It makes me upset to see Craig of The Creek turn into a virtue signaling dumpster fire. I always thought it looked like a nice little slice of life cartoon when it first aired. The premise of a group of kids using their imaginations to turn their neighborhood into a fantasy land was fun and reminded me of KND. They even did a crossover with Deltron 3030 a few years ago which was pretty crazy. Maybe it's just me, but all the forced progressive bullshit like "black ASL" feels so sudden It's almost like they're trying to please the suits and not get cancelled. That's my theory at least.
Have you checked out Clarence? It's ugly as sin so I don't blame anyone for ignoring it, I would have written it off if I hadn't seen an episode in a waiting room, but it actually feels like a proper continuations of the EEnE kids being kids style of show.
Has some gay parents but it comes across more naturally than most other shows to feature a same-sex couple. Wouldn't call it virtue-signaling as much a depiction of a modern family that might be in a neighborhood.
Have you checked out Clarence? It's ugly as sin so I don't blame anyone for ignoring it, I would have written it off if I hadn't seen an episode in a waiting room, but it actually feels like a proper continuations of the EEnE kids being kids style of show.
Has some gay parents but it comes across more naturally than most other shows to feature a same-sex couple. Wouldn't call it virtue-signaling as much a depiction of a modern family that might be in a neighborhood.
Oh yeah I genuinely love Clarence for those exact reasons. Now that I think about it Clarence is what Craig of The Creek should've been. It's full of relatable situations and realistic characters that most people probably experienced as a kid. I agree they handled the same sex couple very well and it feels genuine. The show never pats itself on the back for having gay characters. They just exist and everyone goes on about their day. Damn I miss it now.
Gonna be honest, not too big on the name "calarts style" that's referred to current shows that features that style.
I don't think it does a good enough job describing the awfulness that these styles have, which is why I think "Corporate Schlock" is a much more apt title.
Personally the idea that the beanface style is, and I quote from Kiana's post, 'appealing to kids' is bullshit. It's honestly harder to tell just wtf I'm looking at when I see that style, but hey I'm 'not' a kid so apparently my opinion doesn't matter.
Simple doesn't equal appealing. Hell, if that were true wouldn't we see a lot more kids liking this kind of character? View attachment 3543978
See, what it really is that the beanface 'blob' art style makes it easier to make and sell toys to kids. You can just create a basic mold and then paint whatever character you want over it. Simple, cost effective, and it pleases the calarts banshees. (Basically Funko Pops in a nutshell.)
The whole "I'm appealing to the audience, I'm not just being lazy, honest gais!" is a cope and it always has been, especially when they try to bring kids' tastes into it. People's tastes are far more fungible than they're generally given credit for and kids are especially undiscerning. If you give people an expertly produced smart show, they'll watch it. If you give people low-IQ badly animated dreck, they'll probably still watch it, especially in an era that has done nothing but push quantity over quality. Unfortunately this means when presented with an option between the two, guess which option the bean counters go with. Why make great when you can move just as much merch with merely good or even just passable?
Oh and fuck these whiny cunts insisting that "it's mean-spirited to make fun of us for the work we do!" Fuck off. Nobody forced you into this industry, nothings keeping you there, and if what I've heard about animators' pay is true, you'd probably be better off in a normie job and pursuing your art on your own time. Society was better off when we could just tell faggots to stop being faggots, now we have to give them asspats and reinforce their delusions that they don't really have a choice in this awful industry that they were shanghaied into against their will. No you spineless cunt, you do have a choice, you're just too chickenshit to wash your hands and walk away.
Gonna be honest, not too big on the name "calarts style" that's referred to current shows that features that style.
I don't think it does a good enough job describing the awfulness that these styles have, which is why I think "Corporate Schlock" is a much more apt title.
This also has the fringe benefit of short-circuiting the nitpicking these people engage in. "Nuh uh! The style didn't even come from CalArts, pick up a history book chud!" Okay then, call it NiggerFaggot style, it still looks like samey minimalistic crap these people foist on us to save money. I'm tremendously sorry I didn't refer to your bargain bin animation properly, bro.
Personally the idea that the beanface style is, and I quote from Kiana's post, 'appealing to kids' is bullshit. It's honestly harder to tell just wtf I'm looking at when I see that style, but hey I'm 'not' a kid so apparently my opinion doesn't matter.
Simple doesn't equal appealing. Hell, if that were true wouldn't we see a lot more kids liking this kind of character? View attachment 3543978
See, what it really is that the beanface 'blob' art style makes it easier to make and sell toys to kids. You can just create a basic mold and then paint whatever character you want over it. Simple, cost effective, and it pleases the calarts banshees. (Basically Funko Pops in a nutshell.)
The reason calarts is so popular is because it's cheap and it's quick to do. This minimizes production time and maximizes profits for the bigwigs upstairs. This is a good chunk of why calarts and minimalistic art is here to stay, essentially forever.
Okay, I'm just going to call this style "beanface" and move on.
Anyway, I'm not going to get on beanface artists' grills because their style is simple. Animation has always used simple styles. There's a reason Genndy Tartakovsky's cartoons were so popular in his heyday. Craig McCracken's Powerpuff Girls are just basic circles, rectangles and teardrop shapes. And if we're going to the weeb side one of the reasons why manga characters have such simplified and stylized features is because they often had to produce vast amounts of art on oftentimes weekly schedules. They couldn't afford to make every frame a painting, so they adopted a bunch of very specific visual tropes to streamline the process.
No, my problem with beanface is that I think it's fucking ugly. It's such a shoddy aesthetic, and it doesn't even get a pass for style like Beavis & Butthead, Rocko's Modern Life or King of the Hill did. It's an art style without any hooks, and the cartoons that employ it tend to embrace a brand of humor that just annoys me so it's a double whammy of shitty art and writing decisions.
I had a talk with my fiancé not too long ago about particular artworks because I think I hit a eureka moment in what turned out to be the precursor to Tumblr art which then seeped into CalArts (or at least the current globohomo art):
I think a lot of people subconsciously adopted Mary GrandPre's look without knowing exactly why her art was so appealing and lovely, but they may have adopted the wrong traits such as the red noses and simple human looks. But at the very least, the inspiration is actually very inspiring and talented, although the decision to use color theming later one might've killed a little bit of the magic--I could honestly forgive it for Order of the Phoenix, but Half-Blood Prince-onwards feels like they're missing something. Although despite that, I do like how you see a progression showing how she was making improvements to her work, which is not what you can particularly say about today's artists. (Series of Unfortunate Events is like this, too, though I don't think Brett Helquist was as big of an influencer as Mary's Harry Potter for Millennial and Zoomer artists.)
But compare Sorcerer's Stone to the 20th anniversary edition's cover:
All seven books are drawn by the same person, Brian Selznick, in the same look and busy style, all in boring grayscale. While there's actual artistic talent to be had, it's not charming and feels not necessarily soulless, but manipulative. It's almost as if the artist was afraid of negative space and needed to shove in as many "greatest hits" from the books as possible on these covers (hence the manipulative feeling I'm getting from it)--or maybe this was corporate-mandated, who knows. And yet this is a book cover that was decided for the anniversary editions, probably to save up on color ink or something, I don't fucking know. But I personally don't like how the grayscale ones look and not for nostalgic reasons.
I don't care if there just so happens to be actual artistic talent and care put into the current animation look, but people (corps more likely) are pushing the beanface look because they were implementing Adventure Time back when it was popular, and it was popular with the kids. Problem is, they copied it without knowing why it was that it worked for that show's style specifically, and why it is it doesn't look right in other shows. And Pendleton Ward has gone on record to say some of his biggest influences in animation were Beavis & Butthead, The Simpsons, and Ren & Stimpy, which makes a lot of sense in terms of his style of humor even if it's not so much in looks.
And even if we were to stray away from the beanface look and make that attempt to put in legit talent, I think it'd be similar to the 20th anniversary covers in that yes, at least the people can draw, but they're just too busy or still am missing some kind of passion or "oomph" to them. I think we can kinda see that in that any rare time something "different" comes out, we gravitate to that because "At least it doesn't look like CalArts/beanface!" but do we really like it? Do we really think it looks good? Why is it that they don't feel "unique"? 'Cause even anime's fallen victim to this, not so much the look of beanface, but in terms of "They all look the same" probably because they are the same in feel and look.
But quality of the work doesn't matter when the humans at least look like the artists have studied an anatomy book, which is apparently all we really just wanted in our animation, don't we.
I had a talk with my fiancé not too long ago about particular artworks because I think I hit a eureka moment in what turned out to be the precursor to Tumblr art which then seeped into CalArts (or at least the current globohomo art): View attachment 3545210
I think a lot of people subconsciously adopted Mary GrandPre's look without knowing exactly why her art was so appealing and lovely, but they may have adopted the wrong traits such as the red noses and simple human looks. But at the very least, the inspiration is actually very inspiring and talented, although the decision to use color theming later one might've killed a little bit of the magic--I could honestly forgive it for Order of the Phoenix, but Half-Blood Prince-onwards feels like they're missing something. Although despite that, I do like how you see a progression showing how she was making improvements to her work, which is not what you can particularly say about today's artists. (Series of Unfortunate Events is like this, too, though I don't think Brett Helquist was as big of an influencer as Mary's Harry Potter for Millennial and Zoomer artists.)
But compare Sorcerer's Stone to the 20th anniversary edition's cover: View attachment 3545206
All seven books are drawn by the same person, Brian Selznick, in the same look and busy style, all in boring grayscale. While there's actual artistic talent to be had, it's not charming and feels not necessarily soulless, but manipulative. It's almost as if the artist was afraid of negative space and needed to shove in as many "greatest hits" from the books as possible on these covers (hence the manipulative feeling I'm getting from it)--or maybe this was corporate-mandated, who knows. And yet this is a book cover that was decided for the anniversary editions, probably to save up on color ink or something, I don't fucking know. But I personally don't like how the grayscale ones look and not for nostalgic reasons.
I've got one good guess as to why the anniversary covers look so busy and cynical to you: they were drawn in hindsight.
The original covers were drawn as the books were being released. She pulled a single scene and elements she felt would be most evocative of the book itself and turned them into individual images. Someone at the time would have no idea what was going on in those covers until they read the books. The 20th anniversary covers, on the other hand, have been all drawn long after the series reached its peak, and everybody already knows what's going on. So they're basically just a "let's cram in as many references as we can" collage that just blurs all the books into one, without really giving any of the stories any space to breathe.
I fucking love that image of Stu Pickles from the storyboard jam. It's oozing with dark energy. It practically leaps off the page.
They don't draw em' like they used to...
. I agree they handled the same sex couple very well and it feels genuine. The show never pats itself on the back for having gay characters. They just exist and everyone goes on about their day. Damn I miss it now.
Rate me MATI but that's how we got to our current point in the first place retard. These people at first added more subtle faggotry to test the waters into showing kids more and more degeneracy. You guys forgot to mention how Clarence's creator was a creep that tried to grope his female coworkers.
Kids don't need TV to teach them about fags, even if it's mild. That's a parent's job and corporations and education should not be the ones doing it.
Clarence will never be even as close to enjoyable as Ed, Edd, and Eddy. Also don't give me the modern family BS excuse. Two moms isn't that common outside of liberal cities. Phineas and Ferb portrayed modern suburbia waaaay better than Clarence even attempted to, and the characters in Phineas and Ferb weren't insufferable faggots.
I purposefully forgot a lot about the All Grown Up episodes. They were way too weird for my taste; and yet I watched them cuz it was the successor to Rugrats. There's a few episodes that got burned into my memory; mainly the Yugi-oh episode with Chuckie, and the weird body museum/theme park where Grampa and Tommy get stuck inside a busted ride and nearly drown.
Rate me MATI but that's how we got to that point in the first point retard. These people at first added more subtle faggotry to test the waters into showing kids more and more degeneracy. You guys forgot to mention how Clarence's creator was a creep that tried to grope his female coworkers.
Ah, I was waiting for someone else to point that out. I was fairly sure I remembered there being a huge upset about the whole thing, but I can't recall the specifics. Never bothered watching the show, but wasn't one of Clarence's friends like a mega dick to everyone, or am I remembering that wrong?
Animation has always used simple styles. There's a reason Genndy Tartakovsky's cartoons were so popular in his heyday. Craig McCracken's Powerpuff Girls are just basic circles, rectangles and teardrop shapes. And if we're going to the weeb side one of the reasons why manga characters have such simplified and stylized features is because they often had to produce vast amounts of art on oftentimes weekly schedules. They couldn't afford to make every frame a painting, so they adopted a bunch of very specific visual tropes to streamline the process.
No, my problem with beanface is that I think it's fucking ugly. It's such a shoddy aesthetic, and it doesn't even get a pass for style like Beavis & Butthead, Rocko's Modern Life or King of the Hill did. It's an art style without any hooks, and the cartoons that employ it tend to embrace a brand of humor that just annoys me so it's a double whammy of shitty art and writing decisions.
Agreed; it's not really the beanface style that's specifically bad, but it's way overused and not in a good context. Simple does work as long as the art direction is clear and distinct. Tartakovsky is an excellent user of the 'show don't tell' aesthetic, that it makes his work look like fluid comic strips. He gives his art clear direction, and guides the viewer where he wants them to look. Beanface show creators have yet to utilize anything like this, so that's part of why their stuff is trashy in my opinion.
All the beanface show creators seem to kinda have the same strange agenda when they make their shows, which is why I think a lot of people just hate the style in general because of what it represents. Like, you can just look at the style and know it's gonna be another dumpster fire.
Rate me MATI but that's how we got to our current point in the first place retard. These people at first added more subtle faggotry to test the waters into showing kids more and more degeneracy. You guys forgot to mention how Clarence's creator was a creep that tried to grope his female coworkers.
Kids don't need TV to teach them about fags, even if it's mild. That's a parent's job and corporations and education should not be the ones doing it.
Clarence will never be even as close to enjoyable as Ed, Edd, and Eddy. Also don't give me the modern family BS excuse. Two moms isn't that common outside of liberal cities. Phineas and Ferb portrayed modern suburbia waaaay better than Clarence even attempted to, and the characters in Phineas and Ferb weren't insufferable faggots.
I don't know, I live in a small town in the country bumpkin part of Michigan and there is a same-sex couple of women who bring their 2 kids to our Catholic church. The times have changed for better or worse.
I think there are ways to Include stuff like that without explicitly endorsing the lifestyle or marketing directly to children. There is a difference between Craig of the Creek creators dressing children in pride colors, having explicit nonbianary rep, and having a child character be implied to be a fujo and showing a kid with 2 moms that no other characters comment on.
That aside Phineas and Ferb is fun but I don't think it fills the EEnE niche since it's a bit too fantastical. Not enough imagination and realistic portrayals of childhood. More closer to an upbeat Dexter.
Speaking of Phineas and Ferb, I think it's that cartoon that kickstarted the trope-awareness trend in scriptwriting that's still continuing to this day. It was endearing at first, but even in P&F it got fucking annoying, and then everyone was getting in on it including long-running shows.
All the beanface show creators seem to kinda have the same strange agenda when they make their shows, which is why I think a lot of people just hate the style in general because of what it represents. Like, you can just look at the style and know it's gonna be another dumpster fire.
Tell me you want to groom children without telling me you want to groom children.
If I ever get any kind of power, this will be my pedo test. Draw me a basic character and if you draw one of these crimes against art it's straight to Nonce Island with you.
I don't know, I live in a small town in the country bumpkin part of Michigan and there is a same-sex couple of women who bring their 2 kids to our Catholic church.
lulwut? What Catholic Church is letting same-sex couples bring their children to church? I don't understand liberal churches that actively go against the Bible's teachings in the name of being woke and inclusive towards sexual immorality.
lolwut? What Catholic Church is letting same-sex couples bring their children to church? I don't understand liberal churches that actively go against the Bible's teachings in the name of being "inclusive" towards sexual immorality.
It's not so much inclusiveness and being woke so much as the church is an open place and isn't going to kick people out.
It's funny sometimes though because the priest has given homilies in which he condemns homosexuality and they've been visibly uncomfortable. Not sure why they keep showing up every Sunday I've never seen them at any other church events besides the coffee after mass.
If I ever get any kind of power, this will be my pedo test. Draw me a basic character and if you draw one of these crimes against art it's straight to Nonce Island with you.
I think we'll probably see bootleg SHAFT before bootleg Trigger. Shaft does a lot more of that ultra flat late 90s/early 2000s anime style that would translate from the flat western bean style better. Trigger just has too much flair and an actual animation budget.
