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The answer to this one is pretty straightforward -- it's easier to draw and animate four fingers than five. The average cartoon short requires 50,000 drawings. If you're working with a five-fingered character, drawing each digit really adds up in terms of time and money. But if your character has four fingers on each hand instead of five, that's 100,000 fewer digits to sketch. Or as one site puts it, it's "accountant-based thinking that forces so many cartoon characters to go through life with only four fingers." Two of the earliest animated characters, Felix the Cat and Mickey Mouse, were both
drawn with four "fingers" per "hand," and later characters generally followed suit. But as this 'toon site states, "There's no cartoon bible that you can consult that states that all characters have four fingers."
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