Cartoon (カートゥーン, kātūn), sometimes shorten to toon is a form of illustration drawn in a unrealistic or a semi-realistic style. It is also a term use for animation, mainly animation within the west.
The word cartoon originally referred to doodles (rough drawing) for oil paintings and the like. Later, the term cartoon came to be used to refer to caricatures published in newspapers and magazines. Furthermore, when works based on these caricatures began to be televised as animated cartoons for children, became also under the cartoon term.
In the world of animation there are debates among what a cartoon is. Some refer animation of any age to also be cartoons. Others might not like it as a lot of people don't like the ideal of liking something made for a child demographic in mind, therefore calling ones for children as cartoons.
Another debate is what makes a cartoon and what makes an anime. Compare to cartoons, anime tends to have a wider rage of demographics and genre topics (lot of cartoons tend to a comedy or action show). As stated before, some might see cartoons as for kids, so some might not want anime to bee seen as cartoons. Some also debate the anime refers to only Japanese animation while some say it refers to Asian animation in general.
All these debates most likely came from how popular the word anime became outside Japan. Anime itself is just a Japanese abbreviation of animation. Most of the time any animation out there tend to be also called anime in Japan, but sometimes cartoon is used. Some of other country's animations are sometimes also just called animation within its original language (such as with aeni and donghua works).
The style tends to use large, exaggerated parts of arms and legs, eyes and mouths, and a lot of vivid and pastel colors. The head is also low and deformed, with a height of about 3 to 5 heads, and the drawing of each part and the way shadows are applied are roughly simplified. In addition, the main lines are often drawn with uniform thickness.
On pixiv, this tag is mainly applied to illustrations based on western animations or the art style.
