I really shouldn’t even be touching this discourse but I also want to add that style trends have always existed, and people shaming said style trends is almost a trend itself that follows along.
Before, animation professionals were less accesible online so a lot of this style trend hate would instead just get directed at artists in online communities. Once upon a time on deviantart kids liked drawing sparkledogs and suddenly began getting harassed because it was “not realistic” was the justification. Before the current cartoon style trend people would draw off anime then that became cringey because anime wasn’t “a real style”. When tumblr first started to become more popular, artists got shit for drawing what was called ‘tumblr noses’ where they just tinted a nose red.
All of these trends were completely HARMLESS and as a result of the fact that a lot of artists form COMMUNITIES and LEARN FROM AND INSPIRE EACH OTHER, but as soon as that happened, another group would come up and make them feel ashamed for these things until suddenly it was popular to trash artists that drew X way because it was bad for -insert reason that tries to justify bullying behavior by pretending it isn’t-.
And with the animation itself, style trends are a bit different in how they form because what networks want, marketing, and so on plays a role. If you look back on any era of animation, cartoons around similar time periods followed similar styles because those styles were shown to be what worked and what was appealing. A lot of artists who work on those shows also have to adopt those styles to continue getting work. Heck, even the current style trend is going to eventually fizzle out and be replaced by a new one, and cue the cycle restarting.
I think the worst part about this “calarts style” backlash and even referring to the style as such is
1. It perpetuates an idea that drawing a certain way is wrong or ‘cringey’ (hello cringe culture).
2. It ENCOURAGES bullying of young artists or artists who may simply like the style or want to draw in it and encourages the notion that they should feel ashamed for drawing in a style they enjoy (Things that affected me with previous style trend hate growing up as an artist on the internet).
3. “Calarts style” was a term used by John K himself the creepy pedophile and it’s gross it gained so much traction (I’m on mobile so I can’t link easily but there’s posts and people on twitter talking about this)
4. The industry style trend has nothing to do with calarts. A lot of people use this to fuel harassing innocent young artists who go to calarts probably because they are misinformed about how the college program actually works and want to believe calarts kids are all rich and spoiled and more privileged (not really) to take out their frustrations on them. Which is fucked up. Hate to break it to you, but minus maybe a few students who did bad things, harassing or hating on the students at that school for mostly false online rumors is immature and bordering bullying behavior once again. Also go watch some calarts films, you’ll realize the artists all are hardworking and draw in such creatively varied ways and have their own voices.
5. Literally all of this is bullying when you take it out on other people or pressure others to feel bad about liking or using a flippin’ art style. And you’re not just giving professionals a rough time for no reason, you’re also indirectly hurting the young kids that’ll go online and be inspired by these styles to learn they are ‘cringey’.
Like you’re totally welcome to not like a certain style or have critiques about shows and how they could have done things better. Heck, I have a list of shows I don’t like for xyz reasons and I’ve voiced those opinions before but I guess the difference is since I’ve worked in the industry, I am fortunate to have the knowledge that these things are a result of several factors and rarely can be put on a single person to blame and sometimes production has to go a certain way or can’t go a certain way, which results in things happening the way they do. Sometimes the network wants specific things, etc. So I just hold my opinions separately from the show team and don’t blame or bother them for it, which is how things were before the internet made professionals so accessible.
So the point is as long as you’re not giving artists (professional or not) a hard time for things that ultimately are harmless when voicing your feelings, then you’re fine.
