Experimental Drawing Style

We're a few days into May!
Let's get things started!

A few Mondays ago, my English teacher has given us another typical assignment. However, this was no typical assignment.

We're currently reading the novel 1984, written by George Orwell. This one particular assignment is something we've done before, which is to create a comic strip of a certain section of a chapter, or sometimes the whole chapter. She usually wants us to create with a "graphic novel" type of style, so while the rest of the class went about with stick figures, I had a different idea in mind.
As you know, this is my usual way of drawing:

Totally my kind of style, right?


Well, I had the pleasure of having the dumb idea of trying to attempt for a more "realistic" style, which I've tried to do before. I think of it as an "experimental" style of drawing since I don't normally draw like this, but after several panels in, I started to deeply regret my choice of drawing style. This was how I was drawing characters for the assignment:

I mean I think it looks okay, but I'm really not used to drawing like this a lot. The point I decided to draw like this for the assignment was because I wanted to try to create a "graphic novel" kind of look, and as we know those kind of literature contains illustrations that are very realistic. It's never anything cartoony, so like I said, I wanted to do something more dramatic.
Joke's on me, because I realized I don't like this style of drawing.
And plus, it STILL looks cartoony.
One thing you must know about me is that WHATEVER I draw, whether it be life drawing or something else of that nature, ALWAYS comes out looking like a cartoon. Always. I just have that cartoon gene in my blood that I can't seem to get rid of.