Animals and animation have much more in common than just the Latin root "anima." All animals have unique-looking features, just like the characters of anime or any other kind of animation. Naturally, one starts to wonder what the animals would look like if they were transformed into characters from animation. A Korean artist named Nitro, who goes by the alias of byeongju.a on Instagram, satisfies this curiosity by merging the two together and showing interesting results.

Nitro recently did a series of illustrations that try to depict domestic and wild animals like big cats, dogs, birds, and others as original characters you'd expect to see in animation. It's not hard to imagine that the hardest part of it is to transform it into a new style while keeping the unique characteristics intact. Whether he succeeded or not, we leave it for you to judge, but in our eyes, he did a fantastic job.

If they were part of real anime series, where would they fit in? Or, perhaps, one would create a new anime series that has all of them in it? In any case, the characters are very enticing, and there's a good reason why it's so: the artist is a master of creating unique characters out of thin air. Don't believe it? Check out the artist's Instagram and see for yourselves.

More info: Facebook | Instagram | artstation.com