The color, broken down
Four ways to describe one color. Each slider in the game maps to one of these dimensions.
- HEX
#44C0E4
- RGB
- 68, 192, 228
- HSB
- 194°, 70%, 89%
- HSL
- 194°, 75%, 58%
Nearby tones that look right and are wrong
#44A9E3
#44D3E3
#5FC4E3
#29B8E3
#39A0BF
How this color came to be
The Amazing World of Gumball launched on Cartoon Network in 2011, created by French animator Ben Bocquelet while he was at Cartoon Network Studios Europe in London. Animation was contracted to Studio Soi in Germany, with later contributions from Boulder Media in Ireland and Dandelion Studios. The show was unusual for combining 2D cartoon characters with photographic and 3D backgrounds, a deliberate aesthetic choice that made the cartoon characters pop against real-world textures. Gumball, the twelve-year-old protagonist, is a blue cat — and the blue was tuned specifically to read clearly against the show's signature busy live-action kitchens, hallways, and classroom shots.
The hex breaks down to HSB(194°, 70%, 89%). The hue sits in cyan-blue territory at 194°, with strong saturation at 70% and very high brightness at 89%. The dimension to commit on is brightness — at 89%, this is one of the brighter blues in the Toon Tone library, which is what makes Gumball read so cleanly against photographic backgrounds. Saturation in the 70s gives the color real presence without crossing into gem-blue territory. This sits in the same broad-blue family as Stitch at HSB(212°, 52%, 65%), but Gumball is pulled warmer (toward cyan, 194° vs 212°), much more saturated, and much brighter.
Players who guess Gumball wrong tend to undershoot brightness. The instinct on "cartoon blue" is something around 70–75% brightness; Gumball lives nearly 20 points higher. The other trap is hue — going to pure blue (240°) or pure cyan (180°) misses by enough degrees to drop the score. Land the hue near 195°, push saturation to about 70%, and crank brightness near 90%. If your blue feels "vibrant but not gem-like," you're close.
How to match it from memory
Calibrated to this character's specific hex, not generic color advice.
- Brightness: ~89% — push higher than instinct says.
- Saturation: ~70% — high but not gem-blue.
- Hue: ~194° — cyan-blue, cooler than pure blue.
- Common mistake: undershooting brightness; cartoon blues usually live at ~75%, Gumball is near 90%.
