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(copy and pasted from a comment I left in response to someone else)

I get people like to call this the "CalArts style" because shows like Adventure Time, Regular Show, Gravity Falls, and We Bare Bears are recent popular cartoons by CalArts alumni, but I feel it's also worth noting the vast majority of people at Pixar also went to that school, and so did Craig McCracken, the guy who first made Powerpuff Girls in the 90s (so if anything PPG was "CalArts" long before the reboot, also Lauren Faust went there too), Butch Hartman, Stephen Hillenburg, the creators of Rugrats and Ahh! Real Monsters, and hell even a bunch of Dreamworks directors and animators went there.

Plus the creators of Steven Universe and OK KO graduated from art school in New York, and Gumball is made in the UK, so I dunno to me it feels unfair to just single out this one particular school when frankly a lot of cartoons people love come from it's alumni, and I'm sure this art style is more rooted in something that goes beyond a single school when you've also got animators from New York and England using it.

I personally don't mind the CalArts style that much, but I still wish there was a greater variety in art styles for more modern shows.

I love Star Vs, Gravity Falls and OK K.O! and all that, but it's not super hard to see some strong similarities in their design and such.

I'd say it's more because people are just really tired of CN's constant reboots all looking and feeling the same.

No

This is not okay.

@James Danko

I'm NOT defending Thundercats Roar, I'm saying it bugs me people seem to blame it's art style and the "decline of modern cartoons" (which is a subjective thing, honestly I'd say most modern cartoons are quite good it's just the good stuff suffers from bad scheduling and being overshadowed in the lineup by something that's only average at best) on a single animation school when the thing is said school seems to be barely responsible for the problems people are having.

Plus it's not like a cartoon having a style like that is some inherit bad thing. This style works for something like OK KO because it was made around it since it's an action comedy, Thundercats Roar's biggest problem is it's based off a pre-existing property with two shows that had art styles that better fit its nature of being a more action focused cartoon.

I think is more about the current trend in cartoons/tv shows than the CalArt style itself. Nowadays most cartoons tend to be either more slice of life/comedy or TTG, with some exceptions to the rule (Steven Universe, Star Vs., Gravity Falls, etc). And that the "CalArt style" became a synonym of simple character designs, bean mouth, and simple round shapes, with storylines focused on comedy.

Now about the Thundercats reboot, I've vague memories of the original show and I never watched the 2011 version, but really anyone asked for this? I can see why the fans of the 2011 version and the original went apeshit with this.
Nobody deserved this, Lion O didn't deserved this, neither Snarf, Cheetara specially her and Mummra can anyone think of Mummra!

TL;DR it's just the current trend it'll go away in 5 or so years. Until now we gotta deal with it.

And now /co/ is making parodies of the CalArts style on various threads.

The best one.

Heck if this continues maybe we have to add the "CalArts" style as a meme.

Gonna throw my 2 cents in.

I don't like this artstyle, and I'l explain why. As I feel like this art style is done because it completely disregards or cheats over some of the principles of animation and the drawing involving with it. It feels like it's going backwards back to the rubber hose era than trying to make an artstyle that emulates and improves on it.

I'm not against it because it's "flat" or that it's "tumblr". I'm against it because it isn't teaching newcomers to animation the proper principles, and they instead think they can ride off the artstyle.

It is possible to mix appealing artstyle with good technique, but that takes time, which isn't something you can spend a lot on with animation due to how expensive it is.

Honestly the reason why I dislike this art style is that 90% of the time it's used for a show that just doesn't care. It's the mspaint of art styles.

Yeah, I would make a meme entry for the CalArts Style.

See, the issue isn't the fact on how the style is. There's is shows that use that style good, like OK KO

BUT

The big issue how much of a big saturation we're getting that style. Years ago it was the Flash "bracket puppet" style as I called it, and now it's this style. TV animation has gone into a lazy direction as of recently, barring Adult Swim where some unique stuff can appear, most other channels that either 1 or 2 styles of animations in most shows to the point it makes each show less unique

Doesn't help that Cartoon Network is CONSTANTLY….REBOOTING….SHOWS

People are already hating this show because WE KNOW ALREADY how it's going to work. Ben 10 reboot and PPF reboot are literally the same AND they're almost animated the same. It's stupid AND dull

I don't hate the CalArts style, but it's slightly and slightly turning into a mess of mediocrity pool of people that just DON'T advance their art styles besides the basic stuff YET still get jobs for these shows.

Here's the guy working on the new Thundercats.

LOOK AT THE TOP OF HIS HEAD

It bothers me how everybody lumps everything with this art style in the same boat. For example, for all it's dire need of taking in account model sheets, Steven Universe clearly has its own art direction. In particular, face expressions in that show are very well done; When the show has serious moments, the faces also display emotion in a very realistic way.
Gumball is accused of having this lazy style when… Gumball is amazing in the animation department for mixing all kinds of animation techniques and styles, and is probably rather expensive to make due to this.
But yeah, there is other stuff where the style is just cheap and lazy: The PPG reboot and the Ben 10 reboot clearly display this. You can easily notice how lazy the rt style is, how the design of the characters lacks "soul", and how a lot of the characters have a design that is probably the first thing they came up for design and thus are utterly forgettable. Then there's also the mixed bag stuff: Be cool Scooby Doo for example has good writing, but is garbage in the art department. OK KO! has good animation and writing, and while I don't mind and even like simple styles, the art style for me personally crosses the boundary where it becomes TOO simple.
All things said, regardless of the presence of this style, you can tell most of the time when something is going to be good or bad just by looking a bit of it because it's very noticeable whether it was made with care and if more than a few minutes were put into designing the characters. Even OK KO!, with it's ultra simple style, you can notice that there's care by just how there's more variety and dynamic in the angle of the shots and the character designs show that they had some time and more vibrant colors than in the PPG reboot or the Ben 10 reboot, and the character designs show thought put into them. And boy, the thundercats reboot doesn't show any of those things. This still leaves "Be cool scooby doo!" as an example of it still being possibly somewhat good, but so far odds are that it will be bad.

I actually never heard it call that before. I saw it as american/cartoon chibi.
I think the style is fine, just a little over used and looks a little lazy.
The biggest problem is turning shows with a more realistic art style like Teen Titans or Thundercats, and turning them chibi. It is insulting.

As I've posted in the comments section, I'm fine with an old show getting a new coat of paint, even if that coat of paint looks relatively unappealing to most people. At the end of the day though, I really can't judge until it actually comes out and we bear witness to the writing.

It's not the calarts style that's bad, it's actually decent by Western cartoon standards. It's the writing format that seems handcuffed alongside the art style that elevates it to being garbage.

I don't know much about nowadays Western cartoons, but I remember Western cartoons looked badass and original in pre 2000.

And many others. When shows made for selling toys look better than calarts cartoons it means something definitely wrong.

The weird thing is that a decent amount of these CalArts parodies actually look pretty good in my eyes, despite the fact that they're supposed to be terrible.