Animation errors in the G1 cartoons.

[Ponyfan]

I think it's been a while since we had a thread like this. There were a lot of animation errors in the MLP series of cartoons.  Here is one.

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Lofty has 5 legs.


Ponyfan

 

[Starfrey]

I always notice that in Escape from Catrina, baby Surprise is an alicorn for a good chunk of the nap song.

[Al-1701]

There are actually several cases of Alicornism in the G1 series.  Wind Whistler, Fizzy, Galaxy (twice) were all drawn as alicorns at some points.

It was shots like that which were a nightmare for the animators because of all of the layering.  I think the Lofty leg on the far right was originally going to be Heart Throb's but they had already made one and the colorist didn't bother to count legs.  There was also the odd shape of Heart Throb's body.  Drawing ponies on their backs and pinned by a bar must have been an incredible pain.

I also remember in Quest of the Princess Ponies the animator had given Locket normal eyes and the effects department tried to make up for it by making her irises sparkly.

[Mirnyj]

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Wings! Wings for everypony!
Also in the Ice Cream Wars it is pretty hard to keep up with who is who, I think for example baby Lickety Split is chatting with herself at one point.

[SpaceButtPonies]

While watching G1 recently there was a lot of vocal errors too.

[Al-1701]

"The Quest of the Princess Ponies" also had a ton of errors.  Primrose's tail is red.  Wind Whistler and Locket swap bodies (and yet retain their original mane styles).  And perhaps the most hilarious animation error of them all, it's the Moochick's chair that animated as going on the attack but everyone calls it a plant.

[Ponyfan]

I think you're right Al-1701. I bet Lofty's extra leg was supposed to be Heart Throbs. I thought when they went to the next episode and showed the ponies trapped in a different position it was because the animators weren't paying attention to the ponies being caught on their backs but maybe it was so hard to animate that they decided to put them in different positions for the rest of the time they were caught in the trap?


Here are a  few more:


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Wind Whistler is purple


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North Star was caught in the net but in the next shot

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Ponyfan

[lovesbabysquirmy]

Working in the continuity department in those days would have driven anyone crazy! 

I think the Lofty/North Star extra leg happened because they accidentally included the next layer of "in-between" with it.  See the leg can move to a number of positions that are present in the frame - which gives us an extra two legs - because look, North Star has an extra one too. 

[Al-1701]

You also have to remember, this was being animated by hand with no computer assistance in Japan and South Korea with the QC department in the United States who had to receive everything by air mail.  Sadly, some really obvious errors got through simply because it was too much of a pain to go back to do them all over again.

[Sparkle Pony]

I have to admit I think the errors are half the fun with the G1 cartoons.  The ones where a character would talk with a different character's voice always drove me crazy.  It even happened at least once in G3, you would think they would have learned over the years...

[lovesbabysquirmy]

You also have to remember, this was being animated by hand with no computer assistance in Japan and South Korea with the QC department in the United States who had to receive everything by air mail.  Sadly, some really obvious errors got through simply because it was too much of a pain to go back to do them all over again.

Fun times, I know!  It must be so much easier now that they can email files, but ugh!  I can only dream of the pain when you received the work back and it was full of errors but nobody was going to pay for the labour twice. And with extreme deadlines, nobody has time to fix it! 

[Ponyfan]

The errors can be fun but changing positions in the mousetrap is one that really bugs me.

I think in the Quest of the Princess Ponies  at one point Wind Whistler and Locket say each other's line and call each other their own name?


I can see Hasbro/Sunbow not wanting to fix all of the errors due to cost also.

Ponyfan

[MJNSEIFER]

In Rescue at Midnight Castle when the other ponies are laughing at Firefly for crashing into Applejack's apples, Medley "becomes" Firefly, or is in Firefly's colors.

I think in the Quest of the Princess Ponies  at one point Wind Whistler and Locket say each other's line and call each other their own name?


Ponyfan

It's been a while since I saw it, but yeah, I think that's what happened.  It's funny to see, as it's like two mistakes in one.

[ringwraith10]

Oh wow, how did I never notice these most grievous errors? I always noticed the rampant mis-colorings, but I never saw any extra legs or wings when watching the show, and I watched these episodes on repeat when I was a kid (and usually I'm extremely detail oriented!). That's it: I'm sitting down to watch every episode to look for errors now.

[Iceglider]

Working in the continuity department in those days would have driven anyone crazy! 

Was there one? 

As a kid I remember noticing the changing color ponies.

I've noticed though that other cartoons from that era are really bad too. Even Bambi I remember a baby racoon disappeared in the final scene where the animals are escaping the fire. I attempted to watch transformers and ninja turtles from the same time and I couldn't even watch them. I don't have nostalgia for those lines that can overcome the bad writing and animation.