Explainer video style · Rubber-hose cartoon

Rubber hose cartoon style explainer videos

A bouncy 1930s cartoon: pie-cut eyes, noodle arms, flickering film. Brief it in one sentence and get a narrated, animated explainer film in the Rubber-hose cartoon style, scored and voiced, in about 15 minutes.

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A frame in the Rubber-hose cartoon style

What it looks like, and when to use it.

A bouncy 1930s cartoon in sepia: pie-cut eyes, noodle arms, white gloves, a sun with a face, and everything dancing to a hot jazz beat behind flickering old film. It is drawn in code and steps at twelve frames a second, like early hand-drawn animation. It is cheerful and funny, and it turns everyday processes into a song-and-dance number.

Best for

Playful how-things-work topics
Lessons for children
Fun brand and product moments

Try a brief like

“How does a toaster know when to pop?”
“Why do we yawn?”
“How a cup of coffee is made”

The art direction the director follows.

Every style is a full art direction, not a filter: its own palette, type, motion and music. This is the brief the director works from for Rubber-hose cartoon.

Look: A 1930s rubber-hose cartoon drawn in code, in the tradition of the Fleischer studio, early black-and-white Disney shorts and Cuphead. Monochrome sepia-grey on faded paper. Characters have big round heads, pie-cut eyes (a black pupil with a wedge cut out), three lashes and wide smiles; arms and legs are constant-width noodle curves with no elbows; hands wear white four-finger gloves with rolled cuffs and three lines on the back. Everything is alive: objects, the sun and flowers have faces and dance. Polka dots and striped wallpaper. The whole frame sits behind an old film layer of flicker, scratches, dust and a rounded gate.
Motion: Everything bounces on the beat: each object hops from its own contact point at 128 BPM, squashing on landing and stretching in the air, with phases a quarter beat apart; bows and tails follow a little late. Characters and props step at 12fps (on twos); the film layer flickers and weaves at 24fps. Flowers dance, the sun nods as its rays turn, a smoke ring puffs out on every beat. Shots change with an iris in or out.
Music: Hot 1930s jazz: stride piano, muted trumpet, tuba bass and xylophone, bouncing at about 128 BPM.
Type: Bold, rounded 1930s title-card lettering in dark ink on a pale card, inside an ornate border.