Sheng-ji Yang posted:

Look, I'm just studying cartooning and design now - so I'm hoping that someone can come in and do a more detailed analysis. But I wondered why Equestria Girls provoked such a strong reaction from the fandom - despite the fact that all we've seen are a couple of character designs.

Well... the thing about animation is that you can tell a lot about a character from their character design. Especially if the character is human.

In just about any beginner textbook on illustration or cartooning, the size of a human being is measured in "heads" - that is, an average character's height is going to be about 6.5 (for women) to 7 times the size of their head. That's for normal proportion. But for the type of proportion you typically find in animation, or comics, the head is about 8 times as tall as the body. This is the superheroic or "ideal" proportion.

There are exceptions - "The Thing" is six heads tall, but Stan Lee calls the character "cute and cuddly" without irony - the character design, with the larger head, smaller height, does make the character far less threatening, than, say, the Hulk (a very similar "type" of hero.)

But let's take a look at the Equestria Girls. Their proportions are 4.25 heads - if we're being generous! That type of proportion is usually used for children. Teenagers - young teenagers - will usually go down no farther than 5 heads.

Let's look at some other cartoon characters and see how they're designed.

Daria Morgandorfer is also supposed to be a "teenager." She is just a little shy of five heads - or about .75 heads taller than Rainbow Dash (EG). The problem is that Daria is designed to be a diminutive character - that is, she is the underdog and put-upon protagonist of the absurd environment which she has absolutely no control over. Her lack of height serves a purpose, and you will notice that despite being the "hero," she is often portrayed as smaller than her peers, equating her social status with her height.

On the other hand, you have someone like Hank Hill. He's a little over 5.5 heads. Certainly not tall, but not by any means a child-proportioned character. You can easily contrast that because King of the Hill does have a child character, Bobby, who is coming in at just over 4 heads.
Hank Hill, of course, is designed as an everyman. His height, however, is 5.5 heads. These are "short" by animation standards.
An imposing character like Batman is going to get the full eight heads that superheroes traditionally get, of course.

Now, there ARE exceptions to the rule. Wreck it Ralph, for example, provides numerous examples. Wreck it Ralph himself is 4.25 heads. But look at how interestingly he is developed. His wide bulk (He is also 4.25 heads wide!) shows a stocky, powerful character. Nevertheless, he is looked down upon in his society, and ultimately is not important (at least at the start of the story)

But look at what happens when you compare him to his cohorts. Fix it Felix is 3 heads tall - very diminutive. But that establishes Ralph as a clear "threat" within his world. It's the same type of proportions you'd find between the old arcade Mario and Donkey Kong. And of course, the little raga-mcguffin of the whole piece, Vanellope, is maybe 2 heads tall! Let's also take a look at Felix in relation to the Nicelanders. It can be argued that the Nicelanders ARE just one head with feet! So you see a pecking order emerge: Felix is the hero to the Nicelanders, and Ralph is a clear threat the underdog hero must overcome. (As a point of fact, tough-as-nails Calhoun is 7 heads tall - that's tall enough to qualify as a "superheroic" woman.)
So, let's talk what all this means for Equestria Girls.

With diminutive main characters (all six are the same height, head-wise), you end up with characters meant to evoke sympathy, not to inspire leadership. They seem diminutive because they are diminutive, and we equate them with low status. I think that most fans of the show do not equate the MLP characters with low status at all.

There's also some other weirdness going on with the body design, for example, the characters all have emphasized legs. I might understand that on ONE of the characters - how else to show that Rainbow Dash is a fast runner, for example? But when it's on all the characters, it loses meaning. Indeed, the characters vary so LITTLE between one another that it's hard to even think of them as characters so much as the same template in six different costumes.

I think what we were hoping to see in the character design of Equestria Girls was some aspect of the characters we know and love from MLP. Maybe we want to see a broad-shouldered Applejack. Maybe Rarity is designed with sleeker lines to define grace and elegance. Maybe Twilight's got a big noggin to show she's smart. Maybe Fluttershy's a head smaller than the rest of them, Maybe Pinkie has a "fluffier," rounder look. And maybe RD's more aerodynamic.

Instead, the character with the broadest shoulders is Twilight (due to her puffy shoulder pads), AppleJack looks like a hard day's work would break her, quite literally, in half down her spine. Pinkie's hair is okay (a holdover from MLP) but other than that, she's got the aerodynamic, sleek lines of a serious student.

That all said and done, if the writing's good, I'll watch it.