New Toucan Sam

[sc49erfan15]

19 hours ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

I browse the retrogaming forum on Reddit quite a bit. The only thing there are more of than photos of a 4-year-old playing World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros. (and it's almost always World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros.) are a bunch of comments from fellow nerds saying "You're a great dad! Start 'em early!"

 

The problem with Millenials and Zoomers being locked out of things like home ownership and professional success (not all but a lot!) is that we get to hold on to, and worse, gatekeep the stuff we liked as children.

 

God, I hate gatekeeping.

 

See also: Kid listening to *insert artist here*, "you're introducing them to the GOOD music!!1!"

 

How are personal tastes in art/music/entertainment objective, but science is somehow subjective?

 

19 hours ago, the admiral said:

That's true, breakfast cereal mascots all get redrawn over the years, but come on, what's going on with that mouth?

 

I don't particularly like New Toucan Sam either. The mouth makes the perspective look weird. My point is Toucan Sam isn't intended to sell cereal to 32-year-old me. I don't even eat cereal.

 

(This is a spacer to show that the following is not directed at the admiral)

 

There's nothing wrong with anyone, of any age, eating Froot Loops - but Toucan Sam is meant for kids 10 (or whatever) and under. If New Toucan Sam bothers adult consumers of Froot Loops that much, DON'T LOOK AT THE GODDAMN BOX. Keep an old box with Old Toucan Sam on it and switch the bags out. Or pour the cereal in a plastic container. Or something more pragmatic than being an adult whining about the redesign of a cereal cartoon character.

[The_Admiral]

3 hours ago, sc49erfan15 said:

How are personal tastes in art/music/entertainment objective, but science is somehow subjective?

 

Spoken like someone who hasn't listened to Talk Talk's Laughing Stock, if you ask me.

[MDGP]

6 hours ago, sc49erfan15 said:

God, I hate gatekeeping.

 

Says the person on a message board actively gatekeeping who gets to have an opinion.

[The_Admiral]

Damn, we really do live in a society!

[sc49erfan15]

44 minutes ago, MDGP said:

 

Says the person on a message board actively gatekeeping who gets to have an opinion.

 

Somebody missed the point.

 

There's a huge difference between "having an opinion" and "I CAN'T EAT THIS ANYMORE CANCEL EVERYTHING I DON'T LIKE"

 

Nice try, come again.

[MDGP]

31 minutes ago, sc49erfan15 said:

 

Somebody missed the point.

 

There's a huge difference between "having an opinion" and "I CAN'T EAT THIS ANYMORE CANCEL EVERYTHING I DON'T LIKE"

 

Nice try, come again.

 

Literally one person in this thread said it would affect their eating experience. And that was the post after you jumped in to tell everyone that their opinions were actually just nostalgia and they weren't allowed to say the design sucks because they're not 10 years old.

[sc49erfan15]

49 minutes ago, MDGP said:

 

Literally one person in this thread said it would affect their eating experience. And that was the post after you jumped in to tell everyone that their opinions were actually just nostalgia and they weren't allowed to say the design sucks because they're not 10 years old.

 

Again, that's not what I said. I've said myself, multiple times, that I don't particularly like the new design.

 

I'm criticizing the "everything has to stay the exact same as it was during my childhood" attitude more than the design, because that attitude is an infinitely bigger problem than the design itself.

 

12 hours ago, Jake3.roo said:

 

 

To get this more back on topic, I think this redesign is a significant improvement. It won't satisfy those that are apparently disgusted by the "CalArts style" and want animation to stay the same as it was in the '90s, but it looks much more like... well... a newer version of Toucan Sam. He's got wings (which is pretty important for birds), the beak gradient is much more subdued, and the whole weird mouth perspective is fixed.

 

If you showed me the one on the left and asked me who it was, I'd answer "Toucan Sam?" If you asked me about the one on the right, I'd say "that's Toucan Sam." 

[MDGP]

1 hour ago, sc49erfan15 said:

 

Again, that's not what I said.

 

 It won't satisfy those that are apparently disgusted by the "CalArts style" and want animation to stay the same as it was in the '90s . . .

Literally nobody said anything about 90s design when they criticized the Toucan or CalArts style. You brought that into the conversation yourself. 
 

You've actively decided that other people’s opinions, even though they’re the  same as yours, are bad because you’ve decided it’s because they can’t handle that things aren’t the 90s, when there are countless valid reasons to dislike CalArts style. (Of course, in context with who posted prior to your original post, I think this is more a bit more personal and has to do with the deeper ideological war that currently plagues the site, but that’s probably a conversation for a different time and thread).

 

I’m just saying that you’re criticizing others for supposed generational biases by using a generational bias of your own (against your own generation). And it’s ironic.

[sc49erfan15]

8 hours ago, MDGP said:

Literally nobody said anything about 90s design when they criticized the Toucan or CalArts style. You brought that into the conversation yourself. 
 

You've actively decided that other people’s opinions, even though they’re the  same as yours, are bad because you’ve decided it’s because they can’t handle that things aren’t the 90s, when there are countless valid reasons to dislike CalArts style. (Of course, in context with who posted prior to your original post, I think this is more a bit more personal and has to do with the deeper ideological war that currently plagues the site, but that’s probably a conversation for a different time and thread).

 

I’m just saying that you’re criticizing others for supposed generational biases by using a generational bias of your own (against your own generation). And it’s ironic.

 

I used the 90s as an example. I could've just as easily gone with any other decade, but perhaps saying "in 10/20/whatever years" would've worked better.

 

Once again, you're putting words into my mouth (while moving the goalposts, at that - nice!). I never said there weren't valid reasons to dislike CalArts style.

 

For a third time, my point was not that people aren't allowed to dislike the design (the supposed "gatekeeping"). My point was that cartoon breakfast cereal mascots aren't designed to appeal to anyone posting in this thread, they're designed to sell cereal to children. If successful, cartoon breakfast cereal mascots will use design styles that are currently popular with children. Children in 2020 are allowed to (and are likely to) have different opinions than adults about something like cartoon breakfast cereal mascots. That's not a "supposed generational bias" against any of the generations, even my own, that are posting in this thread.

[MDGP]

28 minutes ago, sc49erfan15 said:

Long post.

All I know is that when someone responds to an opinion with “well it’s not designed for YOU” it’s meant to undermine that opinion. That’s my issue. I don’t necessarily think the specific points are wrong, but it really came across as just another “you’re all a bunch of old dumb farts who hate anything new” (Not a direct quote) post that gets aimed at certain members in seemingly every thread now (not you posting these specifically). Statements like that, which yours really did look like to me based on the context, are just as reductive and gatekeepy as the “anything new sucks” crowd that you were arguing against. Now, you say that wasn’t your intention, and I’m inclined to believe that based on your subsequent posts.
 

Anyways, I never posted about the actual design so I’m gonna do that now.

 

The new design sucks. The other CalArts style versions are better, but they run into the same problem that most CalArts cartoons run into these days, it looks cheap. A big part of the rise of this style was the rise of flash animation. That rose because it was quicker, easier, and most importantly less expensive than traditional hand drawn animation. Doing things more efficiently isn’t necessarily a bad thing. When the time and effort is put in, flash animation and CalArts style can be great. Over the Garden Wall is one of the absolute best examples of how with the effort and passion put in, you can take characters that almost certainly fall under CalArts, and create beautiful, unique art that stands on its own (in this case old-school painted backgrounds and plenty of Miyazaki inspiration). The problem is two-fold 1) a lot of CalArts shows don’t put that same effort into the art (Not all of them obviously) and look like they’re reusing assets (as demonstrated in the gif before), 2) that flat style is directly related to the ease and quickness of animation. Something on a flat surface is easier to animate than intricate characters that look like they move in a 3D space. If you’re using flash to save time compared hand drawing, then having to draw every frame in flash makes little sense, so we get the flat designs. Ultimately, the re-use and cheap design becomes extremely apparent in the animation, and the current style reminds me way to much of the terrible GI Joe style 80s animation as well as the sub-par Disney Silver Era animation, both notorious for their slow budgets necessitating the re-use of footage, and poor artwork. And here’s where I circle back around to the actual logo. This toucan looks like it was designed to specifically mimic the kids shows whose art and animation was designed to mimic other kids shows whose art and animation was designed to, in part, be cheaper and easier to animate. Then add the awkward perspective of t character and weird use of gradient, and it looks like a design that didn’t have a lot of time or thought put into it, (even though that was probably years in the making).

[DG_ThenNowForever]

I think you're overthinking it.

 

The message wasn't "critique of this design is invalid." It was "critique of this design based largely/soley on nostalgia is invalid." Those are two different thoughts. You can critique the aesthetics of something, no problem. But if the basis of your argument is "this isn't what I remember from my childhood" then you're doing a form of gatekeeping.

[The_Admiral]

We'll know it has gone too far when Count Chocula is redesigned as a bearded MFA Bro who demands that women read David Foster Wallace and listen to his problems: he's an emotional vampire, you see

[Ridleylash]

9 minutes ago, the admiral said:

We'll know it has gone too far when Count Chocula is redesigned as a bearded MFA Bro who demands that women read David Foster Wallace and listen to his problems: he's an emotional vampire, you see

Nono, we'd need to wait for Sugar Bear's Sugar Crisps to actually have been a codeword for meth and he's actually a coked-up psychopath to know when we've gone too far.  

[MDGP]

24 minutes ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

I think you're overthinking it.

 

The message wasn't "critique of this design is invalid." It was "critique of this design based largely/soley on nostalgia is invalid." Those are two different thoughts. You can critique the aesthetics of something, no problem. But if the basis of your argument is "this isn't what I remember from my childhood" then you're doing a form of gatekeeping.

 

I'm aware of what he says his argument is. The thing is, saying that liking something because of nostalgia is invalid as much gatekeeping as saying something is bad because it doesn't match a person's nostalgia. In both cases you're trying to invalidate the tastes and design senses of a large group of people.

[The_Admiral]

Just fix the mouth and it would be fine enough. It has to at least look like a vaguely functioning mouth. You couldn't slap a toothy jellybean over Daffy Duck's face, it would make no sense.

[MDGP]

8 minutes ago, the admiral said:

Just fix the mouth and it would be fine enough. It has to at least look like a vaguely functioning mouth. You couldn't slap a toothy jellybean over Daffy Duck's face, it would make no sense.

 

The more I've looked at it, the less it looks like a beak and the more it looks like some horrifying psychedelic growth coming out of the left side of his head. Side note, bird teeth are always dumb.

[IceCap]

am I allowed to comment that I think the new cartoon cereal bird looks dumb without it starting an ideological pissing match? Have we got to that point yet?

 

Look, I know this design's not for me. I get it. I don't even eat Fruit Loops anymore. Still? I think it looks dumb. And seeing as this is a public thread on the internet? I (and everyone else) should be allowed to say it looks dumb if I want without it setting off a storm back and forth over "generational bias" and "gatekeeping."

 

Who the hell even gatekeeps cereal?

 

[MDGP]

20 minutes ago, IceCap said:

Who the hell even gatekeeps cereal?

 

 Weirdly enough, the characters in cereal commercials. There are a LOT of cereal commercials that are about trying to prevent others from eating the cereal.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

19 minutes ago, IceCap said:

am I allowed to comment that I think the new cartoon cereal bird looks dumb without it starting an ideological pissing match? Have we got to that point yet?

 

Look, I know this design's not for me. I get it. I don't even eat Fruit Loops anymore. Still? I think it looks dumb. And seeing as this is a public thread on the internet? I (and everyone else) should be allowed to say it looks dumb if I want without it setting off a storm back and forth over "generational bias" and "gatekeeping."

 

Who the hell even gatekeeps cereal?

 

 

Yes, everything is exhausting now. I agree.

 

Buuuut...I think telling people their particular line of discussion is annoying and dumb is, you guessed it, gatekeeping conversation. 

 

I'm kidding, but also gently suggesting it's okay to ignore things you don't like.

[sc49erfan15]

Man, we're going in circles here.

 

And people will gatekeep anything. Including gatekeeping, apparently.