A deep look into animated eyes

Animated movies have captivated audiences around the world since their first appearance in the early 20th Century. Since, unlike traditional live-action cinema, it does not require a physical set or filming location artists are only limited by their own imagination and graphical talents. Animation can tell fantastical stories that do not depend on the physical abilities of human actors. Characters like Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny became world-famous, and even the earliest cartoons in which they featured are still being watched today.

Aesthetically, the facial features of animated characters tend to be simplified, given that artwork had to be hand-drawn until relatively recently. This simplification, along with artistic design, necessitates an alternative visual language based on making exaggerated facial expressions to convey the same basic emotions that would have been easily portrayed by human actors. Eyes play a major role in these expressions, which consequently led artists to design their characters’ eyes as very large and distinctive, but often in ways that are not physiologically accurate and may come at the expense of visual function. We, therefore, hypothesise that the visual function of the majority of cartoon characters is profoundly impaired.