Basically, the whole reason I get so antsy about this is because a lot of the animation used for cartoon animal characters involves anatomical bending that may or may not even be consistent; I have NO idea how complex the typical rig for a CGI character is, and 2D animation can do whatever it damn well pleases, within reason. :P

In essence, the core idea behind the "implementation" of these "cartoon robots" is that at the "core", there's a base skeleton which looks and moves sort of like the rig would on a CGI character, assuming it's rigid enough to do so, at least (designs and necessary augmentations/alterations may vary...a lot xD)...the limbs and such might need to have some amount of sliding articulation, in that the'd need to be more like pistons than solid limbs, if that makes sense. >.> On top of that might be a layer of some kind of nanite-based artificial musculature, which would ideally be the primary means of articulation. Considering it's nanites, which honestly seems like it's treated as the scifi equivalent of a magical polymorph agent or potion...you could go a lot of directions with this...literally. :P I think in terms of the "properties" of these magic nanites, they'd be able to cause their neighbors to expand/contract in arbitrary directions, which would...presumably allow for some amount of contraction even when the limb is stretched or squashed? Basically it'd need to be able to pull in the right direction from any orientation...toonimals do weird things with their bodies, even just moving around "normally", barring any silly gags or expressive exaggerations (ridiculous faces, being hit hard with a heavy object, being stretched between two things pulling apart, etc.), so the range of required force application is uh...pretty wide, or so it would seem. xD Barring that, there could be some form of direct, silent motor-based actuation (or near enough silent that surrounding "flesh" would muffle it or something), and the only thing the flexy-contracting nano-stuff would need to do is adjust for elasticity to keep a consistent shape, avoiding folds, etc. (unless it's part of the design >.>)

I am NOT an engineer; I don't pretend that any of this stuff is actually feasible in the real world today; I know it's almost certainly full of "armchair physics". (I invoked nanites for cripe's sake xD ...while I'm aware that nanotech is a thing, it's nowhere NEAR the level of what's depicted in science fiction AFAIK) The only thing I'm going on is what little "mechanical sense" I have and what I sort of know about how cartoon animal anatomy "works". :P I wish I could draw this stuff properly; it's hard to translate what I see in my head to the written word without it being significantly "lossy". xD There is, of course, some vague hope in me that there's a possibility this sort of tech could roll around in my lifetime, but honestly, I really doubt it will, if ever. :P As much as I tell myself I'd love to see these things, I don't think it's gonna happen anytime soon. (3

Not only that, but the range of aesthetic styles, both 2D and 3D, is so diverse (yes! really!) that trying to account for all cases would require...so much time and thought put into "mechanical details" like this if I wanted to make them "work" in my own little personal mindscape, and some of them just plain wouldn't "work" at all, to be brutally honest. xD

I don't just do this stuff with character designs; I have ideas for various tech and vehicles and fantasy weapons and such based around forms of (hopefully) mostly consistently-behaving unreal materials...this is part of why I want to set it in a sort of "matrix" world. If your matter is being simulated and is in-system programmable, anything's more or less possible, right? ...just as long as you know what you're doing. :P

I guess when I get all weird and awkward about these ideas and the "feasibility" or lack thereof they have, it's mostly that I'm worried that people will get on my case for having even so much as a glimmer of hope that there could be real-life parallels to the ridiculously floaty/lofty "tech" I dream up in my head to sort of "explain away" the issues...and it doesn't even explain them all away! One thing that comes to mind that I doubt could really be addressed well with any Sufficiently Advanced Technology is the potential issue of fur coverage: when the anatomy *does* bend on a CGI character such that an area of skin/mesh has to expand or contract significantly, does fur appear and disappear to fill gaps and prevent bunching from happening? >.> I seriously haven't scrutinized things closely enough or done any 3D stuff myself to know for sure...I'd tend to think there's SOME consistency with that, otherwise it wouldn't look right...right? xD

So...there's stuff I still don't really know a lot about animation principles, let alone actual physical/mechanical engineerging ones...that ought to tell you how much I "know" about this stuff. xD

I think what I should maybe do is just...get to know the lay of the land in terms of pure design and animation tricks, which probably will involve learning aspects of real-world animal anatomy etc. to see exactly where rules get broken etc., and then I can worry about basically making new "rules" for the cartoons to abide by which could possibly be used in this vague, probably already-done scifi concept I have. xD Maybe then I can actually expand upon it with knowledge I glean from that experience... :o

Anyways, I hope this comes as a nice, more positive changeup from the last couple negative things I posted...it's been hard for me the past week and a half or so-ish, but I think I might be finally starting to come to terms with myself... ^.^;