) in their earliest appearances.
• Looney Tunes:
  • Bosko the Talk Ink Kid & Honey from the earliest cartoons.
  • Even though they look more like dog/cat crosses in Tiny Toon Adventures, they are still drawn in this style.
  • Piggy and Fluffy, Goopy Geer, Foxy and Roxy, Buddy and Cookie, and Beans the cat.
  • Goopy's fur is white in his original cartoons, unlike in his Tiny Toon Adventures appearance in which he's black-furred.
  • Many Merrie Melodies (which, unlike Looney Tunes, didn't have a regular cast)
• Betty Boop and Bimbo are both quite rubbery, even though Betty looks a lot more shapely.
• The Popeye cartoons of The Thirties are this, especially with the characters' eyes and Olive Oyl's Rubber Hose Limbs.

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Retreaux Examples

Video Games

• Peacock from Skullgirls watched cartoons from this era when younger, so her character design is inspired from this style.
• Game and Watch from Super Smash Bros.?
• Sonic the Hedgehog, especially his original look.

Web Comics

• Anthro artist Agouti-Rex's works, such as The Fantastical Bestiary, Witchprickers, Murry Purry Fresh and Furry, and Guttersnipe.

Western Animation

• The Futurama Season 6 finale mocks this art style.
• Yakko, Wakko and Dot Warner from Animaniacs are this, even though they don't have Rubber Hose Limbs and their eyes look somewhat Animesque.
• In The Simpsons episode "Bart's Comet", the Couch Gag is the family drawn in this style.
• Billy and Mandy parodies this in the episode "Hill Billy".
• In a Manatee Gag on Family Guy, Peter was waxing nostalgic about him and Brian in the old days; they were drawn in this style for the flashback.
• Fairly Oddparents has an episode where Timmy's grandpa comes in to baby-sit him. His grandpa later reminisces on how the old cartoons used to look like in this style, causing Timmy to make a wish that causes the whole world to look like this art style for his grandpa.
• The "Old Timey" universe from Homestar Runner.
• Dennis the Duck from House of Mouse, who is basically an avian version of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
• One episode of SpongeBob SquarePants featured a scene drawn this way, with Spongebob singing "I'm Ready to go to Work!" during the entire scene.