You can really tell when a cartoon is created by comedy people who don’t really care about cartoons.
I was actually talking about the art styles, and not the overall quality of the shows.
It’s not that these shows’ art styles are ugly, it’s that they’re bland. It feels like during the initial design phase the artists just did a cookie-cutter job because the creators were too busy with the writing to give them much direction. It could still be saved by good writing, storyboarding and animation (and this might be the case with Big Mouth, from what I heard) but it still looks underwhelming on a fundamental level, when it could have been better.
Also, there’s this sentiment going around recently that adult cartoons in general have bad art styles. While it’s true that having a niche audience makes it harder for more ambitious adult cartoons to flourish these days, I feel like some of these sentiments are misdirected towards shows that don’t deserve it. Sure, adult cartoons, especially sitcoms, usually have a more grounded approach, but that doesn’t mean they’re less inspired.
Like, when Mike Judge created King of the Hill, he had a very specific vision on what he wanted his cartoon to look like, right down to the characters’ body language. He wanted it to feel like a live-action show that just happens to be animated.
Or like when Raphael Bob-Waksberg made Bojack Horseman, he insisted that Lisa Hanawalt be the production designer because he wanted the show to look like her art. She even had her own consistent rules about how they would anthropomorphize the animal characters.
Or how Bob’s Burgers made their characters look endearing without making them conventionally cute or attractive, keeping in line with the show’s themes of loving yourself, imperfections and all.
Or how the Smith family in Rick and Morty intentionally looks normal so that the aliens around them look even weirder, while also allowing them to subvert standard sitcom family archetypes.
(also RnM has tons of fucking gorgeous art, let’s be honest)
Even if they don’t look like Disney, you can still tell when the creators care a lot about how their shows look. They chose the style that fits the tone they were going for. Don’t mistake grounded for bland.
…did you just say Rick and Morty has a good artstyle
What the fuck
Are you actually calling the art of the show different from other unfunny ugly ass adult cartoons
i mean… yea?
they have beautiful backgrounds like these for shots that only last for a few seconds:
and they go wild when it comes to character design, especially the aliens
and also they have scenes like these, which i guess is more of a praise towards the storyboarding and animation, but it’s still nice to watch:
regardless of how you feel about the show, you gotta admit, they have some really nice art
rick and morty is a pretty good show. its just the fans that completely miss the point of it that are bad.
I am Silver Tongue, I am an artist. I have many characters and you can check out my art in the art tag. I occasionally practice witchcraft though I don't do anything too complicated. I am girl 2 and don't know what else to put here.
