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On the left: 1978. On the right: today.
Maybe all of that dieting paid off.

Elan: But at least you got some snazzy new boots, and I got this clasp for my cloak!
Haley: [whispering] Pssst! Elan, it's an art upgrade, we're supposed to pretend we were always drawn this way.

When an artist begins drawing a series for the first time, chances are that the Art and character designs will be crude or basic due to lack of practice. As the artist gains expertise during the run of the series, there will be a gradual shift in the art as rough lines are smoothed out and designs refined. This evolution normally stops when they are satisfied with the art quality and it crystallizes into its final or "iconic" stage for the rest of the series. This is generally viewed as a cosmetic Retcon, the stylistic changes do not have an In-Universe explanation or justification for it (plastic surgery, repairs or upgrades).

First-time series for new animators are most susceptible to this, but arguably almost every animated and graphic series undergoes this to some degree as the animator finds out how best to make the characters look attractive while saving maximum time and money.

Art evolution will be most noticeable in evolving character designs, but more subtle things can change too, including better shading and more detailed backgrounds. Every long running series involving artwork tends to show the effect to a greater or lesser extent. This may or may not be caused by the fact that the show has been running for a long time, and may had multiple artists, and/or different animating equipment.

An art evolution, however, is not necessarily an upgrade. The changes may become worse if the animators become lazy or their budget is slashed, especially in long-running series which are more likely to have an Off-Model episode or two. Standardization of the art style can also result in a paradoxical effect, it results in cleaner designs and crisper animation but also loses the raw, experimental feel and the diversity it once had in favor of the handful of designs they know that works. In the end, artistic quality is highly subjective, which can lead to some fans becoming displeased with the new art style over the familiar old one, even as others praise it.

Very obvious in Webcomics, since the vast majority of webcomics are amateur work; it may be the artist's first sustained attempt at drawing at all. Professional artists often recommend such artists continue honing their style rather than becoming too comfortable too soon. Genuinely good artists tend to have fifty bad drawings for every good one, even if they hide them away from the comic's archives.

Not to be confused with Art Shift, which is a sudden, temporary change in artistic style as homage or parody. However, lampshadings of Art Evolution are often accomplished by means of an Art Shift. In a series with significant Art Evolution, the older style may reappear for a Retraux Flashback. Sudden Eye Colour occurs when a character goes from having generic "colourless" eyes to having a defined eye colour.

May cause Early-Installment Weirdness. Also see Vocal Evolution, Costume Evolution, Animation Evolution, Special Effects Evolution, and Early Installment Character-Design Difference.


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Other examples:

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    Advertising 
  • The Energizer Bunny has gone though a fair bit of this. Compare the original animatronic by Johnny 5 creators All Effects, to this commercial with one by Industrial Light & Magic.
    • As of 2016, the Bunny's gotten a complete makeover with a lighter fur color and more expressive movement.
  • The early toy commercials for Transformers: Generation 1 had early models for several characters, especially between them and the show. Jetfire's the most obvious in this regard.
  • CGI and Flash character Snuggle Bunny (Schnuffel in German) created by German music company Jamster. Started out fuzzy looking in the music videos "Snuggle Song" and "I love you so" until the music video "Doo Bee Doo Bee Doo" where Schnuffel looked less fuzzy and more smooth looking. The character later shifted from CGI to Flash animation starting in the music video "Without You" which stars his girlfriend Snuggelina.
  • The mascot of "Chewits" sweets manufactured in Britain since the 1960s, Chewie the Chewitsaurus, has suffered from this for years. The original claymation advertisements featured him as the 'Monster Muncher' which was consistent until the switch to 2D-animation in the 90s/2000s. He was more popular than ever during this period. But then what followed were constant art style changes, averaging every 3-4 years. As of 2016 "Chewie" is a far cry from his former smiling Godzilla-resembling self.
  • The Morton Salt girl, first introduced in 1914 in a logo depicting a young girl holding an umbrella and a can of salt, saw a number of changes in her wardrobe and appearance in keeping with contemporary children's clothing styles, though she only received a subtle change in her "100th birthday" in 2014 with the line art in her bob haircut further simplified and the logotype modernised. This was done likely to avoid any negative reception over reimagining an iconic advertising mascot, and having her wear something else just to reflect children's clothing trends of today wouldn't be as memorable.
  • Back when Face was the mascot of Nick Jr., the bumpers had a very scanimate-esque animation quality to them with a single, color-changing background. When the character was rebooted for Face's Music Party, the animation for the show is a lot more fluid, with cleaner lines and more detailed backgrounds.

    Art 
  • Anton Thomas, cartographer of North America: Portrait of a Continent, found that his art has evolved significantly on that one project alone (which had taken a few years by that point) that the older parts of the map needed re-doing. Since it was partially done in pen, he had to use an X-Acto knife as an eraser. As his website's "Before" and "After" Pictures show, his outlines became softer and smoother, his coloring grew more vibrant, and certain details were re-drawn for greater accuracy.

    Asian Animation 
  • Season 2 of Hello Jadoo has more color, backgrounds and shadows but doesn't change much in character design, except the change from Four-Fingered Hands to regular five fingered ones.
  • The simple Flash animation in Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf has improved significantly over the years. Starting with The Little Detective, the characters have smaller horns, smaller noses, bigger eyes, and smoother lines. They are also more expressive.

    Eastern Animation 
  • The first two seasons of Mézga család, produced between 1968 and '72, had a very crude, notebook doodle-like style, combined with similarly rough and choppy animation that was almost constantly Off-Model. Backgrounds in the first season were sparse and empty, which was remedied by the varied environments introduced in the second. The show received a massive Animation Bump for its third season (1978), with revamped designs that were now on-model (save for the intro), the characters looked more like actual people with defined anatomy, and the animation became fluid and detailed, with thin lineart replacing the original scribbled look. The planned fourth season from 2005 adapted the updated art style with more cartoonish designs and digitally colored hand-drawn animation. Ultimately, the animation method proved too expensive and only two episodes were made.

    Fan Works 
Five Nights at Freddy's
  • Springaling: Early comics have thicker lineart on the characters than later ones, due to the artist switching to inking lineart with finer-tipped pens.

Kim Possible

  • Anything's Possible began in 2009 and ended in 2013. It dramatically changed art-styles several times. This is most noticeable in the five-part Deviantart version, where the style changes between panels.

The Legend of Spyro

  • Pure Light: Due to having been made by several artists over an extended period of time, in addition to the original artist, Xannador, deliberately experimenting with different styles over her run, the the comic's art and medium shift, sometimes abruptly, multiple times over its length.

The Lion King

My Little Pony

  • Ask Hoops and Dumbbell: While the style remains heavily rough and sketchy, the artist's style has refined a lot in every other aspect over the blog's run.
  • Diamond and Dazzle: The comic's design changed quite a bit since its inception. Just compare the latest comic to the first.
  • Trans Ponies turned from monochrome to colored seven pages in. It then becomes computer colorized in volume 2.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

  • Evangelion 303: After several years drawing, Grummancat's art has greatly improved. In 2013 he uploaded a pic that showed how much his style had changed.

Pokémon

  • Bugged Run: This comic was started in part specifically as an art exercise, and it shows. The comic goes from flat black and white with no backgrounds, simple panel layout, rough linework, and deformed characters, to having full color, shading, detailed backgrounds, dynamic layouts, and more normalized character models by page 16.
  • Rocket Member gets less animesque as time goes on. The art-style in general improves.

Shrek

  • A Small Crime: The writer said that, originally, Kit had long-ish blond hair (instead of short black hair), had blue eyes, and that she wore red armor (instead of wearing a grayish-black outfit), but then realized that she looked too much like Artie. The red armor was switched for a shirt to make Kit less impenetrable. It was even said that Kit originally had red dragon-like wings.

Sonic the Hedgehog

Team Fortress 2

  • The Fedora Chronicles: Like other videos by The Winglet, the quality of each installment' production and animation has increased significantly ever since its beginnings in 2013. The Red, the Blu, and the Ugly shows over 7 years of progress from the first video in the series.

Tintin

  • Tintin and Alph-Art (Yves Rodier) mostly experiences this due to being a completed work, instead of the rough draft that original author Hergé left incomplete at the time of his death, though Rodier did clean up the artwork slightly after its initial release, along with adding colour.

Touhou Project

  • Touhou M-1 Grand Prix: The first 2 contests had different artists doing each skit, with one for the judging. From the 3rd contest and on, the entire competition was done by the same artist.

Undertale and Deltarune

  • Blooming Dreemurr: The blog started out with simple images of the characters followed by text. Then colored images of the characters followed by text. Then text boxes with the characters faces. Then colored faces in the text boxes! Vee's been able to make moving images more recently, but they're too time-consuming for regular asks.
  • Defragmentation: The first few comics have panels with defined borders (akin to sister comic Handplates) and Spamton's cheeks are depicted as solid dark red circles. After that, the edges of the panels take on a borderless sketchy appearance, while Spamton's cheeks look scribbled-on in a lighter shade of rednote .

Yu-Gi-Oh!

  • Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series: The first season had incredibly bad quality, audio, and acting. The audio and acting improved halfway through the season by becoming much less stilted and more consistent, and by the end of season 2, the overall quality is practically on par with the original series. The shoddiness of the first few episodes has been lampshaded quite often in several episodes.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The remake of Battlestar Galactica received a number of visual upgrades throughout its run. The easiest way to tell is by comparing the Cylon Centurions from Season 1 with those of Season 4. A notable example occurred in the Season 4 premiere, in which a certain epic battle looked notably more epic than it might have in seasons past.
  • Babylon 5, similarly, saw a number of changes in art style, most noticeably between the cancellation of Crusade and the production of The Lost Tales released eight years later. When J. Michael Straczynski was shown the first low-resolution renders of the models for The Lost Tales, the company doing the CGI was concerned he might not understand why they were in such low resolution. Turns out, the low-res demo renders were as good as the high-res production renderings ever got for the original show a decade earlier.
  • Game of Thrones: House Mormont's heraldry switched from having the bear passant (striding) from Season 1 onwards to having the bear rampant (rearing on its hind legs) in Season 6, without explanation. It appears to be a case of Ascended Fanon - the TV production team doesn't really have a dedicated Heraldry office, but did it all in one big burst when the show began. The Season 6 version is an exact copy of the Mormont sigil fanart used on A Wiki of Ice and Fire, as were the Reed and Stokeworth sigils. Apparently by later seasons the costume and props departments just used fan wikis as reference, not realizing that this was book-based fanart, and unaware that earlier seasons of the TV series had already established an official design for these sigils within the TV continuity.
  • Star Trek: Enterprise, being a prequel series, ran into the problem that it was being produced over 30 years after Star Trek: The Original Series, but was supposed to be chronologically set 100 years before it. The set design and costume departments have a lot to say about their struggles to make it look like a logical evolutionary step between a modern-day NASA space shuttle and Kirk's Enterprise from the Original Series...even though 1960s designs look very backward now.
    • This gets lampshaded hard in the Mirror Universe two-parter "In a Mirror, Darkly", when the Terran Empire version of the NX-01 crew discover the Constitution-class U.S.S. Defiant from the TOS episode "The Tholian Web". Cue Mirror!Archer and company showing their amazement at the "advanced" technology.
    • This continues in ‘’Star Trek: Discovery’’, which takes place a mere 10 years before the original. The most glaring difference are the Klingons. ‘’Enterprise’’ went into a lot of trouble to show why TOS Klingons look and act more human than any other variant. Then along comes ‘’Discovery’’ and shows Klingons who look even ‘’less’’ human than the established designs.
  • Star Trek: Voyager has the look of Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres change over the run of the series. Not the hair styles, but her facial features. She loses the uppermost of her four forehead ridges, resulting in her hairline beginning a bit further forward. Her bushy eyebrows also get reduced to a more human like appearance.
  • In an unusual example, the sitcom Reba. Earlier episodes used standard establishing video shots of the characters' house. Around Season 2 these were replaced with warm-filtered, soft-focus zoom on stills of various set details.
  • The three CGI-animated "hosts" of the German children's Edutainment Show Was ist was TV went through a slight redesign between the show's two seasons. The original designs (note that Quentin the period is seriously Off-Model here) may have looked simplistic, but demonstrating that this trope doesn't always yield attractive results, the redesigns have a way more uncanny feel to them, especially since these new models have their lips stuck like that.
  • The cartoon version of Lizzie McGuire at first looked crudely drawn, but the animation soon improved.
  • Many TV series airing in The '60s went from being filmed in black & white to color, including Bewitched, The Beverly Hillbillies, I Dream of Jeannie, My Three Sons, The Benny Hill Show and Doctor Who.
    • Speaking of Doctor Who, the graphics used for things like the Time Vortex, death rays (from future weaponry, Daleks, or Cybermen) and spaceships have evolved over the years. Dalek death rays nowadays show a CGI three dimensional X-ray of the victim's skeleton. During the 1960's and 1970's the whole screen would go negative and in the early-mid '80's the Daleks made only their victims turn negative when they shot them. "Remembrance of the Daleks" (1988) showed for the first time a comparatively crude CGI-free version of the skeleton effect, but they could only afford to show it once. The same serial was also the first time Daleks hovered up stairs. "The Ark in Space" (1975) used a model for exterior of the titular ark, and the DVD (released in 2002) has an option to replace these scenes with a CGI version.
  • Recorded 911 calls are presented on World's Dumbest... with animation. Early seasons show rough and unpolished MS Paint art with simple animation, while later seasons have lavish and almost cartoon-quality Flash animation.
  • Both Kamen Rider and Super Sentai have gone through a significant Art Evolution. Since both of these series are around for a very long time, suit designs, props and special effects have improved considerably. Just compare the earlier Transformation Sequences in Super Sentai to the later ones in this video.
    • This trope is also seen with the character of Apollo Geist. When he first appeared in Kamen Rider X, he wore a simple suit, without much detailing. When the character returned in anniversary series Kamen Rider Decade, his suit was more detailed, sleeker and more modern looking compared to his first appearance.
  • Speaking of Toku, the Ultra Series, which has been around even longer than Kamen Rider and Super Sentai, has also undergone significant Art Evolution. In the 60s series, the special effects and suit design were quite similar to the Toku flicks of the time (eg: the Godzilla movies, which shared the same special effects team), though on a relatively lower budget, but in the 70s, financial issues led to cruder-looking work. With the Heisei era, special effects have greatly improved, with more polished-looking suits, miniatures, and other practical effects often mixed with digital effects that have steadily improved over the years.
    • Many series see changes in suit design for the monsters and heroes. In Ultraman, the eponymous hero went through three suit designs, each one more heroic-looking than the last, while the number of returning monsters in the franchise means that unless Prop Recycling occurs, their colours and proportions can change between series.
  • Brazilian network Rede Globo adopted in the 1970s a logo with a television inside a globe, which in turn shows a globe. It has changed a few times to showcase an evolution in both graphics and televisions - the current one is a colorful widescreen HDTV.
  • LazyTown: The show received a minor Big Budget Beef-Up starting with season 2. The green screen effects became much more convincing, the sets became larger in scope and more dynamic, and the puppet characters were given redesigns, complete with moving eyebrows.

    Magazines 
  • Many of the artists of MAD have had this happen over time, particularly those who have been with the magazine the longest.
    • Mort Drucker had a much smoother and more cartoonish style earlier on, which made his work more closely resemble that of founding artists Will Elder and Harvey Kurtzman. By the 1960s, he'd gained his trademark jaggedness and caricature skills.
    • Dave Berg had this happen twice. His earliest works had a flatter, more cartoony look that eventually became more realistic by the time "The Lighter Side" became a recurring feature. A second evolution came in the years prior to his 2002 death, as his increasing age made his art look more sloppy and rough.
    • Al Jaffee's early work was a lot less round and cartoonish early on. By the time the "Fold-In" became a regular feature, his style had largely settled into place. While old age has softened his style slightly (he was born in 1921), it's not as noticeable as it was with Berg.
    • Don Martin's early work was a lot stiffer-looking and somewhat less zany. He also didn't use his trademark Written Sound Effects early on.
    • Duck Edwing went the opposite direction, toning down the cartoonishly exaggerated noses somewhat, while also lettering his comics by computer instead of by hand.
    • The early work of Sergio Aragonés was a lot flatter and less detailed, as opposed to his loose and sketchy but highly-detailed Signature Style.
    • Bill Wray's art for the Monroe and… comic became a lot more rushed late in its run, as the comic was often forced upon him with a very tight deadline. A comment on a now-deleted fan forum said that he often had to color four pages in under 24 hours in order to meet deadlines. The feature was later canceled, brought back with another artist, then canceled again.
    • Mark Fredrickson's art got crisper and more detailed over time, presumably a switch from traditional to digital painting. His first cover is also far more "wacky" in style, with exaggerated facial features and a fisheye-lens perspective.
  • Likewise, at former rival Cracked:
    • When Mike Ricigliano first started drawing for the magazine, he was asked to illustrate the "Shut-Ups" in a style imitative of predecessor Charles Rodrigues, resulting in a very lumpy and scratchy style. After a short time, especially after he broke away from "Shut-Ups", he developed his own style with a much straighter and more polished appearance.
    • Walter James Brogan originally had a much more jagged and pointy style on his first few art credits. Near the end of his tenure, some of his inking got rather sloppy.

    Music 
  • In general, Heavy Metal bands (including dozens of subgenres) at their early stages have simplistic album art covers, with demo cassettes usually contain a prototype of a band logo and a simple illustration, while earlier albums aren't as complex as the later ones would have.

    Pinball 

    Puppet Shows 
  • Fraggle Rock:
    • In the first thirteen episodes, Gobo wore a purple sweater with a yellow undershirt. After the first batch, his puppet was redesigned with a yellow-and-sed striped shirt with a brown vest.
    • Also in the first thirteen episodes, Ma Gorg had a more grumpy face mold with smaller eyes, messier hair, and wore a white dress with a pink floral cardigan. After the first batch of episodes, she was remodeled with a cheerier expression, a bun hairstyle, and a purple-and-gold dress and frocks.
    • In the original series, Mokey has Dreary Half-Lidded Eyes, short, messy hair, and wore a dark green robe. In the 2022 reboot, Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock, her eyes are wider, her hair is longer and tied into a ponytail, and she wears a brighter green dress. John Tartaglia (a key performer for the series) explained this as being because Mokey, being a creative and artistic Fraggle, wanted a new look. It has also been explained as making her look younger, because in the original series there was a tendency for her to sometimes come across as "the mom", rather than one of the gang.
  • The Muppet Show:
    • Miss Piggy looks noticeably different between season 1 and season 2, and different still in season 3.
    • Gonzo looks noticeably different in season 1 from his appearance in the following seasons.
    • Long before the show premiered, Kermit was significantly redesigned. The Proto-Kermit, dating from 1955, had a cylindrical body, no collar, thinner arms, and thicker legs ending in stubbier feet. In 1969 or thereabouts he was officially designated a frog, gained a more oval/spherical torso, got flippers on his feet, given a collar, and his arms and legs were made closer to equal.
  • Oobi:
    • The sets of acrylic eyes used for each of the three kids were updated for each season. In the shorts that preceded the show, Oobi's eyes were dark brown. In the first season, they were hazel, and by the second season, they were an even lighter shade.
    • Also in the original shorts, none of the characters wore accessories. Uma and Kako were outfitted with a barrette and a cap, respectively, in the series proper.
    • Dasdasi, the Iranian adaptation that aired from 2012-13, has all of the characters wear full costumes. This is a drastic change from their non-clothed selves in the shorts.
  • Sesame Street: in addition to several changes to the set over the years, the puppet designs themselves have changed:
    • Big Bird had a smaller head originally.
    • Bert had a longer nose.
    • Oscar had a slightly different head shape and orange fur. Later that first season, a new puppet was built, still with orange fur, but with closer to his current head shape. Between seasons, an appearance on The Flip Wilson Show gave him a green fur, but with yet another head shape and a blue eyebrow. By the time production began on the second season, he still had his green fur, but with the brown eyebrow and head shape of the second orange puppet.
    • Grover's prototype had green fur and a different eye focus from the full-fledged Grover first seen in season 2.
    • Herry Monster, first appearing in season 2, had a furry blue nose in his earliest appearances, followed by an unfurred blue nose, then finally an unfurred purple nose.
    • Snuffleupagus had significantly different eyes during his initial appearances in Season 3.
    • A smaller-than-usual Zoe puppet was used for season 40; this version had a noticeably-different head shape.
    • Several characters have varied in fuzziness due to the materials used in the puppets.
    • The eye focus of several puppets have also improved through time. Most notably Ernie and Big Bird. Just watch the un-aired pilot of Ernie and one will see that the puppet's eye focus is so off that it's hard to tell that the puppet is speaking to viewers until he points to the camera.

    Toys 
  • Tamagotchi:
    • In Japan, the artwork for the characters used to be cruder and had black outlines. Beginning in 2004, the artwork looked better, but had blue outlines and several older characters who originally had black body parts had said parts recolored to match the new blue.
    • In the USA, the artwork looked even cruder than the original Japanese artwork, looking like it was colored in by a preschooler. In 2004, they later received the 2004 Japanese style, but later switched to the anime designs with the Tamagotchi Friends.

    Visual Novels 
  • Ace Attorney:
    • The series started out with a comparatively realistic style that made most characters look plausably Japanesenote , but characters gradually gained more Mukokuseki and modern anime features. It's extremely noticeable in the original trilogy, due to the tendency to reuse sprites from the first game. By the 4th game, the new sprites look so much more impressive that the old characters appear to be downright ugly standing next to them. Maya suffered from it the most, to the point that she's almost unrecognizable as herself with her new pose, "just exorcised and exhausted", added to her sprite repertoire in the 3rd game. Also, in her maid spriteset, the differences between the shading on her body (old) and on her clothes (new) are painfully obvious. Problems like this are avoided starting with Ace Attorney Investigations, which had all sprites redrawn from scratch, even those of old characters.
    • In Dual Destinies, the series made the jump to cel-shaded 3D models instead of sprites and added fully animated and voiced cutscenes produced by Studio BONES. Some returning characters have had their designs changed slightly, such as Phoenix gaining a waistcoat and a strand of Idiot Hair. Despite this, the animations of the returning characters mimic the animations of their old sprites, and the new characters are animated in a way that resembles sprite animation.
  • The characters in Melody appear more realistic in the later chapters than in the earlier ones, especially Amy and Sophia.
  • The art of Superhuman goes from being an acquired taste to genuinely good.

 
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Video Example(s):

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The Patrick Star Show

Episodes in the latter half of season 1 have much more fluid, off-model animations and expressions than what came earlier. This video compares similar scenes in episode 1 ("Late for Breakfast") and episode 45 ("The Starry Awards").



(Electricity scene early on has been slowed and trimmed to prevent epilepsy.)

How well does it match the trope?

3.12 (8 votes)

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