The truth on Derpy from one of the animators.

[Cirrus. 1,088]

So I still see a lot of people still seem to think Derpy was an "animation error." From the first time I heard of her and saw her I was like "Yeah right, animation error "

 

I loved working with flash (which is initially why I was interested in MLP) back when I had a class with it and know pretty well how it all works. Derpy had messed up eyes AND a stupid mouth initially- so having 2 mistakes was fishy to me. The only "ERROR" is that she showed up in the finished episode.

 

 

 

It turns out that the infamous scene was changed somewhere in the editing process and widened. Doing that brought her on screen. Whoever did that didn't notice that she was now visible in the wider shot.

 

 

 

Here is a video interview with one of the animators from season 1.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=2490&v=stSvuwLg3Eo

 

The Derpy part is at 25:36

 

Also Vinyl Scratch's eyes were originally gray- then red- but are toned down to magenta by a color correction filter

Edited July 18, 2015 by Cirrus.