Pony Art: Princess Cadence

Princess Cadence done the night before the big Royal Wedding in watercolor pencil.

Ode to G1: Midnight Castle

When I was a little girl growing up in the late 80's My Little Pony was my obsession. I had the toys, and not just a couple here and there; I had a herd of them. I remember getting my first pony from the store and opening ponies for birthday parties and Christmas presents. I remember watching the VHS episodes my grandma taped for me over and over again. To me the little ponies were more than toys and a tv show, they were a defining part of my childhood.

There are so many things I love about My Little Pony but some of the things that immediately spring to mind are the toys, colors, the magic, the adventure, and the songs. To my child eyes the ponies were everything I wanted to be. They were brave, beautiful, and they way they moved across the screen seemed very graceful.

Firefly (pink), Medley (green), and Ember (purple baby) are some of the most memorable G1 ponies. Firefly, with her sense of adventure may just be the most popular G1 pony. In the pilot Rescue at Midnight Castle the ponies live in a castle and have ribbons but are otherwise very much multicolored ponies without that much human influence. I always liked this aspect and found the introduction of the human characters and excessive musical numbers to be a hindrance to the show. FiM made an exceptionally smart move stay away from mixing humans and ponies. I'm also glad they stepped up the production values of the music. However at its core FiM and Midnight Castle actually have a lot in common. This is especially apparent in the the opening of the first season which draws heavily from Midnight Castle.

Twilight Sparkle's predecessor Twilight had the special ability to teleport.

And applejack is a hard-working pony that surprisingly, works with apples.


But like FiM Midnight Castle comes with real baddies.

Oh hello there stratadons. I'm sorry, I didn't realize the storm brewing was you. I'm sure we can talk something out right?

Oh, I guess not. But come now, is attempted ponynapping really necessary?

This is actually one of two face kicks the baddies get. But they are victorious in kidnapping some of the ponies so Firefly is determined to go and get some help. She meets Megan, a little girl and sings a musical number where Firefly lands on the clouds.

They eventually fall through, but I'm assuming that is due to Megan's added weight. It's interesting how the dynamic of pegasus ponies and clouds comes back in g4 where only pegasus ponies can step on the clouds unassisted. I wonder if this is just a logical "rule" for the species or if Faust was making an unconscious connection to this incident.

Anyway I don't want to just do a summary of Midnight castle. I think it's worth watching, especially if all you know about G1 is that there were seaponies.

Yep lots of seaponies. You may laugh but the Seapony song was one of the most powerful forces when I was a kid. I remember not opening christmas presents for a few minutes one year because the seapony song came on. Basically seaponies trump santa.


Oh, and I forgot to mention that a very clear connection exists between G1 and G4 here, as the big baddy and Nightmare moon both vow to bring in eternal darkness.


In G1 the baddy was a dude named Tirak.

Now Nightmare Moon controls the moon, but Tirak had a Rainbow of Darkness that transformed normal creatures and objects into monsters.

You wouldn't guess here but Midnight Castle was grove of trees.

And the lizard guards were really birds.

Tirak wasn't so pretty looking himself. I think he kind of rocks the Rainbow of Darkness though. Oh and did I mention when he isn't using the rainbow it sits in the bag beating like a heart. Yeah....


Here's some captured ponies before contact with the rainbow...

And here they are after. I'll admit this scene was one of my favorites. I always held my breath through the whole transformation. I'm not sure exactly what I thought that would accomplish, but but I did it anyway.

But the ponies have the rainbow of light, also known as the mother to the elements of harmony. It's just very young and small in this picture.

And then it suddenly isn't small and causes an explosion of color and returns everything back to normal. Oh, and even if you don't like pudgy g1 spike, you have to admit that he's kind of cute when he's scared.


I can honestly say I've meet some awesome bronies who may not understand or like G1 but they respect for the history. Is it such a hard concept to understand that MLP:FiM is only one part of something I have been a fan of for years? My intention is not to convert anyone to loving G1, I just wanted to share with you the reasons why I like it in hopes that we can maybe quell some of the tension between the fans I have seen in increasing amounts lately.

Also who would have thought Twilight would make the silly faces?

And yes this post is supposed to be a little silly and lighthearted. I hope you all enjoyed it!

Fluttershy is Best Pony

Different pony collectors go about pony collecting in different ways. Some are very picky and will wait ages for just the right "minty" pony to come along. Others will buy large lots or ponies that need a lot of TLC as they enjoy taking the ponies to the "spa". Sometimes there are before and after pictures and you wouldn't recognize the ponies. I know some collectors who will search ponies out methodically completing one set at a time.

And sometimes you have collectors that collect a specific pony. It starts out normal enough with maybe a standard release of a pony, and then a baby version, and a foreign counterpart, and then maybe a MOC (mint on card) one. Before you know it you can have an "army" of one pony.

In my case I am not intentionally building a pony army; I just happen to like Fluttershy. I'm a fan of her color combination and her character on the television show. G4 has enough merchandise that it appears that I have the beginnings of a Fluttershy army but I know there are Fluttershy items out there I don't have!

Royal Wedding

This season the My Little Pony TV show's season final is a royal wedding. The Hub, the television network that airs MLP is going all out to promote the season finale. It seems a little counter intuitive to promote the finale in my opinion. Wouldn't you want to promote the premiere?

The first thing to pop up was that they got Tori Spelling to do something with the wedding. I honestly don't know who this person is, but people were making a big deal of it.

Now they've put an ad in the New York Times Wedding Section. I wonder if anyone who is reading the paper normally noticed it? What were their reactions? I hope it's coming off as cute and silly instead of annoying.

We also have a preview clip of the season finale complete with a British sounding voice over. Gee, I wonder if they are spoofing the royal wedding from last year just a bit.




The website in the commercial is actually kind of fun to play around with. At least I was able to dress up starlight a bit for the occasion.

And yeah she kind of gained some wings there. I dunno it just seemed to fit.

Box and Packaging Art

I am a sucker for the G4 pony line. Sometimes I get a little sick of the pink/purple overkill, but I've seen that before. G4 has some truly lovely ponies, or maybe I'm just a sucker for blue.... The blind bags have come in some very interesting colors, including the brown "cherry spices", a chocolate brown unicorn with a mane of varying shades of pink.

Recently I received some of the old 80's pony packaging as an "extra" in a pony package someone sent me. I had never really been one to seek out the inserts and such before so I had not previously paid much attention to them. Here's a scan of a little bit of the brochure showing to different sets of ponies.

The set on the left were called "so soft" ponies and came with a layer of flocking that makes them feel fuzzy/furry.

The set on the right were "twinkle-eye" ponies. These ponies had a shiny gem in the place where a normal pony eye would be.

I like this scan as it shows that there was a decent amount of purple and pink in the original sets, but you can see that neither pink nor purple DOMINATE the page. And the insert itself is pretty attractive. I love the pastel colors and all of the poses the ponies are in. Even where some of the ponies are sharing the same pose there are subtle differences because the art was done by hand and not just vectors being recolored.

The thing I find most disappointing about the G4 packaging is the "copy/paste" or "recoloring" of the almost every new pony to have the exact same design as a "mane six" pony, with only the color pallet swapped. I hope the next waves of pony will show a little more variation .

Zecora Commission

Well my first official pony commission is complete and it wasn't a pony! Since I have been working on pony art I have done primarily ATC size (2.5 x 3.5 inches) But this Zecora is a whopping 7x7!

I might have to start doing some bigger art as I love how this came out. The flowers (For those who are not super into My next assignment concerns the spa ponies Lotus and Aloe and then I can work on Year two ATCs in my drawing project.

Everypony Draw Year 1 Complete

I have been slowly working on drawing ATC cards of the standard release G1 My Little Ponies in year by year.

I'm cheating a little here since technically the first year ponies have flat feet, but mine have concave, but here's just a small shot of some of the original "mane six". Here are Butterscotch, Cotton Candy, and Peachy. (Peachy came with a toy set, so I haven't included her in requirements to draw)

And here is a recap of my renditions of the first year of ponies

The flickr set can be found here.



Onward to year two!

McPonies Complete

I have acquired all of the 2012 McDonalds ponies! Unfortunately, Twilight still won't stand up properly.

My friends in Ohio were looking to complete a set as well and sent me a Fluttershy when I was afraid of not finding one in California. I'm very lucky as I did find a Fluttershy here eventually, but they happened to get something completely different, which I am now the proud owner of.....

And here is a a comparison of both Fluttershy ponies.

I'll admit I like the face and hair of the 2011 Fluttershy better than the 2012 Fluttershy.