Henrique Jardim's Crap Cafeteria

There are a few reasons why you shouldn’t whine every time there’s a reboot of something. Let’s use the new Thundercats as an example.

1. Thundercats doesn’t deserve to die. It’s a beloved property that should have a fair attempt at reaching a new generation of kids. Don’t let a misplaced sense of ownership to something that isn’t yours in the first place ruin a show for other people. You like the original? Good. You can always go watch it. A reboot of Thundercats doesn’t mean the original never happened. Think a reboot should be more action packed and play older? They tried it in 2011 and turns out viewers didn’t want it.

Consider that the new Thundercats Roar may actually do well because…

2. …it wasn’t made for you. The tastes of today’s kids are different than ours, just like how ours was different than the generation before us. Test yourself by watching the original Thundercats. And by watching it I mean actually watching several entire episodes from start to finish. Most likely you’re going to get bored and want to change it to something else. A comedic adaptation of it could just be what revives interest in the Thundercats.

3. You already know and trust the artists. You trusted them when they helped make shows like OK KO, Motorcity, Rick and Morty, etc.. They’re bringing that passion and expertise with them to Thundercats Roar.  You’d be surprised at how much a network relies on the artists’ unique voices to make their shows stand out. Just from TC Roar’s sick intro you should know that this show is bringing something to the table.

4. It’s opening doors for the things you love. Whether you like it or not, reboots like Teen Titan GO and Ben 10 are successful and kids love them. While you don’t have to love them too, you should appreciate them. It’s because of the success of shows like these that networks can have the resources to explore new original content. This is how progress is made. This is why cartoons aren’t just cat and mouse chases anymore. Who knows, maybe a network will even end up developing an original show so successful that in 10 years time trolls on the internet will hate its reboot.

5. If you’re an aspiring artist, this isn’t a good look for you. Go through your favorite artists’ twitters and tumblrs and see if they have ever said anything bad about any animated shows. You’ll find nothing, why? It’s because this is an industry of cooperation and support for your fellow artists.

My response to this went a little long, so I’ll put it here… Two things: One: A lot of the responses I have seen to TCR weren’t so much criticism as they were knee-jerk, frothing, sarcastic hate. Much of it in the form of personal attacks against the show-runner, who is a friend of mine. Criticism is fine. Y’all don’t HAVE to like anything. Please don’t assume that people in the animation industry don’t know the difference between criticism and hate. Two: Those aren’t “threats”, they’re reality. The animation industry is very much a community, or like it says in the post “an industry of cooperation and support for your fellow artists.” People wanna work with people who are nice, and why should anyone believe you’d be pleasant to have on a team if your first response to a new show is to say snarky things about the character designs, or reblog a ten minute rant video about how Calarts style is ruining animationblah-blah blah. Again, I can’t say it better than the post: “Your rants don’t make you sound like an animation connoisseur. It makes you sound toxic and jaded about an industry you haven’t even set foot in yet.” I have seen many young artists who want to break into the industry shoot themselves in the foot, because they think a good way to engage with industry veterans is to crap all over the work those veterans have done. It’s a bad look, and it’s usually done by people who know very little about the industry and what goes into making an animated show. 

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.

It all starts by me reblogging these lovely additions above to my post which give great insight and further perspective on the damage trigger-happy hate does to the industry.

Now onto my actual response...

lol guys I never said you’d get blacklisted. Jumping to conclusions is how we got here in the first place. We even got people sending death threats to artists they THINK work on Thundercats Roar.

All I’m saying is it reflects bad on you if you make a name for yourself of making outlandish assumptions about a shows you haven’t even seen yet. There no reason to dismiss the show completely entirely based on just a teaser of the intro theme. It comes off as closed-mindedness. It’s fair for an artistic industry to not want that.