All memeing aside, why has this 'calarts' style developed...

All memeing aside, why has this 'calarts' style developed? Looking at students independent work they have the ability to draw they have independent styles and their solo short films often seem more ambitious than finished polished projects with a whole team and funding behind them. What is it about the current industry that's teaching young talent to draw in this flat bland 'cartoon' style?

Cost effective.

>Looking at students independent work they have the ability to draw they have independent styles
It’s almost like the CalArts meme is just that; a meme.
Who would have thunk it?

Simple (quick to draw, cheaper to animate)

Appealing (big eyes and smiles)

Really that's about it. Honestly the style doesn't bother me and sometimes I like it. It's a nice change of pace from the rectangle heads of my childhood.

It hasn't.

>Gumball is a European production
>The creator is a French Brit
>He never went to America to study, let alone California
>Gumball is still considered a CalArts show
???

That's right, gotta pay off that $21k somehow.

It's all Adventure Time fault. Hollywood never lets go of a trend as long as it's still popular.

It's cheap to animate and a generation of animators were inspired by Adventure Time. Eventually another show will come around that changes everything, but until then we're stuck with people aping it.

Except it's not a meme.

>Except it’s not a meme
>uses a meme
What did he mean by this?

Student work ≠ professional work

That's just the Star vs. style with a bit of gravity falls

How is Gumball a calarts cartoon if it's made in Europe?

>Adventure Time comes out
>I point out the art and animation are absolute sub-flash shit
>"who cares, it's SoL/lighthearted/funny/other BS excuses"
Maybe you guys should complain about this shit when it starts, rather than supporting it until it overruns the entire industry? Hey, I got an idea, why don't we go do some petitions until they bring back Stock-Generic-Anime Gwenpool? There's no way we'll wind up with nothing but generic anime moeshit in 10-20 years.

Who are you quoting?

Yes, all those except for the skeleton thing are professional works.

Toon Boom, dealing with the ridiculous smoothing that program does necessitates a certain kind of "roundness" to everything and with some simplification everything has round mouths, noodle arms, and bubble hair.

>Every single one of them has different eyes.
>Clarence doesn't even smile the same way, the only similarity being that it's shaped like a damn smile.
>One of the examples is fanart.

Nice meme.

>Maybe you guys should complain about this shit when it starts, rather than supporting it until it overruns the entire industry?
Even if Sup Forums shat on AT from day 1, you forgot it hit big with normies, which led to big money, which led to competition.
AT arrived at the right time, leading to the domino effect you see now.

Is toon boom the industry standard now ?

yes

...

By that logic, we should shun everything out of fear it will overrun the industry.
Even if you support good shit, it will still spawn crappy imitators.

At the very least it is the main training program for animation students everywhere, so they learn how to animate using it

>one show finished
>another cancelled
>Undertale has no sequels in the works
>people are starting to turn away from the other 3 because of progressively worse writing/art

How long until CalArts finally dies?

We deserve it for turning our backs on John K. and traditional animation

He saw this coming and we didn't believe him. Why didn't we believe him?

This meme again

Adventure Time was pretty novel when it came out. It didn't look like anything else at the time. It's not it's fault everyone that followed it had no originality.

>Why didn't we believe him?
You know why.

The only thing that would kill it is a monetized platform for animation on the internet that actually has money to spend. Then you'd see weird shit that isn't the same splosiongoreman/girlnotebookrainbowvomit pilots that everyone who gets into animation does.

>there are people that think calarts students actually draw like this and nothing else

It's as simple as this. Kids really aren't that picky it seems, and as long as it has bright colors, flashy action, and simple humor it will do well enough. With production being so simple, oftentimes the level of success doesn't even need to be very high to make a profit.

But muh John K.

I can confirm that when I was a little kid, I just watched whatever was around, even boring girly shit cartoons, which were still leagues above boring telenovela shit and soap opera garbage.

>cartoons "then" includes cartoons from a period spanning over 50 years
>cartoons "now" covers cartoons inside a single decade

They can't help it, they only know what Sup Forums memes tell them.

If he had better time management / people skills, the whole industry today would be different.

Do calarts style proponents not understand that it's not the shape of the head or features that matter, but whether they behave like real facial features and deform the mass to match? This, rather than some decals slapped on 2/3 angle profile static beanheads.

The worst part is that all of these examples, from both eras, from both perspectives, are horribly cherrypicked

>ignores example using in-show exaggerated expressions in favor of fanart
Autism at it’s finest.

dutygenerate anyone

That fucking smile

That's not even calarts style. It's not even like they have a house style anymore.

>horribly cherrypicked
The point of the first image is that the second one is completely retarded for cherrypicking. It was made in response to it.

>from both perspectives
>cherry picked
The second meme pic doesn’t even cherry pick, it just uses unofficial shit for it’s example.

Don't blame software for the animators lack of ingenuity. Do you blame Maya for for all the crappy CG movie out there too?

Feels more like this is just an circlejerk thread for actual calarts-students ironically mocking themselves while lording over all the poorfags how their shitty cartoon idea pitches will never work because they're too autistic to be anything but a deviantart tier soyboi.

I kind of like the style, but you describe it correctly. Too often its defenders don't get it.

Why is calarts considered evil when more simplistic art like robot jones or ed edd n eddy is accepted on Sup Forums?

>teeth segments in mouth are rounded to give the illusion of depth

I always imagine the characters just have this big squirming maggot slapped over their mouths and they're chewing on it as they talk. it will never not bother me.

>EEnE
>simplistic art
So you never even watched it right?

>Do you blame Maya for for all the crappy CG movie out there too?
Yes if that's the animator's name.

@97895068
Your (You) sir.

...

This is from season 1, it got noticeable criticism during its first few years for its more chalky artstyle but Sup Forums never attacks ed edd neddy

...

Robot Jone's art style is a homage to the school house rock shorts and it's 'crappy' look still takes effort to pull off. Not to mention the animation itself is better than most of the simple cookie cutter bullshit nowadays.

Go back to work Ian

Literally everything moves. Can't do that in toon boom

because they had style, both were uniquely messy in different ways, EEnE had its signature wobbly lines, good use of squash and stretch , and Robot jones was like one long rough pilot with a team behind it

Robot Jones had that "schoolhouse rock" artstyle and EEnE has a totally unique artstyle I can't recall anything similar

The top examples are all from the same company, moron.

Mainly because the animation is better in those shows. Masses are deformed in movement and as expressions change to couple the characters' emotions and personality to their bodies. Still pictures don't mean anything for comparison, it's how they move that matters, and the typical calarts designs aren't made to move in interesting ways. It's all very conservative.

hanna barbera was sameface cancer

it's not "calarts" style, it's easy, flexible shapes so the animation studio they're outsourcing to can manage it within acceptable deadlines. And even then it comes out like shit anyways for certain shows.

>typical CalArts design aren’t made to move in interesting ways
I agree, PPG and Dexter’s Lab have always felt stilted to me.

So ugly art is good as long as it's animated interesting? Does calarts style seriously have less animation than ed edd n eddy?

>EEnE
>Simplistic

I'm gonna make a prediction that OK K.O.! will be the thing that the next generation of American cartoons will rip their style from.
AT is on it's way out; SU is at a crossroads and Flash/Harmony style will be delegated to Canada.

Ironically, when the EEnE went digital, you no longer saw everything move when standing still.

>but Sup Forums never attacks ed edd neddy
I like how you think criticisms are ATTACKS on those shows.
You are really hurt, aren't you?

>Steven Universe is badly anima-

EEnE's really not simplistic. Character designs are but that's expected, background art and actual animation were pretty fucking high quality for a TV show. The squiggle vision alone was a pain in the ass to do, never mind achieving fluid and weighty movement while keeping it in mind.
Yes, and the animation had improved markedly by the second season, along with background art and nearly every other aspect of the show.

Jesus christ how horrifying.

a mark of lazy animation is still limbs and overuse of tweening

*stiff

If anything, blocky comic style ala TLH and DuckTales 2017 will be the new style everyone will copy.

>screencapping a tumblr post of an image instead of just fucking saving the image itself

Why do people do this?

John K. Shrugged

>It's a nice change of pace
Explain how it's a change of pace when every cartoon does this now.

Was that supposed to be an example of good animation?
The character changed poses, but nothing deformed or even hinted motion or gravity. It's like she just turned around and floated away while flailing her limbs. Even the ribbon tied around her waist seems to be in a vacuum or filled with wire to hold it in position.

Because it was a change up from the last trend and the next trend after it will be a nice change of pace.
It goes in cycles.

Still looks alright.

Theres absolutely nothing wrong with CalArts "style." Every single criticism ive seen of it (including OP) is soaked in hyperbole and/or ignorance and I have yet to see an actual educated dissection of why it's bad

It will do the job, sure, but it doesn't really convey the character's weight or effort. I also have no idea what the character is thinking or what their intent might be, the expression is just a blank wide-eyed smile as if she was brainwashed or remote-controlled, yet her body language doesn't convey that at all.

It's a silly expression as she was shooed away by Steven for watching him sleep.

Honestly I prefer CalArts meme like SVtFoE than Ren and Stimpy. I know the latter was better animated but it's too ugly for my taste.

ITT: that one tms fanboy won't stfu about calarts

Sup Forums doesn't know shit, Sup Forums just complains.

OP here, I don't like how flat or is, they look very like cut out paper dolls and the facial features are very drag and drop on the face shape as other anons pointed out they don't act like real facial features. It's all drawing in 'symbols' as opposed to drawing simplified. It's cute enough it's just that everything is going for a similar style that doesn't communicate an understanding of any drawing or many design fundamentals beyond a very entry level. Most of the people working on these projects I believe can do better and I'm wondering why the industry at the moment seems to gravitate towards dumbing down style.

It's terribly bland for "silly", but I guess so.

Wow millenials just hit a new low.

>I don't like how flat or is, they look very like cut out paper dolls and the facial features are very drag and drop on the face shape

OP you are drunk

go to bed

The answer is always money. Whether it's cheap to do or more profitable due to popularity, it always comes down to money.

It works for the scene. It shouldn't be something overly wacky, if that's what you thought it should be like.

It's a change of pace because I'm not new to cartoons and there were many many years of things being another way. Art trends can last a while and that's fine. It doesn't have to totally reinvent itself every two years.

Honestly I think most of the hate just comes from wanting to justify other shifts in cartoons. Such as the shift to lore and slice of life shows or the shift to modern political attitudes.

We're mostly grumpy old men who are depressed that nearly a hundred years later our great strides in technology haven't led to it being easier to equal or top Looney Tunes, but rather a race to the bottom to mass produce the cheapest schlock for children because fuck it, they won't know any better.

You're probably a millennial too unless you're 40+ or underage.

>like and watch over half of these
>Completely agree that the style, whatever you want to call it, is too similar among them.

I mean - Yeah I like some of those but that doesn't mean I want to see that style repeated forever.

Have you forgotten how bad American TV animation was in the 80s?

The key word here is "industry."
The industry is what sets budgets and overseas animation studios and whatnot. Not Calarts. If you want to blame something, blame the industry and understand what you're blaming them for and why.