I agree on the colors, it doesn't need to be pastels, that's easy enough to change.
Animation, if it doesn't detract, or actually adds to the experience, sure, but agreed, some of it is superfluous.
Easings, that goes with the animations.
The dry/stationary look, I think is intentional, and I like it.
Centered text/content is arguable, I think it depends on the form and can vary.
As to the text inputs being lines, I actually prefer the material way, it's closer to what you'd see on paper forms... it's less intuitive compared to what we're used to on a computer, less so when you compare to many paper forms. The boxing that you get in say Bootstrap, by comparison I find a little more distracting than the placeholder->label animation you get, which is similar, but different to a paper form... and works exceedingly well for phones/tablets, though less impressive on a desktop, but that leaves room for additional details.
I don't mind pastel colors. Material Design doesn't recommend pastels -- they recommend garish, over-saturated colors.
The docs say:
"Material takes cues from contemporary architecture, road signs, pavement marking tape, and athletic courts. Color should be unexpected and vibrant."
Things like pavement marking tape, road signs, and athletic courts are not aesthetically-pleasing models of design, and it shows in the final result.
Recommended colors like #e91e63 and #ff5722 look terrible on many monitors. Looking away from the monitor leaves a reverse impression of the color in my vision.
Many sites these days don't consider that some people get disoriented by animation. If I'm trying to read an article, and parts of the page are animating with parallax effect or growing/shrinking, it pulls my attention away from the content. I don't want components to flip over, bounce, or use other "cute" easings. I sometimes stop using websites just because of that.
> Centered text/content is arguable, I think it depends on the form and can vary.
Centered text is the Comic Sans of page layout. It's one of the tools that people who don't know about design reach for first. Centered text should only be used extremely sparingly, so that the viewer doesn't really notice it. Lately, centered text is becoming the focal point of web pages. Some sites are even creating "pyramids" of focus at the tops of pages, using centered text with a user profile picture on top. It looks really bad.
> As to the text inputs being lines, I actually prefer the material way, it's closer to what you'd see on paper forms
A web page is not paper, because you can't "write" anywhere on a webpage. It should be clear where one can enter text -- a line does not communicate that well.
Also, having the line animate when clicked on does nothing useful except distract. When I click on an input, I will know that it's focused by the existence of a cursor in the text area.
The end result is that multiple areas of a page are animating at the same time. The interfaces become confusing, because animation says "look at this part of the page", but multiple areas are animating without coherent reason.
Meetup.com's new app and color scheme is a recent example of the serious problems with Material Design. Even my group's members are complaining about it.
Basically, Material Design has a very strong personality, and it's the kind of personality that many people are not compatible with. In my opinion, it might be okay for a niche product, but is not a good choice for websites aimed at large audiences.
Animation, if it doesn't detract, or actually adds to the experience, sure, but agreed, some of it is superfluous.
Easings, that goes with the animations.
The dry/stationary look, I think is intentional, and I like it.
Centered text/content is arguable, I think it depends on the form and can vary.
As to the text inputs being lines, I actually prefer the material way, it's closer to what you'd see on paper forms... it's less intuitive compared to what we're used to on a computer, less so when you compare to many paper forms. The boxing that you get in say Bootstrap, by comparison I find a little more distracting than the placeholder->label animation you get, which is similar, but different to a paper form... and works exceedingly well for phones/tablets, though less impressive on a desktop, but that leaves room for additional details.