Surprise!

 

Oh look I drew something! Are you surprised are you? 

Sadly I actually drew this for the EQD training grounds and then failed to submit it because I misread the directions. Now I have to wait for a catch up upload night. 

In other news I was able to order a pretty big pony order from target.com the other day so maybe new ponies and pictures soon! 

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!

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 .

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!

Everypony Project: Blue Belle

Continuing on with the everypony project, I'm nearing the end of year one. I finished this lovely Blue Belle the other day and I've only got two more ponies to go before I complete the original six.

I wish Blue Belle got a little more love. She actually have quite lovely colors when you got down to it.

I've also completed the McPony set, but I need it to not rain for a day before I can take pictures.

Everypony Project- Blossom

After about a month of no updates I've got some new art to share. This is a pony named Blossom who happens to be pony number three in my everypony project.

Everypony Project

I got an art table at Everfree! I have no idea how I'm getting there or who I'm staying with, but I've preregistered and I am guaranteed a table. If I'm lucky I might even get to sit next to the talented Starry Night and draw ponies for 3 days in a row.

Anyways to get me to tip top art shape, I'm going to draw ponies. A LOT of ponies. Something I have observed from watching other artists is that to see any real jump in improvement you need to draw almost, if not every day. Now, I think saying that I would draw every day might burn me out, but I'd like to draw more. So I've made a post on one of my pony forums saying I'm open for commissions and I'm going to work on a little project.

This is Cotton Candy. She is one of the first six my little ponies released by Hasbro in the 1980s. My goal is to draw each pony for as long as I can do the project without getting bored. In the end I hope to improve my art skills, and maybe I'll even have some pretty cool ATC cards to sell/trade at the convention.

Why am I starting with G1? Well, G4 ponies are released in "waves" as there isn't much of a defining "set theme" unlike G1 which had some unique pony sets released each year. I'm really interested in working with these sets, as they will all be different but have something to bring them together. That and I'm assuming g4 will be the highest in demand so if I draw them later my art skills will hopefully have improved!

Holiday Art

It's a little late in the season, but I have a story about the spirit of generosity that I would like to tell. Those who have been reading for a while have noticed that I participate in monthly ATC swaps on the MLParena hosted somepony named AmberMarie. Last month I thought it would be fun to send a PM (private message) to all of the participants except AmberMarie and ask them to draw an additional card and send it to her anonymously as a mysterious little thank you around the holidays.

The first 2 cards showed up and I was a little mad that people seem to have a hard time with the concept of anonymous. As a third and 4th card showed up AmberMarie had to deal with a sudden death in the family. I'm so glad that we, as a community were doing something nice when something really sad happened. I hope the little 3.5 x 2.5 pieces of art we sent brightened her day at a much needed time.

Even though the picture quality of these cards is less than what I would like (I didn't have a decent scanner so I took photos) I adore just looking at the yumyum I drew. She just seems extra special.

I love Wingers!

My very first pony I got as a child was a Summerwing pony named "High Flyer". I never liked the name and tweaked it so that she was a "he" named Firefly after the main character in the My Little Pony special. There is another set of butterfly-winged ponies called "Windywing ponies" but no one can ever keep the sets straight so they just get collectively called "wingers"

I love the butterfly-like wings these ponies have but they are some of the more expensive common ponies to replace, as the wings were often damaged. When I sold off all my ponies before moving to California, I kept this little guy as he is very special to me.
I've been considering looking for the other wingers, but with G4 around I feel like I don't want to be spending money like that.

Luckily for me zazzle released some "retro" pony designs right before Christmas and I saw this lovely winger binder. Ben was a sweetheart and got it for me for xmas/Hanukkah and now my pony ATC cards live inside the pony binder.I was a little worried about the quality as I don't exactly consider zazzle to have the best quality merchandise. (I worked in the printing business for over a year. I'm allowed to be picky!) Surprisingly the print looks really nice and I think the binder is worth the higher price tag considering it is covered with pony. My only gripe is that poor high flyer looks much pinker and girlier than I am used to imagining, though I don't think it is the print so much as the original box art. It's also made from a name brand binder and hopefully won't be falling apart on me.

Now I just need to do more swaps so I can get some more art to put in it.


PS. This is blog post# 50! This is about 45 more posts than I thought I would do, so a big thank you out there to everyone reading and commenting.

PPS. We're also pretty darn close to 5,000 views. I should do something special...

Recording Session

A few days ago I made a little trip down to visit AppleCider and be a guest on the Bronyville podcast. I thought everypony might like to see a little bit of the behind the scenes.

Let's start out with a look at the equipment. I'm not going to pretend like I know what all of that stuff actually does, but we did a bunch of fiddling around and moving microphones in and such. Fashion Style (FS) Fluttershy came with me for some good luck.

In addition to being New Year's Eve it was also AppleCider's birthday so we had Indian takeout and StarryNight got him a surprise cake! As we were singing Happy Birthday one of the candles fell over and I was afraid it was going to fall and catch the carpet on fire. And for those listeners that were wondering he did blow out all of the candles in one go :)

And here is a picture of me, probably at the part where I was derping and not remembering the address of my own blog. HipsterDerpy's So Soft (SS) Paradise hopped up on the couch to provide some G1 love as well. AC & Chef Sandy did a very nice job of making me feel comfortable. I feel like it has been quite a while since I have laughed like that. One thing I wasn't expecting (and that I hope doesn't show up in the audio too much) is that I kept smacking my glasses into the microphone.


So yeah a big big thank you to Bronyville for having me on. It was a lot of fun and I hope somepony out there found it entertaining.

Happy Hearth's Warming Eve

Happy Holidays everypony!

Ice Crystal ATC

I've mentioned ATC swaps on here before and this is something I drew for the November swap. My partner, Eviecorn said she liked G1 boys and scarves so I ended up drawing a G1 Ice Crystal. He's a mountain boy that was never available in the US and often goes for $100+ on ebay. I think the exclusiveness adds to his charm, but a lot of the appeal is also that he has very nice colors.

Honestly, I'm disappointed in his back and the bottom of the scarf, but man I love those blue eyes! I'm grateful for the ATC swaps, but I can't help feeling like I'm on the lower end of the art spectrum. I mean it's hard to be a hobby artist when you know some people got to go to art school and actually understand anatomy, color theory, and all that fun stuff. I feel like my biggest problem is my art isn't detailed enough. Maybe part of it is that I dislike doing backgrounds and I need to work on that but I need to to jut draw more to improve at all. I'm kind of considering trying to enter something for the traditional category for the contest on Equestria Daily, bu we shall see how things work. December is shaping up to be a pretty busy month for me.

Felt Firefly

Last year my internet friend MollyBot made me a ridiculously cute felt pokemon ornament for my tree and I have been debating trying my hand at a pony ornament for the last few weeks. Well I ended up at Michael's the other day with a 30% off coupon so I bought a few sheets of felt and some embroidery floss. Then I traced various pony parts from the vector images in the coloring book onto a sheet of paper and cut out around my "pattern".

The result was this cute G1 Firefly that I made for HipsterDerpy's birthday.

I am planning on making some other G4 styled ponies this way as I think it came out awfully cute! Of course I made several mistakes and I know for next time that I should work on the details first. I'm also interested in doing some ponies with felt hair and others with floss. I think the floss works really well with Firefly but it might not work so much with other ponies.

Getting Art

One of the things I like about the pony community is they do a lot of swaps, trading hasbro ponies, custom ponies, and even ATC cards. I wonder if you go to a pony convention if there are a lot of these around. Remember the scans of the artwork I did from the last post? Well I got my pony art in the mail and scanned it.

Dovetail at the arena drew me a High Flyer in autumn, and even made a cute little "back card" story for it.

Halloween ATC Stuff

Hello all,

I'm home with strep throat today, but I figure being wrapped up like a cocoon on the couch is as good of a time as any to update the pony blog.

Ben found a few Wave 3 G4s at target, the exact same day I got frustrated with not being able to find dewdrop dazzle and ordered the set online. They were on backorder for a while but they've finally shipped now.

I've been working kind of crazy hours, but I did squeak into the Halloween/Autumn ATC swap which produced these lovely pieces.

"Goddess Medley"

"Tricky Sweetie Belle"