#theres some masquerade tsums and they hold tiny felt masks that could make cover a quarter of their face

[axvwriter]

Tsum-Tsums Design Observations

So I looked through the Tsums fandom page for the tsum mobile game. I did this as I wanted to look at all the different type of tsums to see what the general rules are for how tsums look.

There does seem to be some rough guidelines, some ignored for stylistic choice. Some of the rules that sometimes aren't followed, I can't really tell why. Perhaps it's just the artist behind the design.

Like one common rule seems to be that eyes are just dots. The exception is sometimes stylistic like when it's a major part of the character's design like Pleakly from Lilo and Stitch or like Perry the Platypus from Phineas and Ferb. Part of Perry's look when not an agent is to look in opposite directions which is a bit difficult to show with no whites of the eyes, the sclera. Some that I don't understand is Timon from Lion King. I don't think the sclera is that big of a major identifying detail about Timon and the Pumba tsum has the usual dot eyes.

There is at least one tsum that has normal eyes, The White Queen from Alice in Wonderland (Live-action Tim Burton directed one). It just feels cursed compared to all the other tsums. There's also Mushu from Mulan who has cartoony eyes going on which seems weird as his eyes weren't drawn like that in the movie. That just seems like a random design detail randomly thrown onto him. It's like the Sonic the Hedgehog cartoons eye shape. Which works for the Cars tsums and for Goofy since the originals have similar shapes. So the exception to dot eyes seems to be if the original has an iconic look associated to that part, though sometimes it's broken for no clear reason? I can only guess artistic choice.

Another common rule seems to be that tsums don't have mouths. The only ones that break that exception and make sense to me are ones with beaks, Pacman, and that one dog from the Coco movie. I haven't seen the movie (though I do intend to watch it some day) but I recall from the trailers it always has its tongue sticking out. So that tsum having a tongue makes sense.

If the character has buck-teeth then they're given mouths. Or if they're like Jack Skellington and Oogie Boogie, both from The Nightmare Before Christmas, then that also makes sense as they do have unique mouths as well. The ones that don't really make sense to me is when there's a random smile? Judy Hopps, Zootopia, has a smile while Nick Wilde, also from Zootopia, has no mouth. I don't usually think of smiling as a unique character identification trait unless it's perhaps that the character can only smile.

Another common rule seems to be a round dot for the nose. Yet this is rather flexible, usually changing for animals. Some characters get a bit more shape to their noses. Though I have noticed that if the original design of a character has a sharp-pointed nose, that's rounded out. At least, that's the case for Pinocchio. Of course some have no noses like the fish tsums.

Hair and other details seem rather free. Just make it look like felt. They can have hats, glasses, earrings, and they do have ears. Usually very small and tiny unless the character's original design doesn't have usual human ears. Heck they even take into account if the character has hearing aids. Carl from Up had what I thought was a dark hole on his ear, but then I realized that wasn't depth design but a hearing aid since his other ear doesn't match. A few rare tsums will even hold an item. Like Maleficient from Sleeping Beauty holds a small staff.

The main major rules seem to be that they must look like they're made of felt and have a round pill-shape.

Oh and have a photo of some of the most unusual tsums I spotted and put together in ms paint.

The top left is the Pixar Lamp. I know Yzma's, from Emperor's New Groove, eyelashes are a big detail, but couldn't they still work with dot eyes? I don't know what's going on with Sully, Monster's Inc, as he looks a bit badly patch-worked? Interesting that the Mirror of Darkness from Snow White has a tsum. That basically breaks the common shape. The crab from Moana is the biggest violation of breaking the usual shapes. That red guy on the top right is Sebastian from The Little Mermaid. Need I say more?

The pink one is one of the little oysters from Alice in Wonderland (animated) movie. The one with the regular human eyes is The White Queen from Alice in Wonderland (live-action) movie.

I might redraw some of these in what I view as the rough guidelines from tsums just to see if I can understand the reasoning of why they're so different.

Have a screenshot of the most botched tsum.

This is supposed to be Wall-E. Wall-E isn't yellow. Like they didn't even try to get the details on his body, like perhaps the top part of his square body could be what's seen behind his head-eyes. I would think brown for a main color, not emoji yellow. Just isn't right.