I was watching the video below, and the artistry there got me thinking about MLP because of how painfully generic the world of G5 is looking. The team there is clearly not thinking about how their homes reflect the inhabitants or how the world reflects the society, just hammering something out to get a paycheck. This in turn got me thinking about G4, and while it's obvious Faust put this level of thought into the girl's homes (and Twilight's new ugly, pretentious castle ironically reflects what McCarthy did to her), I'm struggling to think of many broader examples beyond "idyllic". Thus, I figured I'd turn this over to the group to discuss examples both good and bad.

So this was actually something that struck me as soon as I saw the Season 3 premiere waaaaaaaay back in 2012.

See, Faust was actually really good about making the backgrounds and environments reflect the world. Ponyville, for example, specifically looks like a little Old Germanic hamlet. Perfect for getting across the idyllic, country fantasy village vibe.

Manehattan resembled the New York City of the 1920's, with lots of brownstone apartments and the like. Compared to other cities we saw, it came across as perhaps the most advanced place in the setting - an urban center that's rapidly growing and years ahead of the rest of the world.

Appleoosa obviously resembled an Old West frontier town, with lots of wooden buildings and the like. Exactly the sort of sparse construction that reflects the materials that they'd have available to them.

And Canterlot, presumably the oldest and most established city in the setting, with the most wealth, political influence, and artistic influence in the world, closely resembled something of a fusion between Constantinople - the center of one of the longest lasting and most influential empires in all of earth's history - and Renaissance Italy. Lots of domes and sweeping architecture and towers and golden fixtures and the like. It's a city that denotes wealth and artistry, but in a more traditional manner than the rapidly expanding, more modern city of Manehattan.

...
And then Season 3 began.

And we got our first look at a new place outside of Equestria. If Faust had still been at the helm, I'm sure we would've gotten something that reflected an actual earth culture to better contextualize the place. My guess is it would probably have had a heavy roman influence, as that's the biggest "empire" I can think of that had a terrible, sordid end, similar to the "end" that the Crystal Empire experienced when Sombra took over. An Empire in decline that only now has a glimmer of hope of regaining its former glory now that the mad king has been deposed.

Instead we got this nightmare:

Chunks of Crystal.

With windows in them.

What the fuck is the inspiration for this place supposed to be? Fucking Bedrock?!?

7472535
Yeah, the crystal empire really is an ugly, out of place lump.

That said, your reply doesn't really get at the point of adding life to the background because Appleoosa is the only location that really nails it since all the buildings there are unique and could conceivably represent the personalities of the ponies living there. Take that shot of Ponyville as an example and look at the buildings on the sides of the road. While they do collectively give the broader impression you mention, there's really nothing about them that suggests any real degree of individuality. I can't look at one of those homes and start guessing about who lives there because the only thought was to the collective shot, not the background details. It wouldn't have been hard to add accents to indicate personality, but they didn't bother. That stands in stark contrast to those props which the artists built to reflect the personalities of the characters even though they were only seen for a few seconds and stuck in the background like those houses.

Here's another way to look at it. Why do only the Mane 6 get unique homes? Why does Rainbow have the only cloud house in Ponyville? Why are Sugarcube Corner and Carousel Boutique richly detailed buildings while other businesses like quills and sofas just get a sign? There's so much more to a town than just the handful of main characters, yet no one else even merits a unique color scheme in the eyes of the artists, much less personalized decorations. The result is that those core buildings sort of stick out like sore thumbs, clash with the Stepford wives-like buildings around them, and create a bit of a jarring dissonance in the setting.

A couple days late, I know. But I fully agree. I don't like the Castle Of Friendship. It feels like Hasbro just wanted something to make a new playset out of. Give me the Golden Oak Library any day. It fits so much better with Twilight's character. And if you want the truth, the Crystal Empire was pretty dull as well.

7472505 " just hammering something out to get a paycheck. "

Aaaaaand you have just described the entire Western animation industry!

7475027
Agreed, although as I mentioned in the OP the ugly castle does reflect what McCarthy did to Twilight's character.

7479885
Yes and no. I agree there's a lot of that, but you do (or at least did) occasionally get more thoughtful work. The best examples are probably 90's Disney movies, but there are other gems out there.

7472535

What the fuck is the inspiration for this place supposed to be?

Well i think i might be able to answer part of that.

At least with the other cities pre season 2 you can see everything from the architecture and the overall theme mesh together well. There isn't a defined focal point to look at as most of the buildings don't stand out much from the other and buildings that do stand out (sugarcube corner for example) don't look too outlandish from the other buildings.

The crystal empire is disappointing because i kind of like the theme and idea of the city but one split second of looking at the empire and you can easily see where all the work the art direction went to.

The castle of course.

To answer your question of "why" the buildings leading up to the castle look dull and uninteresting is because this was deliberate so that the only detailed building in the city is the castle itself. The castle is made to be the focal point to draw your eyes into and as a result the rest of the city is so undetailed in comparison. The castle is the only building that shines brightly and it towers over the other buildings the layout of the city itself is made so that all the roads lead directly to the castle. The entire city is made to complement the castle itself and not the other way around. Its why the episodes surrounding the empire mostly take place nearby or in the castle itself or at least have the castle in view because they don't want you looking at anything else but the castle.

I like to think of the crystal empire as a test done by hasbro to see how they could push a potential playset into the show using the empire as their test subject and because of the general "good results" it got since it did not get backlash they went full force.

We know the result of this and that was twilights castle. There is alot of similarities in how the building is to be made as obnoxiously detailed as possible to draw your eyes to it instead of the surroundings. It had similar effects in ponyville after it was introduced the following seasons don't show much more of the town besides the existing landmarks of ponyville and constantly show the castle just so you remember that "landmark".

The only defense one could give to the crystal empire is that when king sombra ruled he wanted his slaves to live in run down shards and the obnoxious castle was made to serve as a constant reminder of his stranglehold maybe that could work but that does not excuse the fact that after he was defeated the buildings look the exact same. There was no remodeling no redecorating nothing.

In all the crystal empire had no inspiration to begin with. It is a glorified tourist stop for the audience and one of the definitive points where you can see the world building take a backseat so they can constantly shove marketing in your face.

7480250
What makes that even more frustrating is how unnecessarily forced it is. You can absolutely have a massive building dominating a scene without reducing everything else to indistinct lumps as seen in pictures of real monumental buildings like Florence's Duomo as seen in the images below:

It dominates pictures even when it's in the background, but that doesn't prevent there from being a full city around it. There's no reason they couldn't have done a similar thing with the Crystal Empire (or distant shots of Canterlot for that matter), but they took the lazy route and the show suffered for it. It's not even hard to justify other decisions like the city layout emphasizing the palace since rulers love showing off like that, but without populating the city with proper buildings that look like someone built them for a purpose and cares about them the setting falls flat and makes the show feel more shallow.

7480203 Yeah, back 20 years ago there was still good Western animation. But RECENTLY? It's crap. Either looks like utter garbage, or is generic as hell and looks like the same 3D models are used for everything.

7480698
Agreed, but then again the same is true for basically all modern entertainment. Hollywood is more interested in preaching than storytelling these days so virtually everything they do is crap, and on the very rare occasion something decent slips through they do everything in their power to crush it.

7480250
Unless that's a stroke of genius. Think about it. Big shiny castle, everyone else's homes looks like crap? Kind of sounds like a city designed by a tyrant doesn't it?

7482342 Celestia's bad decisions keep biting her and everyone in the ass, yet the universe keeps bending itself over to Twilight to make up for them.

7482342
Then there would have been a massive infrastructure development boom after the season 3 premier.

But there wasn’t one, so that theory does not hold up.

7482459
An infrastructure boom implies a functioning economy and getting a 1000 year out of date empire integrated into the world economy would be...challenging. (Just how challenging would be explored in my fanfiction Princess Cadence And The Inefficiency of Mercantilism, but who the hell wants to read that?)

7482488
Manehatten underwent a metropolis-wide overhaul in the span of at least 10 years to go from a 1940s metropolis to a turn of the millennium modern metropolis. To say that the much smaller crystal empire showed no signs of that even by the end of the show points to a lack of planning, apathy towards its concept, or excessive reliance on suspension of disbelief.

7482506
Where are you getting your info on Manehattan?

7482507
Did you even watch The Cutie Mark Chronicles and Rarity Takes Manehatten? Or really, any episode set in Manehatten after season 1?

7482512
I didn't notice a significant difference. Also, Manehattan wasn't isolated from international trade for one-thousand years.

7482518 Advancing that far in just ten years is also hard to swallow.

The tyrant theory also does not hold up. Even delving into the dubious canon of the IDW comics, the only “tyrant” to reign over the empire was Sombra, who was not even native to the Crystal Empire in the first place and did not exactly have a taste for elegant architecture. The history of the empire in terms of established canon is very muddy at best.

But when considering Season 3 was the point where the cracks started truly showing in the major story arcs as well as the immoral premise of the episode, it’s easy to see why the Crystal empire turned out as it did. There’s no real nuance for why it looks the way it does. It’s the result of a convoluted Hasbro toy plan without considering how to make it work in Equestria’s world building.

7482342
Sombra was not even the founder nor the first ruler of the crystal empire i found out after a quick refresh he simply took over the city and gave it a dark paintjob. He never had any hand in the construction of the city.

The city existed before he arrived and even before he ruled the citizens still lived in poor quality homes in terms of building materials. If anything that just exposes the first rulers as con artists or scammers as they took advantage of the people that lived in the city using most of the resources for themselves to make their castle better. But that's saying as if that was planned im more believing that it was more evidence of a rushed job from the artists and the writers for the sake of pushing a potential toy like i stated earlier.

7472535
7480288
To aid to your respective points; the only building that looks sort of traditionally here i.e. the castle; clearly draws inspiration from real world buildings; The Eiffel Tower for example. They also draw upon cathedral like architecture in the forms of those multiple spires at the top.

So it wasn't that they couldn't design clean cut buildings, they just chose not to.

In fact the way those homes were set up, they would have had to put actual work into making them distinct and jagged, as opposed to merely drawing a similar shape over and over again. What makes it even weirder is that you do have detailed buildings alongside blocker ones. And more traditional architecture alongside geometric shapes.

I suppose there could be interesting explanations for that, but they are certainly never given throughout the course of the show.