Is this the same as a sketch style?

No. A sketch style is a drawing that was never finished. This is a finished frame with the sketch left visible underneath it, complete with paint behind it, which is a different and more deliberate look.

Why did studios do it this way?

It removed the inking stage entirely, which saved a great deal of time and money. The rough result was accepted as a cost of the saving, and it later became a style people chose.

How do I keep the construction lines?

Ask for them by name, and put them where they belong: around the hands, the face and any joint. A model treats a stray line as an error and removes it unless it is told the error is the point.

Xerographic Line

xerox line
photocopied line
scratchy pencil line

The animator's own pencil line photocopied straight onto the cel, sketch marks and all.

Draw this style

Opens an image model with the prompt in it. The price is on the page before you sign in.

What it is for

Copying the pencil drawing directly onto the cel skipped the inker, which was faster and much cheaper. It also left the animator's actual hand in the finished frame, which no inked line ever does, and that roughness became a look people now ask for on purpose.

How it works

The rough drawing goes through a photocopier onto the clear sheet, so every construction line and every abandoned correction is reproduced with the final one. The line comes out grey and grainy rather than black and solid. Paint goes on behind, and it rarely fills exactly to a line that was never meant to be final.

When to use it

Use it when the hand should show and the picture should feel made rather than manufactured. Avoid it where legibility at a small size matters, because a scratchy line falls apart in a thumbnail.

Told apart from its neighbours

Storyboard Frame is rough for a different reason, and it carries frame furniture. Model Sheet is a technical document with several views. Cel Animation is what this replaced, with a clean inked line and paint filled exactly to it.

Where it is used

It suits anything that wants warmth and visible effort, and it is the quickest way to make a drawn character look handmade rather than generated.

Studio features from the 1960s and 1970s
Modern work that wants a visible hand

The prompt

Replace the blanks with your own character, keep the rest. Then run it on an image model.

<character>, xerographic line style, the drawing reproduced straight from a rough pencil original so every construction line and every correction stays visible, a scratchy uneven dark grey outline rather than a clean black ink one, flat pale colour inside it that does not quite fill to the line, visible sketch marks around the hands and the face, a slightly dirty reproduced quality over the whole picture

Run it

What goes wrong

A clean, confident illustration comes back. The fix is to ask for visible construction lines and corrections around the hands and the face, which is exactly where an animator draws most and erases least.

Leave out

a clean inked outline, a single confident line, perfectly filled colour, a polished finish

Watch for

Ask for the corrections to stay in. A model reads a rough line as a mistake and cleans it, so the surviving construction lines have to be named as something you want.

Questions

It is a photocopy of a pencil drawing, not an ink line. A pencil line reproduces as grey and grainy, and that greyness is one of the things that identifies the tradition.