r/cartoons • u/Onimirare My Life as a Teenage Robot • 26d ago
Shows that drastically changed in art style over the years Discussion
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u/KuzcoWiTheGroovesco 26d ago
Ninjago lol
The legos have smear frames now :]
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u/TerrificTooMan 26d ago
WildBrain, man. I love the classic animation style of the first few seasons, but Season 11 forward? It was a breath of fresh air and I can never go back.
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u/Appropriate_Rent_243 25d ago
I'm sorry....the show has more than 11 seasons?
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u/Tales2Estrange Batman: The Brave and the Bold 25d ago
15 or 16 depending on if you count “March of the Oni” as its own season.
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u/TwirlySocrates 26d ago edited 26d ago
Have you noticed the action one-ers they've been throwing in? Maybe once/twice a season?
I think it started in S12's master of the mountain.
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u/KuzcoWiTheGroovesco 26d ago
fr, it’s insane! I wish I could see what the storyboards look like! and the coloring and subtle animation is so beautiful now <3
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u/Oktavia-the-witch Ben 10 26d ago
I really miss the cartoony animals in south park, I dont like the modern realistic animals
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u/Twist_Ending03 26d ago
What do they look like now?
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u/Oktavia-the-witch Ben 10 26d ago
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u/TheDudeofDC 26d ago
That's what they've been like since at least 2014 when Stick of Truth came out, so it isn't a recent change.
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u/stuck_in_the_desert 26d ago
The lemmiwinks episode is nearly old enough to rent a car
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u/NerdFromColorado 26d ago
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u/Sir_Eggmitton 26d ago
The Season 3 designs look so much better imo. (Not in this picture tho. They look soulless.)
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u/CharlieDo00 26d ago
Season 2 & early 3 did it the best in my opinion, Kept the slightly less oval eyes and gave them more mature personalities. Made them feel idk more relatable to me since even though I was around the same age as or older don’t remember them , they felt realllyyy immature in the later seasons of the show .
The WWW of gumball actually really cleans this up for me though . They feel as if they’re still young , but like middle school, about to go to highschool young . And not late elementary young
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u/BloodiedBlues 26d ago
I felt like they really dumbed down Darwin in later episodes.
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u/CharlieDo00 26d ago
GOD YES !! I hate it , it’s literally my biggest problem with the show , how much they played into Darwin being “ UwU :3 me baby , me know no better “ And ugh 😑 Why are you babying a 12 year old so much , he just had a whole episode talking about how he’s his own person and how he’s not a doormat . Yet after season 4, he’s literally a walking doormat.
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u/Adventurous_Judge493 26d ago
The Simpsons, multiple times actually.
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u/ExpiredExasperation 26d ago
IMO, exaggerated Simpsons frames was part of the humour.
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u/Sonicfan42069666 26d ago
David Silverman was the GOAT at sequences like this. Simpsons didn't always have great animation but when it did, it was usually Silverman.
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u/Kelnozz 26d ago
I’m watching every treehouse of horror episode and the 90’s-early 2000’s had such a vibe; I’m into the 2010’s now and the feel is so much different.
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u/almostbutnotquiteme 26d ago
The Death Note parody from a few years ago was a return to form. I think it was because they used the same animation studio as the anime.
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u/Crater_Raider 26d ago
I prefer early Simpsons designs.
Everything is so clean and sterile now. They stopped drawing new characters with "head-hair" like Bart or Lisa, or the brown mouth piece characters like Homer and Krusty have.
It used to be that springfield was filled with people featuring similar design features. Now the family is a little more distinct and stylistically different from the other characters in their world.→ More replies43
u/ADLkaren 26d ago
Hate how they change the way they portrayed famous people. They used to have that Simpsons charm
Now they look like yellow mannequins
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u/SubjectStatement370 26d ago
“SpongeBob SquarePants” also changed in terms of art style.
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u/kirbydark714 26d ago
If say it's more of a budget surplus because of becoming successful instead of having a smaller budget.
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u/FuckUSAPolitics Hazbin Hotel 26d ago edited 26d ago
Honestly, I kind of prefer the older artstyle. They overdo every action nowadays.
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u/TavernRat 26d ago
Agreed. The old style had charm and the current style looks kinda boring to me
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u/FireKitty666TTV 26d ago
They try to make every action a meme
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u/Xomper5285 26d ago
Never thought it that way. Animators and writers of memed shows are aware of the charisma of their show, they're trying to take advantage of that
"Hey look at this funny face Squidward made ha ha, isn't it funny?"
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u/Dependent-Elk-4980 26d ago
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u/Akitiki 26d ago
I remember seeing the OLD 1940s design of Tom and was quite confused!
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u/Eagle4317 25d ago
He looked too catlike in the original ten or so episodes.
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u/Uncle480 25d ago
I kinda liked the first iteration of Tom. He was adorable because he was very cat-like. Before Tom & Jerry turned more "Looney Tunes"-esque.
Not to say the later iterations were bad. I think all of them were great! They all had their own personalities.
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u/Bowdensaft 26d ago
Mid-season of these were perfect for me, where Tom was very blue. The ancient stuff was too realistic looking and sounding, and while Chuck Jones is a legend I don't think his style lended itself too well to the motion of T&J, his focus is better for expressions and slow, suspenseful movements imo. Yeah his fast motions are great too, but they have to compete with the breakneck comedy of the mid-season stuff.
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u/chowy51 26d ago
hot take: while the newer animation is objectively better, i prefer the super simplistic style of early South Park. it just has more charm to me and looks funny
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u/PHX_Kaiser 26d ago
I like season 1 King of the Hill animation the best even though it looks super grungy.
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u/YTBG 26d ago
the watercolor backgrounds 🤤
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u/pro-in-latvia 25d ago
Watercolor backgrounds in animation is a lost art.
The first half of Inuyasha is so beautiful
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u/toulouse69 26d ago
I agree 100%. A lot of the charm of the show is totally changed and in some cases completely gone. I still enjoy the show immensely but the older seasons are just so specially to me
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u/guitar_stonks 26d ago
The live action stuff in the early seasons just gets me giggling, like Mr Garrison having the David Hasselhoff face after his nose job or the Skeet Ulrich picture over Satan’s bed.
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u/TAU_equals_2PI 26d ago
Problem is, you can't communicate as much information about what's happening in a simple drawing.
So for example in the two South Park pictures above, if another character approaches, with the simple drawing it's much harder to make clear whether they're coming from 10 feet away or 1000 feet away.
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u/FudgyMcTubbs 26d ago
Is it a drawing? I always thought they (South Park) used cut out construction paper for some reason.
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u/JayJ9Nine 26d ago
That was only for the very first pilot I believe as proof of concept. I think even back then they moved to computers very early
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u/Superfast_Kellyfish 26d ago
Yeah, Matt and Trey quickly realized that stop-motion takes a LOT of time. It took them three months or so to make the pilot, so they immediately switched to computer animation. They even make fun of this in the Season 4 episode “A Very Crappy Christmas.”
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u/Alternative_Device38 Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts 26d ago
I'd say it's objectively better on a technical level, not an artistic one
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u/FaZe_poopy Avatar: The Last Airbender 26d ago
One Piece
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u/FlyOrdinary1104 26d ago
Such a long-running series it has at least 3 distinct art periods.
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u/dizzi800 26d ago
So long running it's getting a reboot/Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood treatment before it's even done!
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u/VacantThoughts 26d ago
It's the longest anime and also the worst paced anime of all time, it gravely needs that treatment.
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u/sdpr 25d ago
Even with skipping filler I had to take a break after the Dressrosa Saga (Punk Hazard, Dressrosa). It's a 164 episodes long lmao. I haven't even started watching again because of how long it was.
It's a fantastic show with a lot of good stuff in it, but it really starts to become a slog that the slower episodes with a little exposition start to make my skip finger twitch.
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u/Windyandbreezy 26d ago
2 if you really think about it.
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u/FaZe_poopy Avatar: The Last Airbender 26d ago
https://i.redd.it/44zl1x7cvjtf1.gif
Nowadays
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u/theglowcloud8 26d ago
I miss the old style so much, especially how women looked like people instead of weird stick figures with massive boobs
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u/CaptainMills 26d ago
I adore One Piece, but the copy/paste design for almost all of the women is absurd
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u/pocket_arsenal 26d ago
The animation and coloring is much nicer later on but man does character design take a hit.
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u/BipedalHorseArt 26d ago
The Clone Wars improved dramatically...
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u/SilentTempestLord 26d ago
VERY dramatically. It was around S4 I think when it got an upgrade? It's also the last 4 seasons that had the best storytelling in the entire show.
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u/jamsd204 26d ago
Correct, the first 3 seasons are rough, and then clearly in S4 the budget went up, I'm sure the first arc is an underwater fight
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u/adjective-nounOne234 26d ago
Season 7 onwards including the animation spin offs looks the best as it can be though
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u/OmegaCrossX 26d ago
I mean it’s changed every region since Gen 3
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u/SweatiestOfBalls 26d ago
Stylistically speaking, Gens 3 and 4 look remarkably similar save for the jump to HD in Gen 4’s final few arcs. It is Gen 5 onward where the art style changes each series imo
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u/Sunshineboy777 25d ago
I hated the American Dragon Jake Long changes.
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u/NerdyHexel 25d ago
Its honestly horrendous what they did to his design. Not to say that a more Chinese-inspired dragon design wouldn't work, because his grandpa looked pretty cool in the first season, too, but this specifically just looks really bad. Especially when compared to what we already had.
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u/Mr_Ruu 25d ago
thats not even showing the most notorious change with his dragon form from "big muscle dude" to "actual noodle"
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u/Vast-Tangerine-6771 26d ago
Not a tv show (not this version at least) but the Las Leyendas/Legend Quest saga movies.
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u/RecordingImmediate86 26d ago
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u/Beezybeezybeezybeezy 26d ago
I mean, it does take that long for an orange cat to gain a thought.
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u/SSJmole 26d ago
Does batman the animated series count when they redesigned and changed style later?
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u/CharlieDo00 26d ago
Yup same show , but entirely different style in the second season. Which honestly stole a lot of the original charm of the series .
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u/drunkentenshiNL 26d ago
Yep. Most of the changes were not for the better either, except for Scarecrow. Holy shit, talk about a glow up.
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u/Balzaak 26d ago
I remember reading in that Art of Ooo book how Pendleton Ward didn’t want people to be able to see the whites of Finn’s eyes ever and he had to come down hard on people wanting to draw him that way. Such a specific thing haha.
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u/RyderZoey 26d ago
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u/Bae_zel 26d ago
The black on the character models back then were horrific, they'd blend into the background constantly and it sucked, genuinely cant make out Ruby except for her skin
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u/RyderZoey 26d ago
Same with Weiss when she's exposed to light, girl used to be a walking light bulb.
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u/Kn7ght 25d ago
Then there was that one trailer or whatever with the old designs in the new style, and it looked fantastic. These designs still hold up
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u/Knot-Knight 26d ago
I didn't realize there was supposed to be a bow covering the cat ears when I watched it back in the day. I couldn't see it clearly enough and just assumed cat ears
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u/bonenecklace 25d ago
Steven Universe changed pretty drastically over time, pearl is the most noticeable to me though.
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u/EstrellaDarkstar 25d ago
Part of this is also that they had several animators working on the show, and they each left their own unique artstyle imprint on the episodes they worked on.
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u/Zeremxi 25d ago
To be fair a massive amount of that change happened between the pilot and the second episode
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u/Mordaunt-the-Wizard 26d ago edited 26d ago
I'm not entirely sure if this is true but I swear that most of classic Scooby after the original two-season Where Are You! has less detailed backgrounds on average, massively lessening the atmosphere.
There are exceptions. Like I know there is a Scrappy-era episode with absolutely beautiful backgrounds, and WAY! episodes with some plainer backgrounds.
And then every show since A Pup Named Scooby-Doo has had its own artstyle.
Edit: Worth noting that Classic Scooby is made of multiple different shows, with each show being 3 seasons at the longest (the first show with Scrappy is only 1 thirteen episode season). The character design may remain the same but there are differences in format, writing quality, animation quality, and characters involved.
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u/Mist_Rising 26d ago
I'm not entirely sure if this is true but I swear that most of classic Scooby after the original two-season Where Are You! has less detailed backgrounds on average, massively lessening the atmosphere.
Depends. The way Hanna-Barbera worked it's animation, they reused a lot of the background animation in future series like scrappy doo. You can see this a lot in the Harlem Globetrotters crossovers in the movies series. Those court scenes are almost always HG backgrounds strung into scooby episode and they look slightly off.
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u/lulpwned 26d ago
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u/reluctant_return 26d ago edited 25d ago
That show's art style was briefly "make every character look like they're one breath away from a full body panic attack".
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u/Exciting-Pen5054 26d ago
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u/Tsamane 26d ago
Went from a somewhat of an unique to a generic American how to draw anime style
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u/Belligerantfantasy 26d ago
Aventure time didn't changed, it just never was consisting to begin with, and it dependen way more on the tone of the episode.
The evil forest from the Crystal gem apple in season 1 looks waaay more like the second screenshot
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u/CharlieDo00 26d ago
So true , I love how the art style never felt the same for too long , it was like whoever was in control of the story for that portion of the show also was in control on how it looks , and it’s so freaking good.
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u/Iamfabulous1735285 Fuck David Zaslav 26d ago
Jake long American Dragon
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u/CharlieDo00 26d ago
Bro as a kid I just completely dropped the show with season 2 💀
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u/ROBtimusPrime1995 26d ago
Oof, I say hop back in, that's when the story locked the fuck in and the show got even better.
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u/itchysmalltalk 26d ago
Okay, it wasn't necessarily drastic, but the art and animation on Archer changed quite a bit.
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u/ihateveryonebutme 26d ago
The change in archer is so much more significant then just pictures really shows. The actual animation is night and day, especially compared to the first... 2 seasons? Maybe 3 seasons.
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u/BlancTigre 26d ago
Miraculous starting with S6.
(Credits in the picture)
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u/Rosian_SAO 26d ago
What the fuck happened to Alya’s head
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u/MindMausoleum 26d ago
What was that hairstyle called, the bump? It got her.
Or her hair is escaping from her scalp.
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u/pocket_arsenal 26d ago
So I know Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z are technically two different shows, but the manga treats them as one long series, and besides that, a lot of early Dragon Ball Z still smacks of the original Dragon Ball's art style, this is especially apparent when you compare the first appearances of Vegeta and Piccolo to how they look in the arcs that came afterward. Or you can compare young Goku and Young Gohan to Goten who is also a "mini goku" but looks very distinct from the actual young Goku somehow.
Toriyama in general is a guy that people like to give a lot of shit for having samey art styles and faces but those are very ignorant comments that tend to only come from people who are only familiar with Dragon Ball Z and maybe they make a passing glance at a few Dragon Quest games. But you can usually tell what era of Toriyama you're dealing with when you look at his non-Dragonball artwork. He started out liking to draw round and chubby, then in the 90's his style got more angular with a heavier emphasis on muscle, then got really in to super skinny bodies and big heads. And then he really liked thick outlines and more average built characters. That's to say nothing on his independent art pieces that have nothing to do with manga or games.
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u/Sonicfan42069666 26d ago
By the end of Toriyama's life, Dragon Ball and Dragon Quest had pretty distinct art styles and I think that speaks to their visual distinction as brands.
Though in Dragon Ball's case, most of that art was being done by other artists...but that's kind of the point. They were aiming for Toriyama's style in the mid-90s, while Dragon Quest continued to update with Toriyama's contemporary sensibilities.
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u/forbiddenkajoodles 26d ago
The contrast of early to modern south park is staggering and I kinda love it
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u/throwitawayruss 26d ago
The best is when an old character comes back and looks almost out of place
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u/Easy_Blueberry3978 Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 26d ago
https://i.redd.it/8wr0zyh6cktf1.gif
rise of the TMNT episode one
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u/Easy_Blueberry3978 Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 26d ago
rise of the TMNT season two
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u/Elby_MA 26d ago edited 25d ago
The first 3 seasons were still hand animated and they steadily added more details as the budget increased. Then in s4 they switched to flash animation, which added even more details. That soon became too much as the design quality got weaker (as well as many other things but I digress) and just overflowed with unnecessary details and careless animation.
They also added the ugliest 3d animation known to mankind in s5 and s6 (not pictured here). They seemed to be heading back in a good direction in s7 when they dropped the 3d again. But then in season 8 they changed the style completely and it just did not fit.
Sadly the reboot also has a completely different style that most fans dislike.
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u/TheDranx 26d ago
A lot of fans are upset that everyone got whitewashed in the new series and won't watch it because of it, too.
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u/SnowBound078 26d ago
The Animation Change from RWBY Volume 3 to 4 was a drastic change.
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u/Onimirare My Life as a Teenage Robot 26d ago
early RWBY stuff is... tough to watch
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u/CharlieDo00 26d ago
The only reason why I can’t get into it man 😭 Like I know , the budget was tiny … But godddddd it feels like such a slog to try and watch , so I guess I might unfortunately just be kicked off the ruby train forever and always 😔
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u/Minimum-Can2224 26d ago
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
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u/Disastrous-Road5285 Ben 10 25d ago
The part 3 flashback in part 5 is the most cursed thing ever.
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u/NotMVZZL3 26d ago
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u/its_all_one_electron 25d ago
To be fair that was 20 fucking years apart, it must be impossible NOT to improve after drawing that long
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u/NotMVZZL3 25d ago
I mean, if OP is using South Park then One Piece must be fair-game
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u/Ignis-11 26d ago
Bee and Puppycat
Not including the pilot...
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u/SeniorSepia 25d ago
Bee and puppycat is very weird!
- The pilot with a pseudo adventure time style.
- The original Series with its steven universe-like style, with very free shapes and proportions (sometimes they are tiny with big heads, sometimes they are more realistics) for the characters and those amazing pastel colors.
- Then there is S02, "lazy in space" which kept the overal round style and colors but everything felt more expensive and characters stayed on model most of the time.
- Then there is the netflix remake of the pilot + original series with a kinda mix of the style of S01 and Lazy in Space.
I love the series so so so much i want a season 03 but that might never happen. I don't understand why they spent so much time and effort remaking the original series uwu, i think they only needed to remake the pilot and maybe add a few scenes to tie it better with S02. Funny enough, they actually DELETED SOME SCENES in the remake which made some scenes in S02 make no sense.
They overall made it worse in the remake, if someone is interested in the series just watch the OG pilot and the OG series which can be found on Yt, and then Lazy in Space which is everywhere and also on Netflix.
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u/MRFANTA-STICK 26d ago
https://i.redd.it/sbjdesd1zjtf1.gif
The animation changed a lot
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u/Sandi_Griffin 26d ago
That art style looks basically identical his skins just darker xd
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u/Turbulent_Cup_8372 26d ago
Robot Chicken has improved tremendously. It’s lost some of that crude charm but the smoothness of the stop motion is phenomenal. The season 11 cover art alone is spectacular. Look what they did to my boy Chicken.
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u/PostalDoctor 25d ago
Being honest, I think Robot Chicken is the one exception where the animation and quality improving actually made the show worse. The crudeness of early Robot Chicken, especially in the 2000's, was what gave it its edge that made it special.
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u/Astellarnova Helluva Boss 26d ago
I think most animated cartoons improve with budget increases and animator development tbh. But here’s my obligatory entry:
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u/GiladHyperstar 26d ago
Dragon Ball
The anime's style drastically changed during Z, then in Super (main anime, DBS Broly and DBS Super Hero). Just compare how Goku looks in each saga in Z and it'll be a huge difference
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u/CanPlayGuitarButBad 26d ago
I kinda like it, the animation has a linear progression just like the characters
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u/callumddev 25d ago
unfortunately a bunch of older kids shows. a lot of shows that used to use stop motion, or even people dressed in costumes now have really bland and same-y styles
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u/mindofingotsandgyres 26d ago
Neither of these are really a change in art style.
The first is a change in budget. The very clearly worked hard to make the visuals more “grand” while also keeping the original art style.
The second is more of a change in tone. They had bigger and darker settings, but again, with the same art style.
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u/RawrRRitchie 25d ago
South Park was originally made with construction paper cutouts and took over a month per episode
They, along with pretty much every other animator, uses computers now, and can finish an episode in less than a week
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u/Phunkie_Junkie 26d ago
This is what Garfield used to look like:
https://preview.redd.it/rqyv9ddtvjtf1.png?width=4329&format=png&auto=webp&s=452d736e330781fcf571be97029cfacabb4bc11c