The MLP Arena
Pony Talk => Pony Corral => Topic started by: sunshinedim on April 07, 2021, 03:57:13 PM
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My Little Pony has been on my mind A LOT lately! Specifically the animated versions of MLP! So I wanted to ask a question here... which adaptation do you think had the prettiest animation?
I'll start first... as a kid I loved the animation in the 1986 MLP the movie. I know many people dislike it but I think that it looks lovely! The lush green forests and the small woodland animals made me think of Disney movies like Snow White and Bambi. The ponies in the movie also looked very cute .. the only thing I disliked was that their eyes didn't have any "whites" in them... with the only exception being the twinkle-eyed ponies.
When I grew older I found out about the first ever Special or pilot "Rescue at Midnight Castle" and I thought that this was the prettiest MLP ever looked! The ponies look very horsey but they also have some appropriate anthropomorphic expressions to them! I also liked that the color palette was a bit more muted and not overly saturated....
So yeah I think "Midnight Castle" is my favorite animation style... followed by the 1986 movie.
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G1, which includes the Specials, Movie , and all of N' Friends + Tales.
G3 is cute, but something is just a little off and took me some getting used to.
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G1 is my favorite animation style. A lot of the commercials have animation too and I just love it. One of the things I love about the ads is even though some of the animation styles are different from ad to ad it's all coherent enough that you can tell it's all MLP.
G3 is okay but not as pleasing to me as G1.
Ponyfan
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RAMC had awesome animation, including the best hair animation I've seen. (not how it moved, but how it was styled)
Everything after that had the Ponies' hair look like thick noodles or something... Megan's too
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RAMC hands-down for any hand-drawn animation. The ponies weren't weirdly lumpy, the hair was beautiful, and was more cinematic than the n' Friends edition.
I think the G5 movie will have lovely CGI-it looks well-animated! I prefer it's snap to the sometimes slow G4 movie.
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To me RaMC is absolutely the best animation MLP has ever had, it is literally how every piece of pony animation should look. The rest of G1 is far below it but it actually isn't bad, it may have its problems like low FPS rate or animation errors, but those were things outside of the animators' control considering the resources and conditions they had to work with (like with many animated shows of the time), and overall you can see at least they put their effort in it when you look at the character designs, background art, or even some of the animation cycles. G3 (save for G3.5) overall seems to have higher production values than G1, but to me it kind of feels too sugary (which of course doesn't make it bad) and the character designs start looking a little less horse-like for the first time. On the other hand, I can't stand the G4 animation, although I realize that plenty of people will probably disagree.
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I’ll thrown in another vote for RAMC being the best all around! Escape from Katrina was good too, even if a bit simpler. I wish they would have kept that art style all throughout G1! Mlp n friends is probably the worst art style and animation for me.
I also have a major soft spot for G3 since that’s more so what I grew up with. I like the super bright colors, the detailed backgrounds, and the art style. I think G3 was the closest the animation ever looked to the toys. I also adore all the detail drawn in the hair in the earlier specials like A charming Birthday and Dancing in the clouds!
G4 has arguably the most polished and fluid animation, but I don’t like the art style quite as much as earlier gens. The first season still has a lot of charm where the facial expressions weren’t quite as exaggerated and the story lines weren’t so over the top. I generally prefer my ponies to be simple lol! Now that I think about it, the G4 movie actually had a really nice art style and animation quality! That might be one of my favorite looks for pony along with RAMC
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To be honest Friendship is Magic has the best looking animation in my opinion as much as I also love G1 and G3 when I'm being perfectly truthful to myself, I like G4 animation the best.
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RAMC is the easy answer, but also early G3. I love the art for Charming Birthday and Dancing in the Clouds. The thin lines, the hair, the colours... chef's kiss. The art style for Minty Christmas onward is... fine. Not as good, but fine.
Not a cartoon, but the animation in the G2 computer game is fantastic. :)
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Maybe a cheat answer, but I feel it's already fair to say that the G5 movie has the best animation ;)
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RaMC, hands down! Catrina also looks gorgeous.
Honestly I'm not a fan of (what I've seen of) G4, something about the walk cycles just bugs me. Felt the same way about Lion Guard though, so I think it's less a FiM-specific thing and more of a Flash animation thing.
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I love the RAMC animation and FiM. :)
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If i had to pick i would say the G4 movie animation.
I really liked how the ponies were styled in that one and it was so nice to watch some good 2D animation on the big screen again.
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RaMC is my favorite. I was watching it just last night and wishing I could draw that style.
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I think RAMC is the best animated pony design. Balances horsiness and cuteness quite nicely.
The later G1 stuff is a little too lumpy, and the ponies go off-model quite often, resulting in some weird looking shots:
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And the designs of the non-ponies, especially many of the villains are too silly and cartoony when compared to the ones in the specials.
I really like the look of the Tales ponies. Similar to the '86 ponies, but a little cuter and more expressive.
G3's fine, but doesn't really capture the elegance of the toys in my opinion. They tend to look especially weird from the front, but the same can be said for any MLP gen, really. The backgrounds are also gorgeous. I like how flowy the hair is in the early movies as well.
Regular G3.5 is already pretty ugly, but when it comes to the Newborn Cuties, it's like they didn't even try at all.
G4 has the most polished and fluid animation, and I find the style really cute and pleasant to look at, even if they don't really look like ponies.
Pony Life is...not great, so simplistic it's hard to tell what's going on.
G5's very detailed and expressive, and I like the bodies and hooves but I find the faces of the ponies a little uncanny. Also 3D just doesn't appeal to me as much as 2D.
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I think it's kind of disingenuous to compare the format/style/polished nature of animation spanning a time period of 30 or so years. If G4 doesn't have the most polished animation, given the advances in tech since the 1980s, then it's failed in its objective.
I feel like to answer this properly means to strip the technical side of G4's animation style out of the equation and just talk about the art design..? I mean, G1 animation has a lot of bloopers, but that's also something common to most other eighties shows.
I don't know if I'm explaining it right but the "G4 animation is best because it's more modern" angle sounds like something the other side of ponyland would come up with.
I honestly am not surprised to see people say RaMC. Weirdly for me as a kid it took some getting used to. I actually, possibly like Catrina better, but I can't tell you specifically why that is. But with time I have got to like the RaMC animation style as well. I grew up with only 4 eps and they were all from MLP&Friends so that was what I was used to. I think that's a factor in how I think of these.
I am not sure about the style of Tales animation, although I love Tales possibly most of the G1 animations. I think my love of it came from the fact it wasn't full of what as a child I thought were 'mistakes' (ponies not sold here/featured under different names) or the fact I first saw it at 13 when I was just about turning teenage. It's not the prettiest animation but I guess I have fondness for it.
Some G3 animation is quite beautiful, some of it is a bit odd.
Gonna step away from the shows for a bit, though, because my favourite animation is probably animation that appears in commercials. Or that rainbow snippet we haven't quite identified yet. In terms of commercials, even G2 can be included in the discussion. I remember the G2 commercials when they were on TV, so I suppose I have a kind of fondness for them (and the 'animation?' in the game I guess).
I don't really care for FIM. The animation style is ok, but it feels like it's trying to be...something. I don't know what, but it's especially how they animate Pinkie when she's having one of her silly moments. Like it's trying really hard to be cool and funny and...eh, it's not my thing.
The summary - I am not huge on the animation, that used in some of the commercials is interesting and different, and probably like Catrina's animation more than RaMC if you have to push me. And let's not leave G2 out - it didn't have a series, but it did have animation.
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G1, but only Midnight Castle and Catrina.
Then G4 (later seasons, moving down to the earlier ones), then the rest of G1, then G3, then 3.5. I love them all, but yeah. :)
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Tales and the G4 2017 movie/Rainbow Roadtrip have my favorite animation styles, plus theyre both super fluid
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I adore Midnight Castle and Catrina and consider those best. Midnight Castle was my introduction to My Little Pony so that's the style I imagine ponies in.
I loved the Wedding Episode of G4. But I don't know if it was the actual animation or the music and story that got me. I really don't feel they look like My Little Pony, more like caricatures. Still very cute, but not what My Little Pony looks like.