Soft

Smooth shading and no outlines: each shape is lit from the upper right, so the characters look round, like soft toys.

Six cartoon characters in the Soft look, a person, a kid, a dog, a cat, a bird and a monster, smoothly shaded with no outlines.
The six ready-made characters drawn in the Soft look.

Make a cartoon in this lookEvery look side by side

What it is

Soft fills each shape with a gentle gradient, lighter on the side facing the light and darker on the side away from it, and draws no line around it. The light comes from the upper right for every character, so a whole scene looks lit by the same sun. The eyes are the classic kind, with whites and pupils. The result looks rounder and more solid than the flat looks, a little like a modelled toy.

When to choose it

Pick Soft when you want warmth and depth without heavy lines: a bedtime story, a gentle scene, a character who should look cuddly. It suits round characters best, the bird and the monster especially, because the shading shows off their curves. Since there are no outlines, overlapping parts are separated only by their shading, so give touching parts colours that differ, as you would in Flat.

Every character in it

The person and the kid look more modelled, with rounded arms and heads. The dog and the cat get a soft, furry feel: their bodies darken toward the belly and their legs toward the back. The bird looks like a plump ball of feathers, and the monster's belly and spots seem to bulge. Where the page's scripts run, the tiles below show all six, moving.

How it is drawn

Soft sets the shading strength to just over half and the light direction to the upper right, and turns off outlines, shine, hard shadows and textures. The gradient is worked out for each shape as it is drawn, so it stays right while the character moves and turns: a raised arm is still lit from the upper right. As with every look, the moves play exactly the same.