Random: "Chunky Cute Aesthetic" In New Pixar Movie 'Turning Red' Influenced By Nintendo Games

Bewear comes to mind every time. Funny, cause Bewear is designed after red pandas.

I can see that. At first I was thrown off by the art style of the movie, but I actually really liked it (and the movie). It didn't exactly feel like a Disney/Pixar movie, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Dang, that kinda makes me feel bad, considering how many people were dunking on the art direction, lol. I saw someone comment once how the girls' color scheme was the same as Mario, Luigi, Wario, and Waluigi. I guess that may have been a deliberate decision, then, which is neat.

Still haven't gotten around to seeing this movie or Encanto as my Disney+ subscription has been expired for some time. I've heard very mixed things, and the discourse around it got so toxic, I'm worried that it is definitely going to stain my impression of the film, which is very unfortunate and not the fault of the creators.

Already saw it and loved it way more than I thought I would (speaking as someone who went into it blind). It was surprisingly grounded, given its fantastical premise. Which was great, as that's a particular niche that's not played with enough in media.

Also, the art direction grew on me so much, I just went and bought the art book the moment the credits hit.

(I also cant get "Nobody Like U" out of my head for the past month...)

Also--this is kinda not that relevant but it sort of is as it has to do with the topic of animation:

I've been in contact with Fred Seibert, executive producer and founder of Frederator Studios, the company responsible for such shows as Fairly OddParents and Adventure Time. He played huge roles in making both Nickelodeon AND Cartoon Network what they are. Anyways, I'm currently developing a pitch for an animated series for him. This is a dream come true for me as a lover of cartoons, and I'm so excited to have this opportunity! I know it has almost nothing to do with the topic, but I've just been so giddy about it and I want to tell everyone! Wish me luck, guys!!! 😃🤞🤞

Chunky cute is how I would describe myself.
😁

Chunky cute also sounds like describing someone after a big night out.

@Not_Soos Wish you the best my dude! And remember, Doshin will be with you always...

Quite sizeable bit of pop culture out there has taken inspiration from Nintendo games. Too many things to list really

@Deltarogue Thank you! Your words are both reassuring and terrifying!

There was a lot in that movie, and I really don't get why people dunk on the artstyle, just because it isn't your taste doesn't make it bad? And does every disney movie need to have some hyper realisticnness to it ooor?

@Not_Soos What do you mean has nothing to do with the topic? Thats amazing! I wish you the best, and you have got to tell us if it work out or not because fred has had some truly amazing cartoons, and if yours can be apart of the line up would be unreal! Again best of luck!

Huh, I knew that panda design looked familiar-ish. You can show me a photoshopped image of the panda in the game and I wouldn't bat an eye

All these Earthbound-inspired indie movies about mental health problems, find a new genre guys. /s

I remember Nintendo Life having an article a few months ago on the film where someone replaced the girls with Mario, Luigi, Wario and Waluigi because of the color scheme or something. Its certainly more fitting now then ever, lol.

The last Pixar film I watched was Luca which I enjoyed, I have yet to watch Turning Red but I’m planning to since I liked Domee Shi’s Bao.

Didn't realize Pokemon, EarthBound, and Zelda were all CalArts

@Snatcher Thank you!! And I certainly will, unless I have to sign some sort of NDA. I don't know when I'll be ready to present my pitch, as I have a pretty concrete premise in my head and have designed the main character as well as a pretty sick theme song, in my opinion. But I still have a lot or work to do, like drawing the rest of the main cast, putting together a show bible, and animating maybe like a 5-minute pilot or something. This is entirely a one-man team, I have literally no one helping me with this, but I think I'll be able to handle it by myself. I hope that will show Fred I'm a jack of all trades, as I even plan to do the voice acting for the pilot. And if my pitch gets rejected, a representative told me they are open to taking more pitches afterwards. I have LOTS of ideas I can fall back on and try again!

@Not_Soos Thats just soo coool! The fact that you even get the opportunity! I really do hope it goes well for you! And you get more try's if it get rejected!

If you can you should get help with it.

@Snatcher Thanks so much! Unfortunately, I really can't think of any artist friends who would be willing to volunteer their services, and I certainly don't have the money to hire any freelance workers. So, going solo is kind of a necessity. I have a decently clear road map in my head, so hopefully, it won't be too difficult to manage.

Thought it looked more like the Steven Universe art style, but in 3D.

@Not_Soos God speed!

That's weird. Pixar trying to imitate Nintendo led to a film that looks like a Chinese imitation of a Pixar film. I thought it looked soulless and inferior to almost everything Pixar has ever made. I guess they have lost most of their talent if they resort to badly copying what other do.

I never grew out of most of the things I was supposed to, but I fell off american cartoons hard somewhere around 2010. Still like the old ones, and I watch way too much mediocre anime to judge anyone else's tastes, but I think the only Disney movie I've liked in the last decade was Coco, and I find anything that looks like this downright repulsive. Not sure how I'm supposed to feel hearing it's partly inspired by my favorite game company.

On top of being easily one of Pixar's best, Turning Red may well be their most animesque movie to date - and I'm not talking artstyle and animation nods alone. :3 Sounds par for the course that it would consciously channel Nintendo vibes as well. AWOOGA!

@Not_Soos best of luck! \(^o^)//

Influenced by the greats, yet cringe as all hell.

@PikaPhantom This is more shouting into the ether, but I swear the term "CalArts" has been one of the most poisonous and derivative words in the animation discourse in the last 10 years.

Both in the fact that it's rarely ever said in a positive context, (its original intention was to lambaste a Disney-like style at the time; coined by the creator of Red & Stimpy), but also because it's far too convenient of a term that often undermines a piece of media's entire art direction (and animation efforts) because of, usually, the use of a mouth shape. /rant

@DTFaux I try not to call things by that because it does seem like a bit of a generalization, but I have to say most of the stuff that I see getting that label is absolutely ugly as sin. I just want more stuff that looks like Treasure Planet or the 90s-2000s superhero cartoons. Or any of the of the movies Disney keeps making terrible live-action versions of. Or Wall-E. That's where 3D animation peaked for me.

@Anachronism plenty of people/companies etc take inspiration from good things and put out garbage. don't feel any obligation to it just because some of the people behind it like similar things as you.
@Rhaoulos It's a very strange thing. This movie is using a foreign and novel culture (to majority of americans and europeans) to push some weird ideological agenda that said culture would never be accepting of. Maybe next they'll make a middle eastern girl power movie lol. It looks soulless because Disney is soulless. They're nothing more than rich radical company trying to sway culture down the slope and off a cliff.

@PikaPhantom this.

@Matty1988 I thought that, too! It looks like the Calarts style (which Steven Universe is), but done in 3D.

@Anachronism I would love for the extremely fluid 2D animation of the '90s and 2000s to come back.
I really wished that Walt Disney Animation Studios was just experimenting with 3D CGI with Chicken Little before making a comeback with The Princess and the Frog. With Tangled being yet another experiment to translate their classic 2D style to 3D.
Unfortunately, The Princess and the Frog failed at the box office (partly because it came out around the same time as James Cameron's Avatar) while Tangled became a massive hit.

Frozen was going to be a 2D film but it was made 3D instead after the failure of Winnie the Pooh 2011 (which they released alongside Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two, so it was doomed at the box office). Which is even more sad since Frozen could have been the biggest animated movie of all time that single-handedly brought 2D back into mainstream theatrical Western animation.

Right now, Russia of all countries is doing their best part in preserving the classic 2D style of Disney with films like Prince Vladimir, but even then, they are pushing for 3D more than 2D.
The film is really great and it's about the man who spread the religion of Orthodox Christianity to the Slavs of Kyivan Rus' (the nation that would eventually become Russia, Ukraine and Belarus) and united them.
My hope for fluid Disneyesque 2D animation is no longer in the West, but with the Slavic countries of Eastern Europe. Too bad most of the Russian animation that gets exported to the West are the super-cheap and poorly-dubbed CGI films like that Pinocchio film with Pauly Shore.
Anime is too different a style from Disney and their animation is usually more choppy (with exceptions like Studio Ghibli's films, Makoto Shinkai's films, Mamoru Hosoda's films and AKIRA) but I like anime too.

@nhSnork Thank you!!

@Not_Soos That's great! I'd love to hear updates on it, is there some sort of online prescence that I could follow?

And as far as Turning Red, it's definitely different from other Pixar movies but in my eyes, if there was one thing that had the top-notch sign of Pixar skill, it was the art/animation. So I think going in it'd help to know that a lot of the discourse around this is, to me, mostly because it's different.

@Hydra_Spectre despite Disney at least successfully bringing their Renaissance spirit to CG last decade, I'll always be biased towards 2D myself (at least they slowly rediscover the tradigital wonders of the millennium watershed with shorts like Paperman and Far From the Tree, and even Pixar has dabbed into the field with stuff like Burrow). But while I have fond impressions and memories of Russian works like Prince Vladimir, Ilya Muromets (still my fave in the "bogatyrs" franchise) and the recent Ginger's Tale, I'm not one to discount the west either. True, Hollywood remains mostly comatose in this department, but MLPFiM (itself a worthy spiritual successor to a lot of what made Disney Disney from the late 80s to the mid-2000s) made way for a bunch of quality 2D movies, there are other recent examples like Klaus, and on the other side of the pond we have studios like Cartoon Saloon with masterpieces like Wolfwalkers. I keep my fingers crossed for the eventual proper resurgence of Hollywood 2D feature animation, but it's not QUITE as gloomy and barren as it seemed back during the tragic Big Kneejerk of the aforementioned mid-2000s. And CG has long won me over as well - these animation technology domains need to coexist and cooperate anyway, they can never "succeed" one another.

@ERIC_MACK Thank you! I'm very active on Twitter, but it's mostly just posting about video games, politics, or geeking out about other people's animations, lol. You're welcome to follow me, you can find a link if you click on my profile, but I haven't shared anything publicly about the specifics of my pitch. I'm trying to keep the actual concept on the down low, since it's not like I have a patent or anything and I don't want anybody to steal my ideas--which is apparently a bad problem in the entertainment industry. If Fred turns it down, I'll probably just dump it on YouTube or something. I would love to share updates about the progress I'm making in the meanwhile, but I just feel like it would be too risky. Whatever happens though, you can rest assured I'll be posting about it on Nintendo Life--whether in a forum, or in another article that has something to do with animation! 😃

I still need to watch Turning Red, but as that requires a subscription...eh. We'll see. Maybe it'll get a physical release, and I can rent it.

@Not_Soos Good luck on your pitch! Frederator has some great shows, though I confess I never really watched Adventure Time; I didn't have regular access to Cartoon Network at the time and very rarely watch TV/stream shows nowadays.

I would have probably watched a pirated version of this in order to not give Disney my money, but honestly the film doesn't look interesting to me.
Same goes for Encanto.
Moana on the other hand was peak 👌🏾

@Not_Soos Turning red is created for (pre)teens. It deals with their biggest nightmare, like moms giving you one of "the talks." It was sweet, a little weird, perfect for who it's made for....and that's not most of the people who have an opinion about this! (far from actually.)

Encanto is magic realism dealing with family. It uses a culture that isn't white, and has a really catchy song. It's not really funny, but pretty and cool and sweet.

I'm guessing people will be screaming SJW-***** is ruinibg movies etc. And the other half is going against that.

I'd say both are definitely not made for me, but they were very feelgood and well made.

I can't see how any of these games influenced it lol. Ok another note this was in my opinion the worst recent Disney movie, it was cute and all at first, buy once the entire plot became make money for boy band, I lost all interest.

@garfreek You're definitely in the right ballpark. I'm guessing the discourse looked a little different depending on what social platforms you're on. I don't doubt there were probably lots of people in other threads calling it an SJW movie, but on a site as Liberal as Twitter, I felt it was pretty much the opposite. There was a lot of toxic positivity imo, and valid criticisms of the film were automatically labeled as bigoted, which I think is not only an unfair conclusion, but also very harmful to a person's reputation. I'm in the camp of "Let people enjoy things, but also let them not enjoy things, too," you know?

Easily the best Pixar movie in years. Don’t listen to the noise

As a Chinese Canadian who frequently visits Toronto, I'm happy to hear where they got the inspiration from.

I liked the movie, appreciated the fact it didn’t like the same as all the other Disney/Pixar characters/faces, the girls all had their own distinct shapes and styles. Plus burned CD’s were awesome to see xD

@nhSnork My family is from eastern Ukraine, though I was born and raised in America. Parents made sure I learned how to speak Russian fluently, and a part of that was to show me Russian cartoons and movies. Seeing someone mention the "bogatyrs" brings me back, I have so many fond memories of those films. Them and the Soviet version of Winnie the Pooh live rent-free in my head. I've only watched the first four bogatyr movies and Wikipedia tells me there have been many more released. If you've seen them, are the rest worth watching?

On topic, I'll add that I haven't been watching many modern Pixar and Disney movies. I don't really watch movies and shows and if I ever get to it, Disney/Pixar usually aren't my first pick. Still, very neat to hear about the inspiration for this movie! Others in the comments have mentioned that the main protags are like Mario, Luigi, Wario, and Waluigi, which is a fun reference.

@Not_Soos Best of luck. I'm rooting for you. Please don't blow it!

@Not_Soos Just out of curiosity, did you just send someone an email at his studio asking if you could send them a cartoon pitch or something? Im just wondering how you got the chance to present then with something!

Now tha they mention this, of course this game has that Mother 2 feeling!

@Dingelhopper So, I've been following Fred on Twitter for over a year now and have been trying to network with him by commenting on his posts. I tried to just keep it formal and address him as Mr. Seibert while expressing my interest in the medium, and eventually, he actually followed me back, to my surprise! I've put in the work to make him aware of my existence, and have even conversed with him a little.

As far as making a pitch though, everyone has the opportunity to submit one. Fred actually stepped down from Frederator Studios recently and formed a new company called Fred Films, where he is looking for pitches from new, independent artists like he did in the 90's with stuff like "Oh Yeah! Cartoons." You've put me in a moral dilemma here, as making people aware of the website is gonna mean more submissions from other talented artists I'll have to compete against, but my conscience won't allow me to keep it a secret. So, I begrudgingly give you the link to the website, which is simply fredfilms.com, if you or anyone else is interested in making a submission. You're right, there is an e-mail on the Contacts page for inquiries about pitches.

@Kevember Thanks! I shall try my best not to blow it!

@Not_Soos oh man that sounds awesome!
Though I doubt that I could ever make a cartoon or game mainly because I stink at drawing and i don’t know how coding works. 😅

@Not_Soos Wow that's pretty awesome! Thanks for giving me the info, even if you didn't want to 🤣 and I wouldn't worry too much about giving it publicity on here. Only a few of us here will be seeing what you said.

Good luck with your submission and pitch! I hope it all works out for you. If it does, you've got to let us know!

@Dingelhopper Oh, absolutely! I'll be sure to let you guys know! And don't mention it! ...Seriously, don't. 🤣

Very good, my son loves Nintendo and he really enjoyed Turning Red.

@Not_Soos I didn't know that, thanks for the link.

I saw Turning Red a couple days ago and really enjoyed it. Didn't make the Nintendo connection at first, but now I can see the influence. The chunky style is very cute, lol. Also got gotta mention how aggressively mental Abby is, haha. 🤣 🤣

@Not_Soos Seeing Red is fantastic, for me it’s one of Pixar’s best (though Coco is still my top). This and Luca feel like a real return to form for Pixar to me. Encanto is also marvellous, I highly recommend ignoring all the internet, both sides, and just giving them both a go. If nothing else they’re both visually spectacular!

And good luck with your pitch! You clearly have good taste in animated shows with your avatar and username so I’m already interested!

@UsurperKing I'm way behind on the franchise myself, although I hope to catch up in due time, and what I've glimpsed of the later movies suggests some promising adventures, too. You may also check out Soviet classics besides Winnie the Pooh if you have yet to - there's a treasure trove of varied goodies like Robert Saakyantz's shorts, Kyivnauchfilm studio's wild ride adaptations of Treasure Island and Doctor Aibolit, the Prostokvashino series, Alisa's Adventures, The Magic Ring, solemn tragic stuff like The Gray Bear, surreal folk adaptations like Wingless Gosling or Parable of a Mouse... and so on, and so forth.

And yeah, I remember the Mario characters allusion report from earlier - now it hits even closer to home. It's pretty awesome that Nintendo's legacy manages to inspire even other media.

@Not_Soos exactly!

@Ogbert coco is still a top for me as well, there is just so much that movie gets right in my opinion.

@Not_Soos Don't let the discourse get to you, it's a great movie. Very different from Pixar's other work, and it's not trying to recapture what can't be, like a lot of the past decade of Pixar films. It's a movie for a very particular demographic so it's totally okay if it's not your thing.

Also, good luck with your pitch! Breaking into that industry, least from my experience trying to do now, is ***** hard, so I hope your experience is a positive one whether or not anything comes of it.

@nhSnork I've seen some of the things you listed, such as Treasure Island (what an absolute trip, I blame this for my interest in rum even if it was deadly there!) Dr. Aibolit, and Prostokvachino (it very much influenced how I eat my open sandwiches!), but the rest don't sound familiar to me. I'll have to look them up, thanks for the suggestions!

I don't know the proper English names for these animations, but I also remember watching Adventures of Captain Vrungle as well as the Adventures of Baron Munchausen as a kid. This whole conversation has been a pleasant trip down memory lane.

@UsurperKing for both of us, indeed.😄

@Not_Soos thats awesome! I hope all goes well

@nowthisisepic @LordPieFace Thanks so much to the both of you!

I'm really touched by the outpour of support on here. I'll try my best to do you all proud and make a cartoon that's worth your time. Been in a funk the past couple days, but your kind words are the motivation to keep truckin'! 😀

Wowie, so much distaste in the comments. I thought the art direction/style was great, and the story was fine enough. I'm sure if I was a 13 year old it would have hit closer to home. Still relatable even though I'm older now. Some of you may not have been around in the early 2000's but yeah boy bands were very popular. (Never understood them though, I was an odd child)

For everyone saying "its cringe", jeez, kids are cringe. Kids do stuff all the time that they later look back on as weird/cringe. Let people be cringe and do what make them happy. That's part of growing up. (One of the themes of the movie 🙄)

Plus you can take inspiration from something but not directly reference it. They also took inspiration from Sailor Moon, Ranma ½, Fruits Basket, and Inuyasha. Some you can see more than others (Sailor Moon, Inuyasha) vs Fruits Basket. Though you can probably make an argument for all of them in some way.

I watched this the other night and really enjoyed it. While i was watching the end bit, it reminded me a great deal of the end bit in Super Mario 3D World...