What makes a cartoon a cartoon and not a illustration?

Katie Corbett: What makes a cartoon a cartoon and not a illustration?
I need to know for my art homework, I have to define cartoon, caricature and illustration

Answers and Views:

Answer by Christie
Animations

Answer by Smoky-Joe
If the characters are drawn with 4 fingers, then its a cartoon, if they are drawn with 5 fingers its an illustration.

Answer by Sarah Eccles
cartoons have more exaggerated features, eg. bigger noses, weird hair etc. etc.

I hope this helps 🙂

Answer by Daz
My personal opinion but I would probably define them as this.
Illustration – An attempt to recreate a lifelike copy of the subject or suggest a lifelike copy.
Caricature – A picture that picks out and exaggerates certain areas to make the individual subject recognisable even though there is no attempt made to make the overall drawing lifelike.
Cartoon – A picture where realism is not important and the picture is only lifelike enough to suggest a species and not an individual as in a caricature. For example, Bugs Bunny has big ears and big teeth suggesting that he’s a rabbit even though in reality a rabbit looks nothing like that.

Answer by clayjar_azn
Illustration is used to convey information or an idea and used in commercial art. It can be any medium and doesn’t have to be realistic. Ex. An illustration of a flag done in watercolor used for a magazine article about patriotism.

Cartoon is a humorous illustration done for print and animation.

Caricature is art that exaggerate features of the subject.

Both cartoon and caricature seemed to be types of illustration.