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Nate contemplating life

Santa Clarita, CA

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light inspo = ok, heavy inspo = credit required

I was just looking through YouTube and I saw a video of someone talking about the new Elio Pixar movie, and how everyone hates the “bean mouth” art style that Pixar has been doing been lately- and something about it felt very reminiscent, like déjà vu. We’ve had this conversation before. The Cartoon Network style (you know the one, Steven universe, we bear bears, amazing world of gumball) granted it was 2-D, got a lot of flack when it was coming out and was popularly used.

Personally, I think all of these art styles are fine in isolation. The art style is cute for the movies, and noticed how almost all of them (except for Elio but that’s a different story) did really well in the box office, and some of them even grew fandoms, see turning red and Luca. The big problem with this is not the art style, it’s the repetitiveness of it. if people actually hated this art style so much it wouldn’t have gotten so popular- There’s a reason that they use it, it works.

The problem with it now, and the problem with it back then, was that it was over saturating the animation market. I think the old Cartoon Network art style back in the day was not due to marketing, not due to the fact that they thought it would do well in the markets I mean- maybe partially, but I think it was because they where all worked on the same group of people-which makes sense, and the shows were different enough that it didn’t really cause too many issues, aside from a small subset of people who didn’t really like that the art style was being used everywhere.

Personally, I believe that Elio would’ve done really good if there was more marketing behind it. It looks like a really cute movie, with a cute plot, cute side characters, that kids would love. However, I will say that the art style is becoming uninspired. Maybe the same people worked on this too, but I think the only reason that they’re using this style is because they know it works. It has no spirit behind it, dissimilar to how Gumball or Steven universe did. What I mean by “no spirit” is that the people that worked on this aren’t doing that art style because that’s what they know and what they love or because it was a cute stylistic choice, I think that they’re only doing it for the money.

None of these movies or shows really had to be told with this art style to be intriguing. They all had a good base story, with good morals, and well, I don’t know anything about Elio cause I have not seen the movie, I can only assume it is the same. On the other hand, the 2d version of the same style worked better for shows like Steven universe, and the amazing world of gumball because they experimented with it. The amazing world of gumball used multiple animation mediums- not just the “bean mouth” look- even though they use that for their main characters, and it all fit seamlessly. Steven universe stretched out the proportions, used the animation style with emotion- and not everyone had a “bean mouth.” Steven universe used the style but still gave their characters life, pushing expressions to the extreme, and letting their characters lose the “bean mouth” if needed, in the same can be said for a lot of other shows in this style.

Even so, the old 2D animation style of the “bean mouth” definitely got oversaturated, Steven universe, amazing world of gumball, we bear bears, star versus the forces of evil, gravity Falls, but the one thing that these shows all have in common is that their stories were strong enough to drive the series. I don’t think people remember gravity Falls as an art style, or that when you think about Steven universe, the first thing you think about is that bean mouth.

But when it comes to the new Pixar style- I’m gonna stop calling a bean mouth it’s the cal arts style- I just don’t think it works as well. The shows stories are strong, but the one thing I can’t explain is they all feel the same. If you put all of the 2-D offenders in a lineup, they all look different enough from each other that you can tell them apart just silhouette. If you do the same thing for the new Pixar offenders, can you say the same?

Anyway, that’s just my rant. They’re definitely more things I could say, and the 2d version definitely isn’t perfect, and there were arguments that could be made for the 3-D version of the art style, but I am just a girl, and I have already been writing this for 30 minutes,,, and it’s so long now that I don’t think anyone’s gonna read it,, anyway thank you lol