They even white-washed Arnold for fucks sake. Took away his curly hair and his nose. At least the new animation is reflective of the anxiety kids face these days
I hate how animation is so consistent now. They all have almost identical faces. The characters are just dolls they dress up with modular pieces. So everything has to be swappable and standardized. It all looks so sterile. I feel like that also serves the function of blocking criticism for racial caricature. If you're designing a POC character you might be prone to unconsciously do exaggerated features or make the features of others monolithic (always frizzy hair, always large lips, always very slanted eyes, etc). But with this style the only real differentiating feature is the color. Everyone has equally unoffensive and bland features. So not only does it make everything cheaper, it also lets them make a racial statement with having 30 skin tones but not really risk pissing anyone off but bigots.
I have no evidence to support this, but I'm 100% sure that it's due to them switching over to computer-generated animation for cost cutting purposes. The kids all look like they were made in a South Park character generator.
the bottom line is, there are a limited amount of studios wordwide that can churn out animation on the nanofiber budgets these things get made on nowadays, so yeah, it's a mix of standardization, automation and good old outsourcing to countries with fewer worker protections
You could make good animation in Flash or similar programs, but they don't give these shows the budget necessary to do good animation, so it all ends up looking like the "default".
That is the case. It's way more expensive to have someone doing it all by hand
Christ, even South Park managed to accessorize. Frizzle lost her patterned shirt and stylized earings, ffs.
Imagine taking the mustache off Stan's dad or Mr. Macky without his comically oversized head.
I like how decades old shows look better than new shows despite massive technological advances. Its almost like capitalism literally eats the "soul" out of anything it gets involved with. Ever craft, every idea, every thing.
Outsourcing all your animation to the lowest bidder yields predictably bad results.
I wouldn't even say this is "sucking the soul" out of the property, as Magic Schoolbus was itself a childish riff on old 60s-era Sci-Fi like Fantastic Voyage. But the embarrassingly bad production value suggests the producers are simply capitalizing on nostalgia, rather than trying to add something to the franchise.
Looking on top, they drew the kids' noses four different ways to reflect different shapes. On bottom, the noses are all just a single curved line pointed in a different direction based on the direction that the head is turned.
Yet more victims of communism. Everyone has the same facial features. You must submit to being equal!
So much for the “tolerant” left
This is a bit different than cancel culture politics that have been going on the last few weeks
This isn't about rabbit boobies, this is about corporations not being good at character design.
It is also that, but less so than some of the other things. But yeah none of this matters just good distraction from the discourse of the last few days
They weren't completely whitewashed. Take Ms. Frizzle's old design being very Jewish, and the new one being Great Value Ariel
Great value Ariel is the take I didn’t know I needed in my life
Oh I'm not saying it matters, but they're two different things. I have no nostalgia for this show anyway, I never watched it
I mean, I'm just going to say this looks like shit, and then not think about it ever again because it's a children's cartoon that I'm not going to watch
Sure is. Turns out people on the internet really keep track of Magic Schoolbus lore and I'm as disappointed as anyone should be about it.
You should take a look at the Thomas the Tank Engine community. The lore is deep.
You ever see a map of the island of Sodor? It’s more detailed than some video games.
That doesnt surprise me at all. The show is supposed to be consistent, and its built around trains. I also wouldve went wild building up lore in that scenario.
Damn that sucks. Super lazy design on its own. Even worse as a redesign of the same characters
Wait was he supposed to be Jewish? I just thought he was just the timid nerdy kid.
I just realized how many cartoons have a timid nerdy Jewish redhead character. It’s at least this, Rugrats, and South Park.
I wonder if there’s more I’m not thinking of because it seems like South Park would have done it because they noticed a trope.
