Black Bead Eyes

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The darkness of his eyes is quite a charming feature.

Lucy: "Do you think my eyes are beautiful Charlie Brown?" Charlie Brown: "Yes, they look just like little round dots of India ink!" —Peanuts

A fairly common trait amongst works with a simplistic art style is that the characters' eyes will be nothing more than a black dot on their faces. Many fans of animated works will be openly familiar with this particular trope since it shows up in both Western and Japanese animation, the latter of which is usually in the form of Super Deformed Chibis. In some cases the characters may get Skintone Sclerae or Cartoony Eyes when a shocked expression is needed.

Could end up causing Only Six Faces or in some cases, the exact opposite. Also guaranteed to show up in a Stick Figure Comic. Might be a way to add a pinch of Moe to the series.

Related to, but not to be confused with Black Eyes. See also Pie-Eyed for an old-school variant.

Examples of Black Bead Eyes include:

Comic Books and Newspaper Comics

• Peanuts, which lampshaded it once (see quote above).
• Dennis the Menace US
• Little Lulu
• Captain Marvel / Billy Batson in the Golden Age.
• Akbar and Jeff in Life in Hell
• The Family Circus
• Dondi
• Calvin and Hobbes
• Cathy Slight inversion in that the title character is the only one who doesn't have them.
• Most of the characters in Dilbert.
• The Adventures of Tintin
• Some characters in Pearls Before Swine, including the main characters, though their eyes often change to Sphere Eyes in order to show emotion.
• Little Nemo
• Johan from Johan and Peewit
• Zits
• Most of the characters in Pooch Cafe

Literature

• Madeline
• Curious George
• Captain Underpants
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid
• Most of the characters in Clifford the Big Red Dog, with the giant version of the title character being the only exception.

Puppet Shows

• Bear, Ojo and the otters in Bear in the Big Blue House.
• The bunnies in Jim Henson's The Tale of the Bunny Picnic, most notably Bean Bunny, who went on to be part of the regular cast of The Muppets.

Toys

• Every LEGO minifigure until the mid-2000s.

Video Games

• Professor Layton, but only for a few characters (including Layton himself).
• The Mario & Luigi series uses this style for some supporting characters.
  • Paper Mario
  • Bowser Jr, the Toads, Boos, Piantas, Lumas, etc.
• Features in all of the MOTHER series games, but it's a more obvious stylistic choice in EarthBound and Mother 3.
• A good variety of Pokémon have this sort of eye. Up until Generation II, a lot of humans had a style similar to this. It took a while for the other adaptations to catch up.
• Many Kirby characters.
• Katamari Damacy: The Prince and his many, many cousins have these.
• Peacock of Skullgirls is the only character in the game to have these. Though in reality, they're not eyes: they're her empty eye sockets.
• All the livestock in the Harvest Moon games.Also the overworld sprites of characters.
• The first few eyes that your sackboy gets in LittleBigPlanet are these. Justified in that his eyes really are only black beads or buttons. However, later on you get eyes that go beyond this, such as the cartoon eyes and the neon eyes.
• The artwork for Harvest Moon 64 had the characters with this style, mixed with Super-Deformed, probably to match the games style. In-game artwork was more detailed though.
• The Coconut Crew, a group of koala NPCs from Sonic Rush Adventure, had these.

Web Animation

• The human characters on the educational website Brain POP, most notably Tim.
  • Also, the animal characters.
• How It Should Have Ended
• Several characters from Homestar Runner such as The Cheat, Strong Mad, Homsar, Trogdor, and most of the Old-Timey cast.
• Tom from "Eddsworld".

Web Comics

• Project 0
• Order of the Stick
• MS Paint Adventures: Everyone in Jail Break and Bard Quest, almost everyone in Problem Sleuth, and pretty much everyone except the trolls in Homestuck(at least in the standard art style).
• Arthur, King of Time and Space, with variants: Arthur's own eyes are heavily lidded; Nimue's have visible whites, perhaps because she's a Wide-Eyed Idealist.
• Our Little Adventure, except for elves.
• Some of the characters in Sakana.
• The Loch Ness Monster in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob.
• In the Doctor Who fan comic The Ten Doctors (as well as other Doctor Who fan comics by the same artist), the Fifth Doctor, Jamie, Zoe, and the Eleventh Doctor all have black bead eyes. Due to the art style, other characters have it from time to time—mostly when drawn in the background.

Western Animation

• Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse have these in their classic designs.
• Stimpy of Ren and Stimpy was given one of these as an animation error (in the "Breakfast Tips" bumper). However, John Kricfalusi thought it was funny so he left it in
• Stickin' Around does this, since its art style takes after the traditional Stick Figure Comic.
• The pilot of Megas XLR had Coop drawn with half outlined eyes without any color to them or even whites. The part of his eye that would have been white was the same color as his skin.
• Some characters in The Flintstones, most notably Barney and Wilma.
  • In the earlier cartoons Barney even had empty circles for eyes. Does Barney have Prophet Eyes ?
• Most of the cast of Winnie the Pooh, which consists of plush toys with actual black beads for eyes.
  • Also, Christopher Robin himself in any of his pre-2011 appearances.
• Elroy on The Jetsons
• Most of the characters in Doug, such as the title character.
  • Jim Jinkins also used this eye style in his other shows PB and J Otter, Stanley, Jo-Jo's Circus, and Pinky Dinky Doo for some characters.
• Most of the cast of Pepper Ann
• Many characters on Adventure Time, especially humanoid characters. They often change in order to show emotion, though- most commonly to Sphere Eyes, similar to the Pearls Before Swine example above.
• Several minor characters in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog.
• Certain characters in Top Cat, such as Officer Dibble.
• The cast of Popeye has these.
• The Cast of The Mr. Men Show may also qualify.
• Any animated character that wears Eye Glasses. Some retain this when they take the glasses off:
  • Gus on Recess (Though it's averted by Gretchen, Miss Grotke, and Miss Finster (Depending on the Artist))
  • Milhouse on The Simpsons
  • Arthur, after the first season.
• Sniz and Fondue
• Ike and every other person from Canada on South Park.
• The cat seen in Whitmore's mansion at the very beginning of Atlantis the Lost Empire for some reason actually drawn with these type of eyes, but when we see the same cat again at the end of the film, it has the eyes of an actual cat!
• Hamm the piggy bank from Toy Story. The Cars version of him has Skintone Sclerae instead.
  • Also by Pixar, Peach the sea star and the seagulls from Finding Nemo.
  • One of Ms. Nesbitt's students from Monsters, Inc. (a blue sluglike monster who bites Mike Wazowski in the arm).
  • Back to Toy Story, a whole lot of characters from the film. Justified, since they are toys.
• Billy and his father from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy.
• Codename: Kids Next Door, though there are a few exceptions.

Real Life

• Some animals have these type of eyes.