Rainbow Dash's Fickle Mane

[Sugar Cube 4,843]

One thing I've noticed about Rainbow Dash, and it's something that I'm sure everyone is well aware of, is that the yellow and red colors in her mane are constantly switching places. There are numerous examples of this. Just take any episode and watch how her colors switch places.

 

Here's just one example, from Party of One:

 

 

Here, the red in her mane is on the right-hand side, and yet seconds later...

 

 

The yellow in her mane is on the right-hand side instead. So, how is that even possible? Is Rainbow's mane just magic or something?

 

So, this pops the question. How do you like Rainbow's mane to be? Is there a correct way, or does it really matter? Is this the result of lazy animating, or something else? I blame my annoying eye for detail for always noticing every time Rainbow's colors switch positions. Just figured I'd gather some insight here.

[Brony Number 42 9,933]

Most cartoons, especially older ones, have animation errors. When you watch FIM in HD you can see more errors, like floating pixels. You can also see the points of articulation, places where a body part moves relative to another, for example. They gave the ponies the same model so that they would be easier to animate. The only differences between them are hair, color, cutie mark, and wings / horn. Of course there are male and female models. There are some Youtube clips where people have pointed out a lot of errors. Maybe an explanation is that Rainbow's hair just flipped over.

[~Silver Essence~ 2,621]

Huh, good point sugar cube!

 

But keep this in mind, animation errors are existent towards every cartoon imaginable, and while that could be the fact, sometimes it's just when they turn around.

 

Most characters with multiple colors or designs, when turned, often have their patterns switched probably due to the fact that maybe that's how they look like when facing another direction.

 

Hope it helps.  

[An Old Head 4,815]

With multi-coloured manes, the grander scale of animation means the order of the colours is probably overlooked. If you look at the mane on the back of her head, it transits into green and blue, but because the mane is tucked behind her ear we can't see an obvious translation there; how does that work?

 

I suppose if you were to take the mane in real life, those red, orange and yellow strands of mane hair would be equally distributed to make a smoother gradient of rainbow; this is just a representation of those colours to match the art style. I doubt the fact that colours switch places is of any real importance, but it's still a nice little speculation

[Thrashy 2,799]

Huh. Honestly, I never even noticed. The only thing about her mane that I've taken conscious note of is the fact that it's only got six colors; indigo is conspicuously absent.

 

Chalk it up to on oversight by the animators, I guess, but I don't really have a preference for the order in which the colors should appear. As long as red's on the top and blue/green/violet are the dominant colors of the rear of her...huh. Now that I think of it, does her mane strike anyone else as mullet-like?

[Yamato 1,347]

does her mane strike anyone else as mullet-like

 

Ehhh... too much party in the front...

 

 

There we go...

 

But really, as far as animation errors go, this is pretty minor. I remember in the "Dragons of Ashida" episode of Jonny Quest the heads of two komodo dragons completely (and very noticeably) disappeared for two or three seconds.

Edited June 26, 2013 by The Dude

[GeneralDirection 971]

It's more of Flash being a failure at life than anything, really. There are many videos online that solely show all the animation errors in FiM, there's more of them than you'd think. Plus it really doesn't affect your viewing experience much.

[NavelColt 22,876]

Animation errors are prevalent at the best of times; having a mane with multiple colors in them is just asking to be screwed up on a regular basis. As such, I don't have a preference on color order for her mane, because to me it just doesn't matter. I honestly never really take notice of it in-show, so I don't have a clear OCD issue with it (ironically ), to a point where I'd need to have a preferred hair color order.

 

At least mane color order is easily unnoticeable for the average person. If they were to make errors like this one more often, I'd begin to question the attention span of the animators a bit more.

 

[Derpy Azusa 272]

I never noticed that her mane changed colors it's not something I look for and I haven't noticed any other errors with the show

[fimdash 1,196]

Heh.. things like this are inevitable I guess. Every cartoon is going to have its animation errors, and as long as they're not too noticeable, I don't mind much. I recall seeing the My Little Bloopers videos on YouTube and being amazed at all the little animation errors that were exposed. But yeah, don't really care since it's pretty much impossible for a cartoon's animation to be perfect.

[TasteTheRainboom 82]

Well i never noticed   and now im not sure which order is correct... But flash is full of bugs anyway and as far as animation errors go this is the less noticed ones. If u want to see a big error just go watch "Ticket master", near the end Fluttershy has Rainbowdashes wings...

[MontagnaMagica 307]

Aw, man! Why'd you do that to me? Now whenever I watch an episode, I will be bothered by this. It simply cannot be unseen! Thanks a lot!
 

[Sugar Cube 4,843]

Aw, man! Why'd you do that to me? Now whenever I watch an episode, I will be bothered by this. It simply cannot be unseen! Thanks a lot!

 

 

 

I can't help it, it bothers me too! I want to believe it is the result of Flash being awful and being chock full of errors, but the color swapping is just so... constant.

 

It really isn't a big deal. I mean, the ponies' manes are constantly switching sides depending on which direction they're facing on-screen. It's just the way of it I guess.

Edited June 27, 2013 by Sugar Cube

[RrVPfX9cPtw59FpC 1,296]

Yeah, this is a bit weird, but... How do you notice these things? I mean, it seems that in a group of hundreds of ponies, you will find the one error! I'm not complaining, of course, I'm impressed!

[Princess Periwinkle 3,774]

Hmm... The second image looks "correct" to me. Not sure why, though.

 

This probably is the same sort of thing that happens when cutie marks are shown on the inside of ponies' legs and such. Just an error that happens often, but is not noticeable enough for anyone to care much about.

[Ashley 2,427]

I don't pay too much attention to stuff like this, but I would put red at the top rather than yelllow. I don't know why, that was probably the first way I drew or saw it.

[Flutter's lover <3 8,204]

I've noticed this as well.It's an animation error. But I prefer  seeing her with the red at the top and yellow at the bottom.

 

 I've also noticed Dashie's cutie mark is flipped around backwards in some scenes, because hers is the most non-symmetrical cutie mark out of most of them. If the others were flipped, it'd be hard to notice.

[spacestorm 183]

Oh c'mon, many people also didn't notice the eyes color change in "Sisterhooves Social" episode, even though it was intended. It is normal that we don't notice many small errors in these animations. This is how brain works by filtering some data regarding them as unimportant. Maybe you are more perceptive, or you were very lucky, or you just wanted to find that.

[Taviscratch 453]

Yeah I noticed the changing colours of her mane but it never bothered me, unlike the numerous times Applejack's head gets disconnected from her body

[I used to be a stranger 7,989]

Big Macintosh and Applejack likewise have inconsistencies.

 

Applejack's missing freckles.

 

Big Mac's cutie mark without sparkles.

 

And with sparkles.

[jcpruett98 0]

In this post is the one that was animated wrong and the one that is animated right. Rainbow Dash's mane is supposed to go Red, Orange then Yellow rather than Yellow, Orange, Red

[Princess Periwinkle 3,774]

@@jcpruett98,

 

Since we already have a thread about this in Show Discussion, I've added your post here. In the future, please refer to the search function before creating a new thread. Thanks!

[Grumpy Enchantress 586]

It's more of Flash being a failure at life than anything, really. There are many videos online that solely show all the animation errors in FiM, there's more of them than you'd think. Plus it really doesn't affect your viewing experience much.

How could them putting her hair the wrong way be Flash's fault? It isn't.