A breakdown of toon's biology

Here you'll learn about a toons' anatomy, how it works and how they reproduce

General anatomy

Toons look very different from us, they have fewer details and are much more obnoxiously colored. Their body is entirely composed of a substance that's both malleable like clay and sleek like rubber and beneath the layer there's empty space where gasses, liquids or solids can fill. That also means their 'skin' is glossy.

However, all toons always have a complete lack of organs, bones and muscles, instead food is stored in their mass and converted into the same substance. This process is not well-understood in their world because it defies logic, like most other things over there actually.

The substance allows for transformations and transmutations to occur. A toon could be turned into a plush, a pooltoy or wax and it'd still work that's on top of it being very malleable yet firm and resilient yet mutable.

Injuries

This brings in new advantages not seen in our lives like a good resistance to trauma. Blowing toons into balloons, crushing them, melting them into slimes by acid, heat or via digestion or absorbition or last but not least burning them to a crispy pile of ashes doesn't damage them like it would for us and they can't "die" from it unless they think they could. At worst they may feel a light tiredness or headache after the effort.

Despite not having proper nerves. Toons still have some sort of pain receptors. These work differently for them compared to us, while they can feel temperature differences like warmth and cold or painful stinging feeling, they can't suffer the martyr. All forms of pain to a toon is fleeting, if you cut a toon in half he'll feel the initial cut, but afterward they won't feel anything anymore.

Despite being fleeting, the feeling can't be prevented and repeated external stimulis will keep the toon on edge even if it's unpleasant. So they tend to be very sensitive to tickling.

Mutations

Rarely they wear a full coat of fur that's very soft and fluffy. It is made of the same material.

They may, based on which species they represent, have a slightly different anatomy like claws and fangs made of said substance if they are a feline.

It is rare, but some toons have hair-like tuft on their head, it is either made of many strands like "fluffy" toons or it's like a single growth that looks smooth. Tufts can also appear on other parts of the body and be fluffy or a single growth too.

Toon's life cycle

I am not really liking the idea of cartoon characters being exactly like us. So, while most artists draw child characters as children with proportions corresponding to ours, I am more interested to draw younger toons vastly differently. So this is the lifecycle of cartoon characters in my lore. You are free to adapt or use my infopage for your own needs.

Egg stage?

It's never been proven if toons came from eggs because they are always found outside them. Some folktales say that a magic stork lay eggs that it intends of bringing to parents once they crack open, or the stork is so clumsy the egg is dropped and lost somewhere on its way. This would explain why babies can be found in doorsteps or even out in the wild, but no eggs or eggshells.

Despite the uncertainty of how babies are carried to their 'parents', it is said that romantic couples are more likely to find them at their doorstep in a straw basket.

Larval stage

During their larval stage, baby toons are just a blob with sometimes a tail trailing behind after a couple weeks. They move by hopping. They are nonverbal, but can be taught to speak. Due to the way toons aare born, they have no biological parents and are taken-in by other adult toons as pets (not the kinky kind, just like an feral animal)

A graph or chart will be supplied someday, but for now if you can't picture what they'd look like, use this as reference Baby I - Wikimon.net

Waddling head stage

During their waddling head stage, toddler toons grow a pair of feet, so they no longer have the need to hop around it's much more convenient! More rarely, they grow hands, but usually not. If they do they're usually stubs which makes holding objects harder anyway. They are capable of speech, but it's limited and several of them would remain nonverbal until their next stage.

If you can't picture what they'd look like, use this as reference Species: waddling head - e621.net or use Kirby or a Goomba as a reference point

Chibi stage

By this point all of them are capable of coherent speech whether they were taught or they learned it on their own. They have hands and feet, but also legs, arms, a belly and a torso growing under their head. It's all very thin and brittle-looking like a stickman, but as the final stage before adulthood, these parts will grow thicker and longer.

I think it's clear to everyone what I meant by 'chibi', but here's a refernce just in case chibi - e621.net

Adulthood

The toon is now fully anthropomorphic with clearly-defined proportions comparable to a real adult from the human world.

Regressions

Always directly caused by injuries and sometimes by magic or reality-bending prowess.

Dwarfism

If a toon gets injured causing a loss in their mass (since theyre all made of a substance) or getts changed by magic or latex goo, their body will regress into a dwarf, a smaller version of themselves with proportions akin to a human child. Mentally, they are still adults. Some toons are naturally this short, but it depends heavily on their animal species.

"Death"

Death is a social construct in their world, it is not part of the real physical reality and isn't a consistent thing. If something causes them to "die" they'll reappear as a very opaque ghost and they can be "revived" into their regular form.

If you've ever player Pizza Tower, Peppino's ghost transformation works the same way.

In their home world, this is not understood why they are basicly immortal

Ethics: Overpopulation?

Despite there being seemingly no way for toons to die or disappear completely, there's no such thing as overpopulation due in part to the very low and static rates of birth (since a magic stork is delivering babies, no more than 10 per trip and no more than once per week) it takes forever to increase population and there is no telling if toons can indeed die for real or permanently dissolve into nothingness. On top of that, the planet they live on is like Minecraft's it is seemingly infinite with no end in sight and any other planet they may manage to find and goto in the universe are similarly expansive.

It's worth noting the inspiration for every bit of anatomy and biology in my characters comes from trying to make sense of furry art and cartoons and how they work since they are more logical than they seem at first glance (see also my take on cartoon physics) and I figured that toons are like solid jelly slimes that can stretch, be molded like clay and reform thanks to their slime-like properties. Speaking of clay, here's literal clay that makes my point for what cartoon characters would be like in my stories.