looking through his website, it's clear he's capable of a broad range of styles, but with varying degrees of success. I think no artist can do their best work when the job doesn't play to their strengths. One doesn't always get to pick and choose.
McCrea's been doing the "How To Draw" segments for the UK movie mag, and it's a whole different style there. At a con last year, I saw two big full page group-shots he'd done of the G1 Autobot and Decepticons, and they were well nice. I think the thing with Animated is simply that it has a very, VERY specific style that ISN'T malleable, and you either draw it PRECISELY (see: the IDW book), or you get... well, this. The short strip in the movie mag drew is precisely, but it was a collection of weird copy-pasted static images.
