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Snowdrop is a 15-minute piece self-touted as a "short film". It was produced by Silly Filly Studios by a crew of 24* (9 VAs, 5 Animators, 8 Artists/Vectorers, and 2 Musicians/Sound Technicians,) not including translators. It premiered on BronyState March 21st, 2013.

Double Rainboom is a 30-minute piece self-touted as the "first fan-made episode". It was produced by FlamingoRich based at the Savannah College of Art and Design with a crew of 105* (2 Directors, 40 Animators, 7 Storyboard Artists, 27 Background Artists, 10 Effects Artists, 5 Puppeteers, 4 Musicians/Sound Technicians, and 10 VAs.) It premiered on the Everfree Network March 30th, 2013.

Snowdrop is set in the sky of Equestria with pegasus ponies during the winter season in the time period before Luna had been banished from the moon, but only just before. As such clouds, wisps, stars, and sky are very much present, as well as many blue and white tones. Ground is never shown past the opening narrated scene that merely sets the mood.

It contains all original character design for the main story, using canon characters only for only the opening scene, with exception of Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. This gave it an immediate boost in my opinion. The voice talent was superb, especially on the account of Meredith Sims on the lead role of Snowdrop and Kira Buckland (Rina-chan) as Snowdrop's mother Primrose. The background characters were also voiced well too for their brief parts.

The animation was fantastic, despite a few errors. While DHX studios makes many more errors on the official MLP:FiM, the errors in Snowdrop were more pronounced, especially if you watched it in the BronyState stream, but getting the HD version on YouTube minimized a good lot of those errors, which I believe were magnified by the lower resolution quality loss. Still most who aren't looking for errors won't notice them at all.

Music and sound, for being covered by only two people, was exceptional. It really tied the show together and brought the emotional element (the "feels") much stronger than many things I've seen. Snowdrop had some degree of scoring as well, with an official soundtrack longer than the film itself.

What set this overall was the gorgeous art behind the animation. If you notice, artists outnumber the animators; it definitely shows. A heavy degree of the artwork also was original or referenced original. Being set in the winter season, blue, white, and teal hues dominate most generally. Incorporating such similar but different colors successfully increases the rating in my opinion.

Overall it is important to realize that Snowdrop isn't a comedy or slice-of-life film, it's an emotional piece that is one part a feel-good and another part tragedy. That fusion personally found to be very powerful in the medium and story they told. Story-wise it wasn't rushed, but smooth, wonderful considering it covers a story with over 1000 years time difference in parts. In fact, getting used to the opening I found myself a little impatient as general MLP:FiM episodes come at you fast (especially concerning Season 3,) and required time to slow myself down. This is not to say that it's too slow, but in fact perfect for the story they tell, it was just a little unexpected.

Moreover, Snowdrop explores a character attribute never seen before in the MLP:FiM canon, blindness. The closest thing to it would be the cross-eyed Derpy Hooves. I only realized this halfway through and it hit me in the chest. The character of Snowdrop is so cute and well-spoken that I seemed to have overlooked the blindness. Including and pulling off just that element alone gives it a few points in the difficulty category.

Final Ratings (10 point scale):
Animation: 9 | Music: 9 |  Art: 9.5 | Voice Acting: 8.5 | Story: 7.5 | Originality: 9
Fan-Made Rating: Superb | Storytelling Difficulty: Medium-Hard | Overall Rating**: 9 of 10

Double Rainboom is set in classic Ponyville at about the canon time in history (minus Twlight's wings and royalty). The big monkey wrench in all of this that nobody saw coming was there wasn't one main setting but two. The second, subordinate setting is in the different universe of the Powerpuff Girls (Townsville).

This point makes Double Rainboom less of the over-published tagline "the first full-length fan-made episode" and more "the first full-length fan-made crossover animation". In fact, the background of some of the earlier Equestria-based scenes has hints of this impending Powerpuff transition (most specifically Twilight's imagined super-Rarity scenario, where many of the pony dresses that pop up briefly are Powerpuff characters).

The characters are not original to the film, all characters in it are canon to either MLP:FiM or Powerpuff Girls (and a brief extra at the end). However, the personalities of those already set characters were pretty well matched up. I found the best voice and demeanor for characters were Scootaloo and Pinkie Pie, voiced by Brittney Lauda (BreeFaith), and Bubbles, voiced by Eileen Montgomery (EileMonty). Overall, voice acting was doing very well all around.

The animation was very varied, not just across the crossover gap, but in type. Certain elements, such as Twilight Sparkle's scientific apparatus, are very well done and I liked them a lot. Other parts of the poses were much more diverse in type, but that led to some degradations in quality. The biggest gap is between the effects and the animation. While the rainbooms, magic, and general effects were spectacular, they often contrasted and made the baseline animation appear worse. It also appeared that they broke from show style quite often and had outlines that were thinner than should've been on the ponies.

Double Rainboom was scored and full of audio, which had extremely good quality, and was a powerhouse combination of David Larsen, Andrew Stein (Mandopony), and Robert Knorr (RobBob). Almost everything has some degree of background music in addition to the foley-type sounds. It is probably the best-done part of the film.

Art quality is hard to judge because it wasn't as much original for most of the film. Double Rainboom, being episode-like, is limited to emulating the official show style and settings, which they did to a certain degree of higher quality. Because it was emulation, Double Rainboom loses points some art points but gains a few back incorporating the crossover styles which it emulated.

One of the biggest things to note that overall Double Rainboom was thoroughly a fandom product and that's evident. An incomplete listing the fan service within the film: Derpy Hooves and the muffin at cafe scene, Scootaloo's "Adopt a Chicken" gag, Berry Punch's wine store, Doctor Whooves and Derpy, Best Pony and 20% Cooler references when Rainbow Dash bounces around town, Pinkie Pie breaking the fourth wall, Dan, EQD and welovefine billboards, background Tardis of Dr. Who fame, and numerous other animation allusions to count. Some things were in the background in good taste, such as the face on the moon. This is to be expected being a long bit, but honestly putting almost every fandom bit/gag in there doesn't count for creativity. If the agreement for permission with Hasbro didn't most likely include a non-violent clause, we probably could've expected a poster in the background advertising a rainbow factory or putting Fluttershy near or in a shed. Originally it was going to be a normal 22 minute episode, they lengthened it to the degradation of the film. Many things took way to long than they should've and many things that should've been longer were short.

Final Ratings (10 point scale):
Animation: 8 | Music: 9.5 |  Art: 7.5 | Voice Acting: 8.5 | Story: 5.5 | Originality: 5
Fan-Made Rating: Superb | Storytelling Difficulty: Moderate | Overall Rating**: 8 of 10

With only 5 official animators and some help from the Series of Informal Animators, what the Snowdrop team produced was better on a quality per animator basis. In fact, compared to animation style, errors, and implementation, the Snowdrop team produced a higher quality animation. Part of this might be because a smaller team allows more direct quality control, which the large Double Rainboom team would lack.

Double Rainboom did have the advantage in types of animation. Many more different animators allowed varying styles to be incorporated, with traditional MLP:FiM style, micropony style, and Powerpuff Girls style being used. In the animation, the DRB team seemed much more interested in adding in fandom references, inside jokes, and easter eggs compared to the Snowdrop team who has very little of this going on. Then again that fits more to the comedic adrenaline style of DRB, versus the emotional, somber style of Snowdrop.

Effects-wise, Double Rainboom and Snowdrop tied. Snowdrop used not as many effects while Double Rainboom used a ton. The few Snowdrop effects were extremely nuanced and well-implemented; the vast Double Rainboom assortment included some take-your-breath-away effects such as the rainbooms, to some effects not well done like Twilight's teleportation.

Animation Conclusion: The more quality-based animation fan probably will prefer Snowdrop while the more variety-based animation fan will prefer Double Rainboom.

Both Snowdrop and Double Rainboom excelled in the musical category. Snowdrop's bell, string, and piano score interwove perfectly with the wintry, emotional atmosphere. Double Rainboom's powerhouse musical crew scored it wonderfully, giving it a wide range of instruments with very nuanced control of volume, pan, and effects for every and all occasions within the film; a shot of adrenaline when needed, an emotional pang if required.

Since they were both so exceptional and purposed for different emotional ends it is hard to compare them. You can compare them however in noting that while both are fantastic, Double Rainboom does have music for almost every little thing and has a variety of sounds, while Snowdrop's score is very similar-sounding and flows into and out of itself.

Music Conclusion: Viewers wanting diverse music that is very finessed will like Double Rainboom while those looking for simpler, more emotionally moving soft music will prefer Snowdrop.

Assessing art is tricky between these two. Snowdrop is almost all original art referencing the MLP:FiM style. Double Rainboom on the other side is direct setting emulation and has more individual elements to pay attention to. Based in originality, Snowdrop automatically gets huge points for that. Double Rainboom likewise gets bonus points but not for originality but for emulation of three different varieties of animation.

Just assessing art quality is difficult because of this fact but noting Double Rainboom emulates Powerpuff Girls animation style better than it emulated official MLP:FiM show style. Snowdrop's original character design put it into a whole new boundary. There are also fewer flaws in Snowdrop art than Double Rainboom art. The static posters advertising both films are wonderful, but Snowdrop's banners look like the actual in practice animation, while Double Rainboom's vary quite significantly.

Art Conclusion: Those looking for art set pretty much in Ponyville will probably prefer Double Rainboom while those wanting more original, creative (and honestly higher quality) art will probably prefer Snowdrop.

Voice acting, surprisingly is easier to assess for comparison. Officially, both Snowdrop and Double Rainboom have the same number of voice actors. Considering the much more expansive universe, more characters shown, and so forth, Double Rainboom does have less voice actors per space. Basically it's not very diverse in that aspect, which is interesting considering how diverse it was in other areas. Snowdrop featured background characters talking, as well as the main and supporting characters, while Double Rainboom had none of that.

One fact I particularly liked about Snowdrop was though they weren't prominent, they did have more male voices for characters. Both films have a pro and con for their format. Snowdrop's originality allows it to create characters, so it has no objective line (besides Celestia and Luna) to measure against but also makes it have to create good characters. Likewise, Double Rainboom has a benefit and restriction being that since they are emulating existing characters, they have a successful character to base themselves off of, but the difficulty of reproducing those characters.

Voice Acting Conclusion: Those wanting the thrill of new characters will love Snowdrop while those wanting to hear their favorite existing characters will prefer Double Rainboom.

Note: Kira Buckland (Rina-chan), Meredith Sims, and Emily Koch had voice roles in both features.

Overwhelming the originality of both new characters and storylines in Snowdrop is apparent. Double Rainboom really has only its storyline to draw from and not much else. The general storyline in Snowdrop can be seen as cookie cutter as Double Rainboom. Snowdrop uses the classic underdog with special ability does something awesome for everyone storyline, while Double Rainboom used the equally classic protagonist does something they're not supposed to, causes havok, ends up in trouble, and learns their lesson storyline.

To compare the two you have to use a couple perspectives. Breaking the 4th Wall is a very common fandom plotline, while power-boosting items or potions is canon MLP. This would make Double Rainboom more generic or fan-based. The idea that an individual would create the first snowflakes on the other hand is highly inventive. In fact it's almost mythology-level storyline.

Personally since hearing Twilight referring to the potion as a talent enhancer I basically knew the entire plotline, just didn't know about the brief 4th Wall excursion. Similarly, I had some concept of that after the introduction of Snowdrop (not as much, but some), yet the way the story unpacked itself was much more story-like than Double Rainboom for me. Furthermore, Snowdrop was very emotionally-involving while Double Rainboom was more light-hearted, attempted adrenaline rush.

Story Conclusion: Snowdrop is there for those who want an emotionally-demanding story with a ton of original elements you haven't seen, while Double Rainboom is there to put your favorite characters in a fandom-based, easy-going plotline.

Snowdrop is a  highly-engaging, emotionally-involving piece that was animated to high quality with tons of originality. It explores new areas never seen before in pony animation or the MLP canon. Highly artistic and independent, Silly Filly Studios's Snowdrop is a fantastic fan animation!

Double Rainboom is a highly-diverse, universe-bending crossover animation animated to a high quality in general but lacking focus on MLP:FiM canon show style. It has allowed many to learn how to animate, given many more the tools to animate, and provided a couple laughs and intriguing parts to it while allowing so many to contribute. Fusing elements of various animation styles, Zachary Rich's Double Rainboom is a quick whirlwind journey through a double rainboom of variety.