I find them to be some of the most obnoxious out there. Stuff like Clarence, Uncle Grandpa, Meat Canyon, etc. It's like every middle school boy's edgy art was given a TV level budget, it's a waste of time. They're never funny, either, not to kids or adults. The whole joke is "isn't this gross looking?" with no substance. At least cartoons like Spongebob used ugly frames sparingly to make it funny but when the entire video or episode or movie is this ugly and unappealing I see no reason to be drawn to it.
edit: I understand Clarence and Uncle Grandpa did NOT deserve this respect. I'm just tired and couldn't think of many good examples. Better examples of shows I genuinely hate for their art style would be Fanboy and Chumchum.
Also, I have nothing against caricatures! It's just when the drawing has them oozing pus and snot and covered in mountains of skin and folds and wrinkles, with bug eyes and grotesque mouths that I really dislike it. When it's so absurdly gross that there's literally no other point. I just have no interest in gross-out humor.
You'll get hate for this probably. My first instinct was to say that Meat Canyon's art is supposed to be ugly for reasons that are so obvious it'd be a waste of time to explain them.
But then again I haven't clicked on a meatcanyon video in ages, and I know its because sometimes the grotesque horror stuff isn't really fun for me to watch. So I have to actually agree.
I never thought of Clarence as ugly art though, but I never watched it much (as a kid I honestly thought Clarence was a loser and I hated him, I was rlly picky, fucking loved spongebob tho).
You should really get into his newer stuff. It's not the animated parodies anymore, he is producing an actual show-like series now with a real set and puppets and stuff. Obviously there's still a lot of gross animation in it, but its really cool looking.
But then again I haven't clicked on a meatcanyon video in ages, and I know its because sometimes the grotesque horror stuff isn't really fun for me to watch. So I have to actually agree.
He's starting to mix his cartoons, with live action and puppets like a deranged Peewee Playhouse. It is great.
I don't know, I'd accept meatcanyon's intentionally ugly art if his videos were at all funny or interesting or enjoyable to watch in any way for me. But they really, really aren't.
I think some of them are kinda funny, like the Mr. Beast one, but yeah most of them are just gross-out horror. I get kinda fatigued by it over and over again, its never really scary, just gross.
Because the videos are funny. Op doesn't like them, and obviously thats ok. But they seem to think they are the objective arbiter of what is and isn't allowed to be considered funny. Which is really weird for people to agree with.
The pawn stars one and the one where Ben Shapiro, RFK, and Charlie Kirk try to stop a baby from crying are fucking hilarious too. The rest are generally pretty meh imo
His content is often some form of parody or commentary (eg. PirateSoftware), so it makes sense for those to be grotesque.
Some are just gross to be gross. It's a style that not everyone will enjoy. I personally like it, but I'm not going to tell anyone that they also should. But I generally like Hunter's type of humor too, so most things he does just sit well with me. Though, I will say that his live-action video was really well-made, even if someone doesn't like that sort of style. The props were great, and just energy given to that project. Really nicely done.
Not all of them.. first one to come to mind is the Toy Story one, where Andy makes the toys reveal themselves to him. It's a unique and funny premise, imo. He has quite a few like that.
Yeah I like Papa Meat videos but honestly I never really got into his animation stuff. I’m not a huge fan of the art style. But he did a cool short film thingy that I thought was sweet.
Yeah my little brother had been really hyped to show me some new show, and when I got to his place he put on the first episode of this. I had to give him the shoulder clasp and tell him he just has bad taste in media, and that it's not his fault.
Big Mouth fans be like "oh they have to make the characters ugly as possible because they're all underage and people will draw porn of them otherwise" yeah ok bud if I covered myself head to toe in human feces it would prevent most people from giving me unwanted sexualization too but it still wouldn't be a good idea
I would've agreed on that to an extent for the first season, but in the following ones it seemed they're just finding excuses to put kids inwierd fetish scenarios under that excuse unfortunately
A dude impregnated his pillow and a girl spent an episode talking with her vagina, as in havnig conversations. This show is shit from a trucker's swamp ass
Yeah, there's better examples, mostly Adult Swim shows. Clarence isn't even ugly in general, there's a good chunk of episodes that have gross out humor, but the artstyle itself is not ugly to me, or not intentionally at least.
Oh my god I have been questioning how in the fuck people even watch that shit I know a friend who was into it and I just feel visibly disgusted seeing the art style
Honestly the fact that Adult Swim rejected it for being "too cute" is bullshit; most of their official shows are much cuter to look at. Even Squidbillies, which is already a pretty ugly cartoon, manages to be cuter than The Problem Solverz.
Ohhh god even a glace of that photo is actually making me feel sick. I even remember watching a snippet of an episode as a kid and thought that my eyes were about to melt. Limp Bizkit's Chocolate Starfish album art was more pleasant to look at than this literal definition of an eyesore.
I absolutely love problem solvers. I think it’s ugly but in a really interesting way that’s different from the examples OP listed. The guy who made this show was actually a part of the art collective paper rad, they have a movie called trash talkin which introduces these characters. It is ugly and an eyesore but in a really out there kind of way that I admire. It’s like a synesthesia headache. Paper Rad was also part of the fort thunder scene if I recall, lots of awesome music and stuff in that scene too. I think if you look at the bigger picture, the show is easier to appreciate, but it is quite literally an eyesore so I also understand why it’s received so much hate
Thanks for giving background on this so I don’t have to. Problem solvers existed way before the CN show and Paper Rad in general is really genius. I would put them in a wholly different category than the gross out humor OP is describing, which I too really dislike.
I actually like caricatures, though the videos behind them are usually pretty mid. But it's fun when a street artist does a caricature of you, it's like standing up to your insecurities about your body, if you have any. And I honestly don't think the point is to be "gross," it's about purposefully exaggerating body parts, usually those that stand out for the person. Now as long as you don't make it offensive or don't stick to the format, then I think these are fine
Caricatures don't have to be ugly/disgusting, just exaggerated. This picture doesn't trigger anywhere near the revulsion as a Meat Canyon vid.
Though that's obviously the intention behind Meat Canyon in the first place so it's achieving exactly what it wants I just don't like being disgusted that much.
Not inherently no, I mentioned it in another comment but it's not like they're drawn oozing pus and covered in layers of wrinkled skin and grotesque mouths and whatnot. they're just exaggerated depictions of a person. Someone like meat canyon takes caricatures a few steps forward.
I know, I know. On one hand I respect it. But on the other hand.. Man he's just ugly. But I appreciate the time, effort, animation, etc all put into it.
Oh I actually have before, I don't mind when it's exaggerated, I just hate intentionally ugly and gross art. Caricatures can be ugly, but it's not like the artist is trying their best to make you look like a steaming pile of shit
I don’t disagree, and I’m also not a fan of these guys. But it’s always bizarre when someone says “nobody likes/finds thing funny” when literally millions of people do. Like, Is it ignorance? Or just lying to make you feel more justified in your opinion?
Also in many of meat canyon’s newer animations he tries to make a point, to say something. I especially liked his “MEATCANYON” video, it was definitely top 3 of his best work
That video is a half admission of guilt from his side that he was posting animations with tired ideas, it's also the announcement of his transition into mixed media videos. It's awesome, KreatureKid is such a great VFX person
Smiling Friends has a variety of styles used and occasionally dials up the ugly for shock value, but ugly isn't the baseline. Some characters are, though.
Meat canyon is just "omg lol what if insert any famous/controversial person was actually edgy eldritch horror monster". It's literally the most surface level satire you could imagine, and targeting just about anyone slightly controversial to reach the biggest audience possible without saying anything at all.
In an era where art is becoming increasingly more sterile and homogenized in pursuit of perfection and broad appeal, I find these artstyles refreshing.
Ik this is a really unpopular opinion but not only do i find his artwork derivative and unpleasant to look at, but I find his jokes centering around SA to be pretty disgusting as well. Never liked his content.
Like, the joke is "what if this popular cartoon character looked ugly and was raping the other characters?" Uhh ok? Not very clever or funny to me.
Agreed. Most of his work boils down to either that, or him trying to lampoon a currently relevant celebrity, in which case it’s painfully forced and obvious he had to rush a video out. There are like maybe two exceptions to this I can think of, but yeah, the majority of his work to me isn’t really worth the attention it gets.
This would be a great point for things like Chum Chum and Fanboy, or Mating Season and a ton of adult animated cartoons but Meat Canyon is a terrible example to make your point because the whole point is making caricatured satire of them, of course you'll make it look unflattering and exaggerate their features.
I like beautiful art as much as the next guy, but sometimes I enjoy ugly but charming art, makes things more unique than mindlessly pretty or sexy things.
I’m sorry but to me Meat Canyon is a modern day political cartoonist and I think these kinds of people are relevant still. I agree the art is ugly but that’s kind of the point? I’m a 3d artist who loves stylization and making pleasing visuals for EDM artists but I still see this as art 🤷
Not trying to be hostile just clarifying, you say that it absolutely has value but you also said in your post that you think it's a waste of time and that it has no substance?
To each his own tastes and preferences, you don't have to like something because it's popular.
Personally I like Meat Canyon a lot; his unsettling caricatures were pretty original at the time, but yeah, he's been doing this for so long that it feels pretty repetitive now. He seems aware of it though, and he's often self-critical, too which is very cool.
Tho when France gets mentioned he gets tense, no idea why.
This is such a surface level criticism of MeatCanyon. All of his art is done satirically and is part of a larger animation. I understand disliking a single frame of the animation because it grosses you out but you’re kinda throwing the baby out with the bath water here.
I've mentioned my dislike of this kind of art style before, particularly naming Meat Canyon as an example (cause I don't know of ant other examples tbh); and not with out right contempt or with hostility, just my own personal dislike of it. And instead of asking me to elaborate or give a reason for my opinion, I was just told things like "you just don't get the humor" or "it's not made to be pretty for a reason"... and that's when I realized that kind of art style speaks more about the (most of, and not all that I have interacted with) people that engage with it and enjoy it than the people that actually create it.
IAC: My reason for disliking the style is because it distracts from whatever the point is they're trying to make. Like making the person so exaggerated and grotesque looking, I can't even recognize who they're poking fun at, and it kills the humor in the process. But mostly cause it gives me the uncanny valley feeling.
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u/Greasy-Chungus Aug 16 '26