It looks like the Copts were facing 2 problems: 1, some of them went through a period of iconoclasm with Pope Cyril IV and afterwards. 2. Like in the Orthodox Church, Coptic art went through a long period of Latinization... in fact, there are still new churches being decorated in this style.
What Isaac Fanous and others of like mind wanted to do was restore a more traditional, native iconographic tradition. Isaac Fanous, however, studied under the Orthodox Byzantine iconographer Leonid Ouspensky. I guess he was trying to combine native Coptic style with the Byzantine style he was learning. That the result looks kind of like a Disney version of Byzantine icons, I don't think was quite his intention. But there you go.