Mirror flipped cutie marks?

[Merion 783]

Here's something that bugs me when I paint cutie marks on my figures.

 

Cutie marks in the show usually get mirror flipped: the mark on a pony's right side is a mirror version of the mark on the left side. This works fine for the cutie marks that are just pictures, like Twilight's star or AJ's apples. Flip a star and it's still a star, flip a couple of apples and the picture doesn't lose its meaning.

 

But what about Octavia and her treble clef? It looks fine on her right flank, but the flipped version on the left side of her body seems just off.

 

 

I assume the cutie-mark-being-flipped is not a deliberate design choice. Maybe it's just a side-effect of flipping the entire pony model for the animators' convenience. (The fact that Hasbro's toys only have one cutie mark just adds to my confusion...)

 

So what would you do if you had to paint cutie marks on a pony sculpture? Imagine dealing with a character that happens to have a letter or a Chinese ideogram for a cutie mark. Would you mirror-flip the mark even though it would make it look weird? What do you think?

[NazmiFR 84]

Hi,

yes it's weird, but from a few drawings I saw and my personal opinion I think it's right that the CM gets reversed, about Octavia's CM, a propper treble clef looks like that, so her left side seems to be the correct one:

Also I didn't know that the toys only had one, well one more weird thing about them :awuh:

 

Lastly I saw your sculptures, you do an amazing job at painting the things oO

Edited August 3, 2016 by NazmiFR

[Inky Well 2,942]

Yes, it can look weird with some bootymarks.

 

I guess it's just mistake. Artist just is not familiar with music stuff and didn't notice.

 

[Happyandrenewed999 106]

Nah, I wouldn't mirror flip. But yeah, you're right. I guess it is for the convenience of the animators.

[SFyr 1,982]

@@Merion,

Honestly, I do believe it is intentional. If it was not mirrored, the whole design would lose left-right symmetry for the body. Kinda like, if you have an arrow pointed forward (in respect to the pony's body) as a cutiemark, not having it mirrored would have it then point to the rear on the opposite side.

Yes, specific symbols look off because of this design choice, because there exist symbols, letters, and such that are only meant to be oriented a certain way, and mirroring takes something away from the reflected image. However, when you get into pictographic symbols or straight-up images... mirroring is the better way to go, using the arrow as an example. And, the vast majority of the ponies have images or symbols that take well to mirroring. So for consistency... I understand mirroring being upheld even if it takes a little away from the CM on one of the two sides.

(In the case of Octavia, even if her CM looks a little off, it's still instantly recognizable either way.)

 

However, with the example of Chinese symbols... That makes it all the harder. I would say you'd either make an exception at that point, or maybe not use such as a cutiemark? I mean, languages and their characters aren't established the best in the show, so I think a cutiemark like that would only exist in the realm of OCs, which is known for going a bit beyond the show's design choices sometimes.

 

EDIT: As for hasbro's toy line... Honestly, I think that's a quirk of manufacturing--sometimes it's more affordable and efficient to not sweat the details, and having a single symbol rather than a symbol and its mirror is a lot more mass-production-friendly.