I think in the last year or two, there's been a "backlash to the backlash" situation where animation fans get fed up with other animation fans complaining about the "Calarts" style, telling them that a show's animation is only one piece of the puzzle, since writing and voice acting is equally important, and that people should not be so quick to write off a show because it uses an animation style many other shows use.

Please read this:

Toucan Sam Redesign

Toucan Sam Redesign refers to the controversy surrounding Kellogg's decision to redesign the iconic mascot of Froot Loops, Toucan Sam. In early May 2020, the cereal company released a new commercial featuring a redesigned Toucan Sam with a drastically different cartoon style, light blue head, animated mouth with teeth and a rainbow color gradient on his beak.

The curse is still going to this day

You people are aware that the term "CalArts style" was coined by human scum John K. to dump on The Iron Giant, right?

Not only are you idiots spreading misinformation, you're spreading misinformation from a serial child rapist trashing a beloved animated classic.

I bet none of you idiots have ever lifted a pencil in your fucking lives.
Just try drawing a fucking hand and then try and say that artists are "lazy".

Worst artstyle ever, who's with me?! Too lazily simplistic, overused, and same-facey for its own good! Only the cesspool known as the West could've produced something as visually-repelling as this! Too bad we'll never be as good as we were, before…Back when I, Mr. Pines the Grunkle, was a child…We never had to deal with this dare-I-say evil artstyle! And the utopian land of the rising Sun never had this problem, of course! God, I love Anime!

My little cousin can do better than calarts style

The dark age of Calarts (Aka the Thundercats Roar controversy)

I hope all of you fucking faggots die in a fire.

It's happening again

lol
it was a shitty meme with holes made with a pencil
the culprit should do this every day so school will be out forever

Threatening a school shooting to own the libs

For fuck's sake people , we weren't supposed to go THAT far.

It's still a shooting threat

even if you're being ironic

What the…? it was a meme joke, it was just a parody of the "don't come to school tomorrow" meme!
it was an image of a bad drawing green guy with holes… hell, the holes looks like they were made with a pencil, but even then this is not a threat but a joke.

"What are you talking about, I can't get on my flight? I was only joking about hiding a bomb."

Scrumpy responded:

Because any tweet related to guns = threat

ScrumpMonkey?
That guy?
With this meme?
I know it was an incredibly stupid thing to do, but I feel like it's an overreaction. I'm very conflicted on this controversy.

You all laughed at me.
You said I was being a baby and that you had perfectly valid criticisms.
But I was right.
Cartoon fans are shit, always have been shit, and will continue to be shit until someone puts their fucking foot down, which needs to be soon.

I have to be honest this looks like an overblown "don't come to school tomorrow" meme

Look I know that might have been a joke,but still fuck that guy

Really,dont joke about killing someone because of art style,like really wtf

"Ominous"? He stuck a pencil through a target with a shitty face drawn on it. I'm not surprised they shut down but the original tweet is completely overblown.

I'll be honest, this is fucking hilarious

This one's going to the book. You know, in case there's a test I didn't study to…

Wait, the threat they freaked out about is a meme posted by SCRUMPMONKEY of all people?!
I was kind of annoyed someone gave them victim ammo at first, but hearing it's scrump I can only laugh that a guy who does nothing but shitpost got a progressive """art""" school shutdown by shitposting.

Welp, there you fucking have it. Now I'm concerned that 4chan or some other group will continue to spam these dry threats until calarts starts teaching people how to fucking draw properly. Can't say it'll make the situation better, but somethings gotta get them to teach people armatures and other basic fundamentals of art.

I guess i'm hoping the thundercats fiasco is signalling the end of this trashy era of cartoons. Maybe then people will start studying from the classics again.

A school ran and attended by cucks shuts down after a joke tweet?
Like fucken clockwork.

This argument has more holes than a fine swiss cheese

Seriously though its an awful argument- if the naming of the style "Calarts" wasnt a dead giveaway enough.

Nah what am I saying? There clearly isnt any kind of correlation equals causation fallacy there at all.

The funniest thing about the trailer was seeing the 80s logo in their headquarters and it was the most detailed object in the shot.

I mean oversaturation of art styles isnt really new, remember the 90s? remember Rob Liefeld?

We have been through worse fads…

Found this Tumblr post defending the CalArts style from 2 years ago:

http://lordchaben.tumblr.com/post/139263549511/but-im-getting-ahead-of-myself-ahem-lets-take

"Honestly, the only problem I see here is that they're all white."

Oh Tumblr, you never cease to amaze me.

Psychic artists from Japan try to steal your mind's elation
And little girls from Canada dream of funny cartoon quotation
And if you want these kind of dreams its CalArtforunication

Pay your artists very poorly to break the spell of animation
Tellin' you man, are those your fans, or is it war your waging?

I take it if a new cartoon tries to use this art-style, people won't even give it a chance.

I don't know if it's been discussed yet, and I in no way think this is an art style one should look up to, but let me try to put one little thing into this discussion.

This art style is cheap. VERY cheap. You can re-use assets, you don't have to retrain a bunch of Korean animators, you don't have to worry about retraining any American animators. Especially at CN, writers, directors, animators, story boarders are thrown from project to project. Keeping things consistent and familiar saves time and saves money. Most of these shows with this style are on very limited budgets.
As much as I would really love to see anything different, if CN is still given the budget it is given, this style might become their standard. Money rules the animation world, not art.

The Soy Face of cartoons.

I'm not thrileld about Thundercats Rorar either but all I'm getting out of this is; "This style doesn't appeal to me so no one should like it." I was the same way in the 90s when almost everything wanted to look like Nicktoons like Ren & Stimpy or Rugrats and I absolutley HATED that art style but you know what? I grew up and got over it.

Honest question: At what point will you guys be finished kvetching? I've only been back for a day and I'm already nauseated by the complaint-levels.

It really sucks that this is the closest thing we have to an image gallery devoted to Western cartoons in general.

Let's not forget this pioneering opus.

All of these takes are god awful

This art style is lazy. Like others have said, the final product so rudimentary artist consistency isn't needed because a 9-year old could accurately draw the collection of amorphous blobs that is much of CN's lineup since Adventure Time in 2010. I'm glad the CalArts style is finally getting criticism. I was quite annoyed during the Adventure Time craze of 2010 because, as a former artist, I immediately notice things like animation tricks when a studio tries to save money, and I visibly roll my eyes when low-effort work gets unconditional praise by those who can't help but be entertained by it because they can't recognize laziness because they've never drawn themselves (which I understand). Some examples of good art that have earned my respect because I can see the effort and talent put into them can be found in my comment below, to avoid the 1500 character limit.

1. Most anime. This green-haired female is comprised of many complex lines, curves, and shapes that overlap each other. Her hair and facial features have specific proportions that, if drawn poorly, will result in something ghastly. For example, the tip of her chin here is way to the left of the center of her body from the viewer's POV, because she is facing away from the viewer. If some kid tried to draw this, they would likely screw it up badly. And her bangs deserve nothing but high levels of respect.

2. Spongebob Squarepants. I've always respected Stephen Hillenburg because drawing Spongebob not easy. While his torso and legs are easy enough to draw, what I'm talking about is his head. To mimic a real-life sponge, Spongebob's head is a "square-like" shape with very specific dips and crests that are difficult to get right if you don't want your picture to end up looking BAD. Below is Spongebob drawn by a random person:

Anyway, I'll post a picture of some CN characters so you see the stark difference:

Simple proportions, simple shapes, simple lines, these look like the black-and-white rough draft sketch filled in using MS Paint's Paint Bucket. A child's drawing. That's it…there's really not much more to say. Stop praising this trife, people.

Why people are associate this with reboots? All four shows they used as example are original shows and as far as I know none of other renoots have same bean face-ovular mouth combination.

I'm at least glad that the CalArts backlash is slowly turning less into bashing cartoons that use it and more just criticising the art style in general, ignoring the actual quality of the shows that share it's style.

the virgin bean-mouth vs chad simpson-overbite

Everyone is mad about bad cartoons

Everyone in here saying "Gravity Falls isn't that bad" or "I think it's cute, and sometimes it can look pretty good" has never seen Golden Age animation from the 30s-50s. Go watch a Bob Clampett cartoon, or Tex Avery, or a Classic Disney cartoon like The Art of Skiing, or Mickey Mouse and the Mad Doctor. If you prefer stuff with more dialogue and less slapstick, watch a Chuck Jones cartoon. Even the low-budget cartoons were better, like Popeye. They had no Koreans drawing inbetweens for them. They were masters of momentum and form. And above all, they were very funny. Everything they did was miles ahead of the stuff today. They had no giants with shoulders to stand on. These were the same men that invented the art form, and mastered it. They have not been surpassed.

Hey guys, there's already a booru for it.
http://calartedits.booru.org.
You can add it in the links, if you want.

Isn't there another animation school where other animators/cartoonists can go or is the only "prestigious"/famous school that everyone wants to go to?

Okay, quick question, guys: Can you guys take anything animated in this art-style seriously anymore?

What's up, doc?! It has been a horribilis sabbati since the TC-Day of May 18, 2018.

Not wanting to have this drama selling as what Edward Kowalczyk sung about in 1994, I would like to share this film that is uploaded on just exactly 30 days before this cripe had dropped.
"My first film at CalArts! A creature of darkness tries to save his only love." -Chalky Wong

Found this myself when searching CalArts in this excellent curator

CalArts had its own collection on Vimeo covering first-class top-notch Character Animation since 2010

When Howard Phillips cited four reasons including restricted to few colors on why the older game systems that might have led to their demise of video gaming industry, it is up to this institution to speak out that this certain artstyle serves as a disgraceful trivialisation (or soiling) to the CalArts name/

But here's the question, is Victor Courtwright a recent CalArts graduate?

Yeah the artstyle is trash, but my main problem is that all these trash reboots keep using it, that's what really makes me hate the style, I miss when every cartoon was either faux anime or nightmarish CGI….ok maybe I don't actually miss the latter that much.

Uh-huh-huh, his surname is Cummings.

Now seriously, imagine a Beavis & Butthead reboot under this style.
I'd rather commit suicide by falling from a cliff, going down a waterfall and being eaten alive by piranhas while also suffering from Ebola's last stages.

Cue Nathan Explosion's "Brutal" reaction image.

I have to be honest, I thought pixel graphics in video game would receive backlash first.

So is CalArts the new loss? It's a meme that everybody fucking hates, thus fueling the fire for those who secretly enjoy it in a sadistic way to make more of it?

Not gonna lie, if I ever got my idea for a series greenlit I'd probably have the main character drawn in this CalArts style. No one else. Just the main character. Don't know why. And that's probably why you'll never see my series see the light of day.

Just a thought because it seems clear that some CalArts artists don't share the same aesthetic as cartoons like "Steven Universe" or "Thundercats Roar", I made this comparison on a photo that someone shared in the "Thundercats Roar" article

how about we just call it "Cartoon Comic Sans" or just "Cartoon Sans" like the font "Comic Sans".
It kinda makes sense, they both have the same goal of seeming "safe" and"friendly", it shares the aesthetic of roundish shapes (except for the thin lines maybe).

that way, some people who studied at CalArts are spared from the internet's ire. Then again, I don't have much control on what term people come up with to describe an aesthetic, it seems Tv tropes already called it "Thin Line Animation"

CalArts Fact Sheet
Here are the videos Anon shared on /co/ as Post No. 100669408. All of them are by CalArts graduates.




Try finding one by a CalArts graduate from this excellent curator

The thing that pisses me off about this whole thing is that ISN'T Cal Arts style. John K coined the term back in the 90's and he was using it to describe the faux Disney style used by action cartoons in the 80's and 90's. Original Thundercats is Cal Arts style, the new one may look like shit but don't blame Cal Arts for that. The current trend in cartoon art styles has everything to do with the fact that people keep eating up the shows that use them, not because the art school people attend is forcing them to adopt it.

Wider adoption to a particular style is less to do with innovation and more to do with efficiency and costs. In addition, many of the creators of these cartoons have directly worked with one another in previous projects before. Absolutely their styles would be similar. Is it over saturated? Probably, but that seems to me more of a particular business model of today. Adult Swim especially is notorious for pushing cheap-to-make animations, given the slew of cartoons that borrowed directly from Space Ghost Coast to Coast: Sealab, The Brak Show (arguably from Cartoon Planet), Harvey Birdman Attorney at Law, etc… Money is what drives it, that's why Korgoth of Barbaria, despite getting overwhelming praise (in my opinion, probably could have easily been of the greatest animation series for decades) never got picked up by AS: it cost too much to make. People forge the cookie-cutter styles of the 80s cartoons designed to sell toys, or the near total similarity between Hanna Barbera cartoons, or Chuck Jones cartoons. Honestly, the most innovative time in animation, in terms of pushing style and limits, was probably in the 90s, but that's when there was a lot of demand for alternative and experimentational animation, which was fostered by MTV…when MTV was still cool.

The Captain America image by flipskip1 wasn't mocking Thundercats Roar, but commenting on the angry backlash to the show.

it does feel like things are getting a little stail when it comes to cartoon styles but it's not something that keeps me up at night.

Soooo am I the only one who dosen't care about the style but is instead more concerned with e show being another source of vapid-obnoxious "comedy". Also that the creators, instead of making something new or using another franchise that would have been better suited, choose Thundercats to potentially be a vessel for this crap.

and people say "Cartoons are only for kids"
psssh that gives them less of a reason to dip down so low
Real shit tho does it REALLY matter if it's in the Calarts style? I personally don't care what it looks like ( except for that thundercats roar thing, that made me bitter ) so as long as it has a decent story

@whoever did the front page image

The TMNT example is not a parody, it's from a one off internet short officially endorsed by Nickelodeon (they've done a whole bunch of these by different creators, one was even done by Invader Zim creator Jhonen Vasquez).

so uh, what's this site's general consensus on this style? I'm hearing conflicting arguments all around

The animation in Adventure Time and Over the Garden Wall doesn't seem that bad especially because of the competent use of lighting and good backgrounds. SU is absolute cancer though.

This is why I don't like the idea of teaching style. Art students shouldn't copy-paste everything teachers do. They should experiment with what they are given and eventually create their own style. Otherwise everything will look the same.

When will this style be considered retro?

Honestly, the only time I can remember actually having a problem with this art style was when I first started watching Gravity Falls. At first it kinda just ticked me off that the main characters looked so much younger than they were supposed to be. I soon got over it, though, and Gravity Falls remains one of my favorite shows of all time.

I'm dealing with a Digital Arts major, which deal with 2D & 3D.
In 3D, our instructors introduced us to this website called Artstation
They basically told us, "This is who you're competing with in the Video game and Movie world."

Since people have been comparing various character design trends like this CalArts style to previous decades, I actually wonder what the 2020's would look like…

Honestly, I don't think anything is wrong with this style. The real problem with thundercats is that its particular version is done in a kinda odd way.

Talking about lion-o here: His arms have muscle lines, yet they stretch and shorten where needed with little regard to proportion. Which is fine, but with the muscle lines and the way the arm gets thinner and thinner from beefy shoulders to tiny hands, it looks unnatural. You can avoid this by making arms like rubber hoses (detail-less, same circumference throughout) like old cartoons or adventure time, but it seems this show opted out of that, which means it should try to keep the proportions straight.

The particular degree of minimalism with his overall design makes him look more like kindergarten cartoon character than a proper kids show design, you could see him being in a dora type show. Which clashes hard with his deeper voice.

The overall animation style also clashes with the voice, with the mouth movements seeming a lot more childish than the voice, like a hyper kid. You can see what I mean in the trailer.

Finally, the character looks oddly rubbery and like a toy, because the hair and clothes are super shiny and his hair sticks up in the back like a wax mold.

Calbooru when?

Christ, this page is extremely…… B A U H A U S

I kinda think that these people are giving this style too much hate and they're just overreacting. It isn't even that bad. I actually find it pretty appealing and, I must admit, even kind of adorable. It's good to have an art style that represents its decade and our generation. It's like a symbol. It's something we and our children are gonna grow up with and I'm okay with that. Sure, there are much better styles out there, I can admit, but this one can suffice in my opinion, for what it is.

I really hope this growing irrational hatred of this art-style doesn't suddenly discredit all the shows that you guys have praised up until now, like Steven Universe, Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, Star VS. The Forces of Evil, The Amazing World of Gumball, and Regular Show, among others. Like, just because you guys randomly decided you don't like this art-style anymore doesn't make these shows any less good.

I guess I'll play Devil's Advocate then..

I like the style. There I said it.

There's something about it which is just easy on the eyes and as long as the animation is smooth and not disjointed then I personally don't mind skipping through the repeated body types throughout multiple shows (assuming the designs suits the feeling of the show COUGH THUNDERCATS COUGH ).

With that being said, I agree with the argument that shows such as TMNT, Teen Titans, Samurai Jack ect. showed that in the early 2000's when given time you can really create a unique design to stand out. A design which truly makes the show memorable. But what if we were to go a design that is even lazier than #CalArt? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you:

South Park

Now yes, I know the first three season were essentially stop-motion animation and that is fair play. Trey and Matt worked with what they had and made something truly unique. But from Season 4 onward, when they had a proper video editor the characters still hopped around, use the same recycled four mouth orientations and four eyeball orientations. That may be the charm of the show (and please understand I love South Park) but up until Season 8 with "Good Times with Weapons" rarely did we see any kind of super ambitions animation, outside of the cinematic movie.

You may now commence your down-voting. Thank you.

Okay, let’s be honest: Who else here actually likes the art-style?

I see the real problem with this being more to do with how the style is used.
We just keep getting "lol I so random" cartoons with this style for some reason. Steven Universe and Gravity Falls were at least able to keep a story going, but now we're just getting comedy after comedy. It's like, remember Hey Pikmin and Chibi Robo Zip Lash? The random 2d platformer games from non-platformer franchises? Imagine if Nintendo didn't stop doing that. 2d platformer Star Fox. A 2d Metroid with levels and goal points. A Fire Emblem platformer even. It'd be dumb! And yet here we are riding the stagnation train to gray land.

What's important is saturation of art style.

Something I realized while thinking about this.

While we can maybe argue that art style =/= show quality with enough evidence for it, there is still something to be said in regards of the reason for animators to choose this style, or a very similar one, and how it relates to people's problem with the style choice.

We know it is because of time and budget limits, right..? This is understandable: animation is VERY hard even at its most basic expression, and even this simple style can take several hours of work just for a few minutes of animation. We are lying to ourselves if we think that old animators back then did not have to suffer because of this. Hell, even modern anime artists get this so much that they legitimately often get overworked trying to meet schedules while keeping quality the same. This reality by itself also explains why YouTube animators cannot prosper as much as other types of channels: they do not meet the strict upload requirements for YouTube to care about them enough. Working on the animation world is a punishing reality, and I can see why animators would do everything posible to make it less punishing.

WITH THAT SAID…

I'm gonna be honest…I like this style, so much so that my own art style was inspired by it (Star in particular) and I always loved creating and drawing characters:

But while this may sound a bit ridiculous, knowing that so many people actually hate it, and that it even killed some people's interest in cartoons in general kind of makes me feel terrible for using it as an inspiration. I know I probably shouldn't, but I can't help it, especially since I've never had much confidence in my drawing to begin with.

I don't feel great about this. I fear that people are going to get too wrapped up in blaming the school and not put enough fault on the TV channels that demand this style because it's cheaper and easier to animate. TV is always looking to cut corners as long as it looks passable.

Reminder that children being the target audience isn't an excuse for poor quality.

If calarts was for animations and not art then why don't they call it calanimations

First of all it´s very understable the backlash of the Thundercats roar (considering the bad reboots that CN has put on) and i hate it completely like many people, and im not a fan of calarts either, but even if i have very low expectations, lets see what happens, who knows, many dont expect to be on the same level of GF, SvsTFOE or SU among other cartoons of this decade, but lets just wait.

Just what we fucking needed – an excuse for nostalgia goggles and 90s’ kids to come back. Fucking Hell, man…

Good. Call out Calarts for the lazy uninspired shit it is. Used to be hugely into cartoons and animation and this style literately killed any and all interest I had. Not to mention no one wants to make something that doesnt flat out pander to children or mental children or whatever the fat 27 year old on tumblr identifies as because how will a show ever get renewed unless it appeals to the lowest common denominator.

Turns out John K was actually responsible for coining the use of "CalArts" as a pejorative.

The difference is when he started using it, it was in reference to the Brad Bird/Iron Giant style of animation, and it eventually got co-opted as a catch-all term for whatever art style was popular in western cartoons at the time (save for the "anime-esque" era, for obvious reasons).

If this affects the school in any negative way I'm going to be fucking mad.

I welcome this new meme.

Ironic that technology is advancing, but animation is going backwards.

We used to have charm put into animation, now with computers instead of drawing things by hand, we see CGI (not saying CGI is bad, it works well in certain cases, TMNT 2012 being a great example) and very simplistic 2D animation.

Glad that I'm not the only one who hates this kind of art style. It's one of the reasons why I don't touch most modern cartoons.

After checking all arguments and examples to be had about this, I realize that the only real and valid "old VS new" argument to be made here is the one by The Simpsons and South Park:

But about animation instead.

Our parents: "All music that kids hear today sounds like the same crap, old music was so much better."

Our generation: "All animations that kids watch today look like the same crap, old animation was so much better."

And a quick 10-minute browse on images and comments here immediately disprove both claims, as you can say the same about absolutely every generation of animation AND music if you cherry-pick carefully enough.

Man, to think that 20 to 30-something year old people already found a reason to sound like their parents… I am actually a bit scared about that, since I am on that bracket. Homer's dad truly was right: it WILL happen to us. It already has, if anything. How long until I pester someone online about their shit taste on videogames, then..? 10 years..? 5..? 1..? Time and nostalgia can be such cruel things.

Let's be real here: even anime (not all of course) can be just as homogenized stylistically.

Wait a minute, is everyone falling for the trap of taking /co/ seriously?