A grinning mouth packed with dozens of teeth stretches across a cat-shaped bus body, and that image alone makes the Catbus one of the most recognizable vehicles in the Studio Ghibli lineup. This guide walks through how to draw the Catbus in 21 steps, covering everything from the wide furry head down to the soot sprites perched on the roof.
A Character That Works on Two Levels at Once
The tutorial runs 21 steps and ends on clean line art without color, so the focus stays entirely on getting the shapes right. The crouching pose facing the viewer means you are working with a near-symmetrical layout for the head and body, but the bus structure behind it, the destination sign, and the curled tail break that symmetry in ways that keep things interesting. The soot sprites on top add small but fiddly detail near the end of the sketch.
Key Features of the Catbus Design
- Large cat body doubling as a bus shape
- Wide grinning mouth with many teeth
- Round eyes with small circular pupils
- Pointed ears on a rounded furry head
- Striped fluffy tail curled to one side
If you enjoy drawing creatures from the Ghibli world, the Kodama and Kiki on her broom make good companion pieces to this one. For something a bit simpler to warm up with, Heen is a quick and satisfying sketch.
Reading the Step Colors
Each step in this tutorial uses a three-color system to show exactly what is new and what came before:
- Red Color: lines added in the current step.
- Black Color: lines completed earlier.
- Gray Color: base sketch for structure.
How to Draw the Catbus: Step-by-Step Tutorial
Finished Your Catbus? Share It
Once the line art is done, drop your drawing in the comments below. Seeing how others handle the teeth row and the bus windows is always useful, and it helps others know what to expect from this tutorial. New guides get posted to Facebook and Telegram as soon as they go live, a new YouTube video based on existing guides goes up every day, and Pinterest stays updated regularly too. If you want to keep going with Ghibli creatures, Jiji is a solid next step, and No-Face offers a different kind of shape challenge. Supporting the project on Patreon helps keep new tutorials coming, and members get access to unique hand-drawn coloring pages as a bonus.