"But My Little Pony is extremely well-animated. Better than most I've seen in a long time, actually"
i know i tried flash before in college and believe its time consuming and ain't easy if you really want fluid animation especially when you start getting to more complex motions even if its a simple cartoon
every minor detail is taken into account...for example most cartoons would just use roughly 3-4 in between frames or so for a head turn which results into a very choppy crude look heck most of the time you would even just have the head static and just put the mouth and eyes on a different layer and animate them separately
...resulting in probably seeing just stiff talking heads (which you are probably better off reading a comic if that's the case)
every facial animation is fully animated...i rarely see this done in 2d cartoons, usually only in movies
or just swaying certain parts of the character to save on time and cost of production but results in obvious repitions and such
sure there are still some repiitions but its only a few and not that heavy as compared to most cartoons
as for background in most cases backgrounds are just static or usually just buildings/structures in the background again to save on money and time but resulting in errr..."empty" but if there is a characters in the background there just there, parang wallpaper lng sila
in mlp:fim its a totally different even if the characters will just be in the background for a pretty long air time >_< their still moving and their actually doing something that helps fortify the story better
the animation is beautiful its fluid, clean halatang they worked hard on it even the smallest details
there are no sudden jumps, halts, jitters and such theoretically speaking everything flows smoothly
like one of the bronie fans in youtube said: "its like...Disney like quality animation...especially when they break into a song number that sounds catchy or really good and actually helps progress the story..."
great >_< i explained the points clearly cant help i love animation/movies/games dang >_< gusto ko tuloy na talaga mag start un sa Toon City tuloy...kunting na lng tiis na lng XD
it actually made me cry on the inside, it made me miss the good old days of Disney, Ducktales, Darkwing Duck, Batman, etc, when cartoons /animations shown in the T.V. were still very well made...kinda reminded me a way of what it was like a kid back then
to sum it pretty much my reaction is something like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJqfP_vZBfw
i just hope the will maintain the quality all the way i want more than a season 2 XD