Cartoons with the most creative/amazing art styles?

[thefarmboy]

I am an aspiring artist and I find that cartoons really help inspire me and get my creativity flowing.

I'd love to hear what you all think are some really beautifully done cartoons. Shows with art styles (or just standout visual qualities) that really shine through. The animation work itself or the backdrops.

I really like Chowder, for instance, the bright color work and unique setting.

[Tails]

Wander Over Yonder was done beautifully in every aspect. The characters, the backgroumds, the animation, they were all very unique to the show.

[thefarmboy]

29 minutes ago, Tails said:

Wander Over Yonder was done beautifully in every aspect. The characters, the backgroumds, the animation, they were all very unique to the show.

 

Looks great! I'll have to add it to my watch list, thanks for your recommendation. I love the backgrounds and character design and from what I saw on YT the voice acting is really great too!

[Tails]

4 minutes ago, thefarmboy said:

 

Looks great! I'll have to add it to my watch list, thanks for your recommendation. I love the backgrounds and character design and from what I saw on YT the voice acting is really great too!

Yup indeed it is. Season 2 will make you enjoy the show even more. Have fun watching.

[Dab is a Cunt]

Looney Tunes OFC

 

Also Ren & Stimpy (really anything Spumco, Weekend Pussy Hunt was greeeaaaaat), Cow and Chicken/I Am Weasel, Pig Goat Banana Cricket (really rubbery, very old school but like new school old school like ren & stimpy-ish know what I mean?), Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, Spongebob ofc, Ed Edd n Eddy, all the Bakshi animated movies (Fritz the Cat, Coonskin, Heavy Traffic, I think he did one for Lord of the Rings too haven't seen it tho). 2 pilots from the What a Cartoon shorts (the shorts program that produced the firt ctn shows like Courage and Dexter and PPG and J Bravo and all that stuff): Buy One, Get One Free and Tales of Worm Paranoia. Old Disney stuff, like 30s-60s weather movies or shorts. Tom & Jerry. The new Mickey Mouse reboot shorts. Old MGM cartoons, like Tex Avery's stuff. The Grinch cartoon. Roger Rabbit. Oh and Private SNAFU, which is a series of WWII cartoons made by the Looney Tunes guys, my favorite cartoons actually along with the Looney Tunes from that exact time period.

 

Also these:

 

Anything on Nick Cross's Vimeo really

 

 

For 3d cgi I'd say old Pixar mainly Toy Story and Sausage Fest. I'm usually not impressed with 3d cgi. I think Dreamworks sucks but some of the character designs for the Captain Underpants movie where great specifically George and Harold.

 

For backgrounds/ink and paint I'd say Foster's Home and Samurai Jack on top of the cartoons I already mentioned. PPG too great fucking color. Hell a lot of the old ctn shit had great color. Time Squad actually has really amazing color.

 

As you can see I like wacky and rubbery stuff

 

Do you like comics? Those are even better in terms of cartoon art, like the really good ones. Original MAD magazine/anything by its contributors: Kurtzman, Wally Wood, Robert Crumb those guys; Milt Gross; Carl Barks; Bruce Timm/Paul Dini/Shane Glines/Darwyn Cooke alot of the DCAU alumni; Kyle Baker; Dave Cooper (whos a co-creator of Pig Goat), Troy Little, You know I'm gonna say the Spumco comicsgoooooood stuff man

Edited October 12, 2017 by DabDeity710

[thefarmboy]

14 hours ago, DabDeity710 said:

Looney Tunes OFC

 

Also Ren & Stimpy (really anything Spumco, Weekend Pussy Hunt was greeeaaaaat), Cow and Chicken/I Am Weasel, Pig Goat Banana Cricket (really rubbery, very old school but like new school old school like ren & stimpy-ish know what I mean?), Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, Spongebob ofc, Ed Edd n Eddy, all the Bakshi animated movies (Fritz the Cat, Coonskin, Heavy Traffic, I think he did one for Lord of the Rings too haven't seen it tho). 2 pilots from the What a Cartoon shorts (the shorts program that produced the firt ctn shows like Courage and Dexter and PPG and J Bravo and all that stuff): Buy One, Get One Free and Tales of Worm Paranoia. Old Disney stuff, like 30s-60s weather movies or shorts. Tom & Jerry. The new Mickey Mouse reboot shorts. Old MGM cartoons, like Tex Avery's stuff. The Grinch cartoon. Roger Rabbit. Oh and Private SNAFU, which is a series of WWII cartoons made by the Looney Tunes guys, my favorite cartoons actually along with the Looney Tunes from that exact time period.

 

For 3d cgi I'd say old Pixar mainly Toy Story and Sausage Fest. I'm usually not impressed with 3d cgi. I think Dreamworks sucks but some of the character designs for the Captain Underpants movie where great specifically George and Harold.

 

For backgrounds/ink and paint I'd say Foster's Home and Samurai Jack on top of the cartoons I already mentioned. PPG too great fucking color. Hell a lot of the old ctn shit had great color. Time Squad actually has really amazing color.

 

As you can see I like wacky and rubbery stuff

 

Do you like comics? Those are even better in terms of cartoon art, like the really good ones. Original MAD magazine/anything by its contributors: Kurtzman, Wally Wood, Robert Crumb those guys; Milt Gross; Carl Barks; Bruce Timm/Paul Dini/Shane Glines/Darwyn Cooke alot of the DCAU alumni; Kyle Baker; Dave Cooper (whos a co-creator of Pig Goat), Troy Little, You know I'm gonna say the Spumco comicsgoooooood stuff man

 

Thanks for all the recommendations! I do already love some of what you listed so I will check out the others!

 

Yeah 3D animation usually doesn't grab me as much when it comes to artistry.

 

I'm not that big into comics. Haven't read any for a while, maybe I should get back into them...

[Dab is a Cunt]

3 hours ago, thefarmboy said:

 

Thanks for all the recommendations! I do already love some of what you listed so I will check out the others!

 

Yeah 3D animation usually doesn't grab me as much when it comes to artistry.

 

I'm not that big into comics. Haven't read any for a while, maybe I should get back into them...

Always happy to push this style of cartooning on aspiring artists

[sfaxt]

hedgehog in the fog. insane consindering its 40 years old. beatrice-raws encoded it a while back.

Edited October 13, 2017 by sfaxt

[thefarmboy]

14 minutes ago, sfaxt said:

hedgehog in the fog. insane consindering its 40 years old. beatrice-raws encoded it a while back.

 

Wow, that is a pretty unique art style. Almost stop motion-ish. It added a lot to the atmosphere of the piece, thanks for recommending this!

[Dab is a Cunt]

Do you like anime? The color in anime is almost always amazing. For animation I'd say my favorites are Akira, Space Dandy, Redline, and Mob Psycho 100. Really crazy stuff. Also forgot to mention The Haunted World of El Superbeasto. A lot like the Ren & Stimpy stuff, makes sense they used a lot of the spumco artists

Edited October 13, 2017 by DabDeity710

[thefarmboy]

1 minute ago, DabDeity710 said:

Do you like anime? The color in anime is almost always amazing. For animation I'd say my favorites are Akira, Space Dandy, Redline, and Mob Psycho 100. Really crazy stuff. Also forgot to mention The Haunted World of El Superbeasto. A lot like the Ren & Stimpy stuff, makes sense they used a lot of the spumco artists

 

I've only seen a few anime and I enjoyed them but there is so much I find it a little daunting to really wade into. Akira's animation was superb. I'll check out the others if they're on par for sure.

[Dab is a Cunt]

1 minute ago, thefarmboy said:

 

I've only seen a few anime and I enjoyed them but there is so much I find it a little daunting to really wade into. Akira's animation was superb. I'll check out the others if they're on par for sure.

Oh shit I forgot The Boy and the Beast, excellent stuff, I was so fixated on wacky stuff I forgot it (not that Akira's wacky but Akira's Akira ya kno?)

[thefarmboy]

22 minutes ago, DabDeity710 said:

Oh shit I forgot The Boy and the Beast, excellent stuff, I was so fixated on wacky stuff I forgot it (not that Akira's wacky but Akira's Akira ya kno?)

 

Just watched the trailer. Great animation and art style, plus it looks like a story I could get into, definitely adding it to my watch list. Thanks for all the great recommendations!

[olympustenay]

I really loved the animated disney movies from the past. Most of them were quite beautiful

[thefarmboy]

12 hours ago, olympustenay said:

I really loved the animated disney movies from the past. Most of them were quite beautiful

 

There were definitely some gems in there but their styles are all very similar.

[Slandash]

I've always liked the style of Medabots, especially the ninja episode.

[zeonizer]

Unico in the Island of Magic...if you haven't already seen it! The first one too, but the animation on this is pretty great. Okay, fine. It's anime...

 

 

Edited October 26, 2017 by zeonizer

[thefarmboy]

On 10/26/2017 at 7:16 AM, zeonizer said:

Unico in the Island of Magic...if you haven't already seen it! The first one too, but the animation on this is pretty great. Okay, fine. It's anime...

 

 

 

Anime counts, haha. This looks great, thanks for the recommendation.

[Dab is a Cunt]

On 10/13/2017 at 3:39 PM, thefarmboy said:

 

There were definitely some gems in there but their styles are all very similar.

Yea, Disney's style was a lot more "formulaic" in terms of animation compared to other cartoons of the time (I'll say 30s-50s that's what I consider the golden age). Looney Tunes loved going "off-model" I think it's a disgrace that so many of these so called "artists" in the industry consider that an animation error god forbid you have a unique frame that doesn't just copy and paste the same pose over 20 different frames. Ren & Stimpy too, hell John K encouraged his cartoonists to do so even the subcontracted animators overseas cuz he'd actually go to said overseas studios with a translator and overlook everything instead of going "here's the key animation finish it with absolutely zero communication from us who formed the basis of what your working on" like every single other tv cartoon ever made does. At least Disney didn't copy and paste different heads onto the same 4-5 bodies for every single character in the 40s like all of the post 60s-70s stuff Disney didAt least they had proper composition/color contrast/line of action instead of 5 poses totally unrelated to each other that look like they were all drawn separately being pasted onto the same frame looking sort of like a mess (like Samurai Jack they're very bad with that) and the brightest possible colors with silly contrast (like the 90s Disney movies, Aladdin's color makes me barf) and every pose being as stiff as a board (like Rick & Morty/Family Guy/Archer that kind of stuff)

[morchichu]

Honestly, even though it's made with Flash, I think Tangled the Series has an amazing art style. I think the creators made the right choice to animate the show in flash rather than in the 3D that is used in the movie. If they had used the 3D, I feel as though it would have been disappointing as far as quality goes.