Man, if only the actual series went for THIS art style… I’d say it arguably looks even better than G4’s aesthetic.
 
I’d take this over downgraded 3D models any day of the week. Ya’ll know the film has waaay higher production values than an episodic series, so inevitably there will be a large graphical downgrade for each character model in the transition.
 
(Note: This is actually the first official 2D artwork of the G5 ponies that looks really good. I’m not sure why the other 2D artwork looks so terrible by comparison. The vectors just seem so lazily executed whereas this looks like actual effort and art direction went into it conception. Of course, the series has already been confirmed 3DCG, so I suppose this entire comment was pointless, lol)