As much as cal arts style has its routes in the 60s disney movies alot of it also comes from a misunderstadning of chuck jones and his smug expressions.
In chucks cartoons the smug expression had context that made it funny say when bugs is listening to Wile E prattle on about his geinus only for bugs to look at him like this thats funny same if say the coyote has a smug look on his face before hes blasted back to reality.
Maybe around the 90s disney started using this jones smug expression without any context that made it funny in chuck jones cartoons. this is what became known as the "tude face" or when they started marketing their films "the dreamworks face"
This is where we get to today where this smug expression is in every animated movie now it originates from a misunderstanding of what Chuck was doing in the 1950s now constantly used ad nauesium.
Jones Smug is not the only way to draw smug theres a million diffrent ways to draw smug. but thats how cliches grow they get stuck in the psyche of cartoonists and eventually executives
Cartoonists work best when their studying real life over cartoons. My dads done funny unque smug expressions that would be perfect draw upon and exagerrate real people aren't text book cliches
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