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Animals

Free cheetah SVG files

Free cheetah SVG files: the animal itself, running flat out, walking, standing, sitting and lying on a mound, with a face, a cub, a mother with her cub and a savanna scene. The spots are plain round holes that keep clear of the outline, so each cheetah lifts as one piece.

12 designs. Free for personal and commercial use, no sign-up. What you can do with them.

Thin legs and a great many spots

A cheetah is built like a greyhound: a deep chest, a waist tucked up tight, a small head and legs that are long and thin all the way down. The legs set the smallest size you can cut. Every file is 100 mm on its longer side. On the running cheetah, which is the longest and so the smallest in scale, the lower legs and the tail are about 3.3 mm wide and the thinnest material, beside the eye, is 1.1 mm, so vinyl holds it at 100 mm long and card at 120 mm or more. For 3 mm plywood use the cheetah silhouette at 150 mm or larger, or the sitting cheetah, whose front legs stand close together.

The spots are separate round holes about 2.5 mm across on the body and smaller on the legs. There are a lot of them, so in vinyl weed with a pin and work from one end to the other, or reverse weed: lay transfer tape over the cut vinyl first and peel the backing away so the dots stay behind.

Telling a cheetah from a leopard

Three things mark these out as cheetahs. The spots are solid dots, not rings. A black tear line runs from the inner corner of each eye down to the mouth, which you can see on the cheetah face and, as a small slit, on every side view. And the build is all leg and chest, where a leopard is long, low and heavy. If you want the rosettes of a leopard, or spot patterns without the animal, see the leopard and leopard print sets.

How to open the files

  • Cricut Design Space: choose Upload, pick the SVG, and add it to the canvas. Set the width you want; the shape is already welded.
  • Silhouette Studio: Designer Edition and above open the SVG. The free Basic Edition does not, so open the DXF instead.
  • LightBurn, xTool Creative Space and Glowforge: import the SVG, then set the layer to cut, score or engrave.
  • Inkscape, Illustrator and Affinity: open the SVG. It is a plain filled path, so you can recolour it, add a stroke or combine it with your own work.
  • Printing or sublimation: use the PNG, which has a transparent background.

Each design page lists the file’s narrowest part at seven sizes, so you can tell whether it will survive at the size you plan to cut.

Questions

How do I get black spots on a gold cheetah?

Cut the cheetah from gold or sand and lay it on black: the spots, the eye and the tear line are holes, so the black shows through. It is one cut, not two layers. If you would sooner place black dots on top, the layered cheetah gives them as their own layer with a white underside.

Which cheetah is easiest to cut small?

The cheetah silhouette has no inside cuts, and the cheetah cub has only a few large spots and thicker legs. Both hold at 50 mm. The fully spotted side views need to be about 100 mm long before the dots weed cleanly.

Why does the running cheetah not touch the ground?

At a full sprint a cheetah has all four feet off the ground twice in every stride, and this is the stretched one. It suits shirts, car windows and the middle of a sign. For a design with a flat base, use the standing silhouette, the sitting cheetah or the cheetah lying on a mound.

More free SVG files