[quote=Etcetera]
That sounds utterly horrid. I couldn't stand to work with that.
[/quote]

It's quite easy. And a lot of ponies either don't want to learn or don't have time, so they ask other people to do it for them. I learned vectoring quite easily, tutorials are great. In order to trace, you simply take out the pen tool and start creating a jagged version of the curve in the picture. When you finish it, you fix the curves with the curve tool. It's incredibly easy to manipulate them and create other nodes to make it even easier, and eventually you have ponies as perfect as the ones in the animation.