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.
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