I thought so too. Then, Butler provided a photo on another thread to prove his point about the animation. The heads seem a bit disproportionate, and he mentioned other things I forgot. But I've seen it up close, though I can't really say it's terrible. I think it's more like the studio's trying to get the hang of animating this according to the show.
Here is the image in question, for reference:
[img139]http://25.media.tumblr.com/bcf47257a1d14eb48b52ffcd166a8f81/tumblr_mxq67jmdQi1smmou4o1_1280.png[/img139]
The heads and bodies are frequently out of proportion. Bonnie is the best example, because even in her stock art, her head is the size of her entire torso.
Something seems off to me about the faces, too; I've noticed multiple times where characters will just be staring off into space or the faces are drawn strangely.
On the animation side of things, it fluctuates wildly, which isn't good. Look at the scene where Ash sends out Fletchling in today's episode, for example. When it chirps after being sent out, its beak is animated amazingly fluidly and smoothly. But then when the view switches to its back, it's flapping its wings with only two frames, one with the wings up and one with them down. That's not the first time either, because in XY002 there was a scene of Clemont running with only two frames.
I think XY animation has its share of flaws just like BW was ridden with stock footage. DP had awful artwork too IIRC. BW's artwork seemed better (?), but I don't really have an eye for these things. But I agree, XY animation has its flaws.
BW's flaw was its stock footage everywhere, in my opinion - Woobat barely had anything that wasn't stock footage - but the artwork seemed on the whole more consistent overall. DP had atrocious art directors like Kazue Kinoshita and Yusaku Takeda bringing down its art. It seems like a lot of new animators joined over Da! and into XY, which is probably where these issues are coming from.
But the battle scenes are a bit upgraded and good. A few scenes are golden like Bunnelby vs Heliolisk. But a few like Manetric verus Maiika seem weird.
Agreed on both counts. Bunnelby VS. Heliolisk was a great example of what the animation should look like, while Manectric VS. Inkay was a complete mess.