@sketchyswirl
Yeah like I said, I think the “log legs” were originally intended as a placeholder, but they couldn’t finish the pose in time and just left it. They’re not only the wrong shape but also way too small.

I’m tempted to edit this into a proper pose.

@Chopsticks
is it just me or do her hind legs look like theyre missing hooves? hooves arent usually that round on the bottom

@sketchyswirl
Oh right on. Yeah I’m assuming the coat color around the inside edge of the hip outline is a single rigging unit on the 3/4 right model, and in the rapid copy-pasting they accidentally grabbed the butterfly from the cutie mark, flipped it and left it.

Lol, now that I’m looking at it more, it appears they took some rigging from a 3/4 rear and flipped it also for the other side.

@Chopsticks
dw, im well aware of how flash animation works, ive animated pony puppets myself
i was just wondering what exactly what was cutting off the extra butterfly, but youre right in that it looks like the leg symbol is layered over this secondary cutie mark, but under the “real” one. since im an artist, i usually think of ponies anatomically, and was thinking of her leg being attached to her flank like it would be on her skeleton, even though thats not how the flash rigs work, since it would be troublesome to redraw the flank every single time on every possible leg position.
hopefully somebody else can find your explanation enlightening though ^^

@sketchyswirl
It’s cut off by layering.

What they do is shape the hip with an edge of the coat color and overlay it in an upper layer so that something like a cutie mark won’t stick out or protrude from the outline.

In Flash animation, they don’t draw each image like in frame-by-frame art. They have preset shapes and defined structures that they can manipulate for a very fast, fluid motion. A profile (side) view of a pony for example composes of the torso, with the neck, head (with mouth edge, teeth, tongue, eye, and iris as separate components), 3-4 parts of each leg, flank, and 1-4 parts of the tail and mane. They then program motion into each part, like shifting the blob of coat color over the mouth to reveal said mouth in a layer underneath, and shift/move the components for talking, or a back-forth rocking motion of the head with the neck portion leaning forward in a run.

Usually they can pre-define “paths”, start and end locations for these motions, and the Flash animation program will automatically flex the parts to meet the path. These motions can then be recalled for later so if they want a running or talking animation, they simply apply the presets and voila, animation with almost no drawing involved.

So for a 3/4 view, each butterfly of Fluttershy’s cutie mark is reshaped by stretching the features to give the illusion of angles to make it look like her flank is shifting in accordance to her movements.

But this rear-view sitting pose however is brand new and unique. Working on a tight schedule, animators can’t do a quick animation sequence because there weren’t any images available at the time. So I’m guessing they had the small hind leg logs as a stand-in, and they copy-pasted the flank shape from the 3/4 view, and they ran out of time to finish the animation sequence. The designated clean-up artist either didn’t get to it or was told to leave it by the animation supervisor due to tight deadlines, and any editor felt it wasn’t bad enough to correct (if they noticed).

You’ll notice there’s extremely few instances of a pony sitting from behind in a way that shows the plot, except from an upper POV. Most of the time animators hide the plot off-screen, behind a tail/crowd, or other obstruction because they never really had quite figured out how to draw it, and developing it took too much time.

@Chopsticks
yeah, the fourth butterfly is a different color, and its lower left wing looks like its being cut off by something. it persists until fluttershy turns around

Man, that pose looks really strange.

I’m assuming this was a rushed job for a very brief frame/pose transition, and the fourth butterfly looks like an imprint maybe for an animation layer for another frame, like if she were left-facing 3/4.