As a Mission Hill alumnus (it was my first animation job!) it’s awesome to see younger artists recognizing how cool these backgrounds were. Lauren MacMullan pushed hard for this comic look, and I believe Joseph Holt was the art director that executed the vision, though the whole art dept was great
I can’t recall if the colors were too bright for broadcast, as one commenter is asking, but I do remember the studio balking because we needed so many more paint pods (cannot remember what the right term for those is) than other shows they produced.