Rebecca Sugar didn't go to CalArts.
I think it's funny that people keep blaming CalArts for cutesy character design based on easy-to-draw and child-friendly, round shapes in characters like Steven or Gumball or Clarence. Which goes all the way back to Mickey Mouse.
But as you can see with Rory and others animations, there's nothing cute or attractive about these abstract art styles.
I think it's less CalArts, and more of an art school thing in general. Sugar didn't go to CalArts but if you look at her regular art and animation when not drawing Steven Universe, it's ugly as sin.
I think it has something to do with deconstructing the human form or some bullshit but let's be real, they're all just too lazy to animate the human figure.
I’ve said this before in other threads, but while the CalArts issue and the issues of how art direction is handled in modern animation are two separate, they are somewhat related because of how the industry works.
A more accurate description of why the art direction of so many current animated series looks so same-y and often ugly I think would be artistic inbreeding. The current crop of animation “professionals” in the field is that they are VERY clique-y and there’s a lot of nepotism and cronyism in the industry as a result. Which means that you end up with a lot of people who all draw from the same creative compost heap for inspiration, like all the same things that influence their preferences, and hire people more on in-group clout rather than talent or if they’re a good fit for a specific position; so there’s very little variety to reference in their field, so when someone who working as an artist on one the shows that was a breeding ground for this style goes off To make their own thing, more often then not it ends up being more of that same style because that’s how they’ve been conditioned to draw for so long.
Mind you, isn’t new to the industry. I’m sure most people remember when every other animation studio was trying to ape Disney’s art direction in the 90s, which was basically Disney taking Glen Keane’s sketchbook and declaring the house standard. But I think it’s a lot more noticeable currently because the current hiring practices for animation, particularly in the slightly more accessible realm of tv animation, seem to make the primary model for in-group hiring revolve around people’s opinions rather than their portfolio - I’ve lost count how many times I’ve seen a “if you think [insert milquetoast criticism or opinion here] or then you don’t
belong in
our industry” from a Twitter handle that says they work for one of the big/ger animation studios.
The main reason why CalArts pops up in conversation is because it’s become THE breeding ground for the above. A lot of people bring up Sugar not being a CalArts alumni as a gotcha, but conveniently ignore that when you look at the rest of her SU team like 95% of them are in fact from CalArts. And they are not shy about this either: people who interned for Cartoon Network have said Pendleton Ward wouldn’t even speak to non-CalArts interns, most of the animation studios won’t hire outside of California (and often mediocre CalArts alumni have a better chance at getting a job than a good portfolio from another Cali school), and the CalArts students and professors reportedly pull a lot of bullshit like brow-beating on people for liking any artist or animator not on their approved lists until they either shut up or retract their opinion. So while the art style current batch of animation style technically isn’t the fault of CalArts in and of itself, CalArts tends to be the primary influence for this sort of thing.
Hell, you can kind of see it playing out with Rory right now. Sure, she’s a pretentious twat waffle with a troon fetish that makes everyone look like a beautician tried to give a blobfish Botox and can’t take any criticism, but look at some of the shit her peers have pulled. People graffitied her posters labeling her a racist, the people in charge of writing the artist descriptions for promoting their alumni make jabs about her history out passive-aggressively insult her or her style, and the end result of all that seems to be that no one collaborated with her on anything.
Again, a lot of that is on Rory and her antics. But I can’t say I’ve been terribly impressed with the schoolyard antics of CalArts’ student body either.
