Comic Auzi

Where did the modern cartoon art style come from?

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So recently a new reboot of ThunderCats was announced called ThunderCats Roar, and the announcement has caused quite the uproar (Wocka wocka! within the animation community. The main target and focus of discourse within the cartoon community is regarding the art style. Said art style involves the characters drawn in a very rounded art style with limited to no sharp edges, thin outlines, and use of bright colors.

Now the reason why a lot of people aren’t found of this art style is because it resembles the art style used in the PowerPuff Girls reboot, which resembles the art style used in Steven Universe, which resembles Craig of the Creek, which resembles Star Vs. The Forces of Evil, which resembles Gravity Falls, which resembles Regular Show, which resembles Clarence, which resembles Adventure Time- Bottom line, this art style has been used a lot (and I mean a lot) in the past decade of animated shows, with the majority of them being on Cartoon Network.

People often refer to this art style as the “Cal Arts style” but I personally hate that term because not everybody who went to Cal Arts draws with that art style (Tim Burton went to Cal Arts and his stuff doesn’t look like Clarence), and a bunch of the shows I mentioned before weren’t even created by Cal Arts alumni. Still to keep things simple I’ll use @pan-pizza’s term for the art style and call it “The Bean Style”, which is a good way to describe it cause a lot of things in that style are certainly bean shaped (like the heads and smiles).

Now how did this Bean Style come to be? Well I have a theory. Being a cartoonist myself I’ve noticed that we tend to be mainly inspired by what we watched when we were kids, cause often we start off by trying to draw out favorite characters, and the art styles those cartoons are drawn in end up influencing our personal art styles in one way or another.

For example back in the 90s, cartoons were created by people who grew up back in the 60s and 70s. Back then the main cartoon shows running were the various series made by Hanna Barbara Productions and reruns of classic theatrical shorts from Warner Bros., Disney, Fleischer Studios, and MGM.

Thus manly of the shows made by the people who watched them as kids resembled them strongly.

Now we’re getting to the point where cartoons are being made by people who grew up in the 90s. Now while several cartoon shows came out in the 90s, there was one particular cartoon show that came out that stood out amongst all the others, both in terms of appearance and writing, this cartoon would be later be a major factor into reshaping animation as well know it. This cartoon was The Simpsons.

While The Simpsons is pretty common place nowadays, back when it debuted nobody had ever seen anything like it before. No cartoon had characters that looked this strange or that dared to go against the ideal Nuclear family, as a result it became a smash hit. Back to what I was talking about before, take a look at The Simpsons art style, the characters have thin outlines, a very round with little to no sharp corners, the toothy smiles only show three straight lines, and use bright colors. Looks familiar doesn’t it?

Now I’m not saying that The Simpsons was the only source of inspiration for the current cartoon creators using the Bean Style (the anime boom in the US during the 90s certainly influenced them too), but The Simpsons is clearly the most prominent influence looking at the art style.

Now I want to be clear that I’m not trying to bash The Simpsons, nor the Bean style, this is just my theory as to why this particular art style seems to have such a strong presence nowadays. Am I a little sick of it popping up so much? Well… Yeah I am, but I can’t deny when the style is done well nor when it’s used appropriately (Gravity Falls is one of my favorite cartoon shows of all time after all), and that being said the Bean Style isn’t the only art style being used in modern cartoons. Shows like the 2017 Ducktales reboot, the new Mickey Mouse Shorts, The Loud House, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Mighty Magiswords all have different art styles that are unique from each other.

Besides, eventually the kids who grew up back in the 90s and 2000s will be the cartoon creators of the future and the art styles from that area will most likely make a comeback.

I’m not saying you have to like every cartoon art style, but rather you should keep in mind that there are still several more options out there, even if one particular art style seems to be dominating the market nowadays. Also you shouldn’t assume that there’s a bad guy in all of this, just that we all have different tastes when it comes to what art we like.

So the next time you see a cartoon with the Bean art style, don’t start getting all angry and blaming Cal Arts…