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hello i have some strong feelings about how littlepip is often designed.
I think the first design, how she’s often drawn, is easy. It’s easy to look at and understand and especially easy to animate, which I assume was part of the point, but…I don’t like it. I think it’s incoherent, I think it clashes, I don’t think there’s much real decision behind why the colours are the way that they are. Plus I don’t like plain, genuine grey on characters (blue makes it look brown, brown makes it look blue, it’s just not very good at doing what you want it to do.) it echoes a lot of early community show design puritanism for me, and I’m just not very fond of it, and the same goes for a lot of the OG designs of the FOE characters.
Is my design neccecarily right? no, but that’s how I like to draw murder horse. I like how scars can show how long she might have been in the wasteland, what sort of a pony she is, pointing is a personal taste but all the colours on there are coherent and chosen for a reason. They’re all warm, and don’t clash, the green goes with how I draw green on pipbucks, the pointing is more horse-y (and just something I like to add to my characters) and it isn’t boring.
Is it easy to animate/simple? No, but it can be. I’ll always be a browngrey littlepip drawer, I want to get to a point where I make little sheets like this for a lot of FOE characters.
I think the first design, how she’s often drawn, is easy. It’s easy to look at and understand and especially easy to animate, which I assume was part of the point, but…I don’t like it. I think it’s incoherent, I think it clashes, I don’t think there’s much real decision behind why the colours are the way that they are. Plus I don’t like plain, genuine grey on characters (blue makes it look brown, brown makes it look blue, it’s just not very good at doing what you want it to do.) it echoes a lot of early community show design puritanism for me, and I’m just not very fond of it, and the same goes for a lot of the OG designs of the FOE characters.
Is my design neccecarily right? no, but that’s how I like to draw murder horse. I like how scars can show how long she might have been in the wasteland, what sort of a pony she is, pointing is a personal taste but all the colours on there are coherent and chosen for a reason. They’re all warm, and don’t clash, the green goes with how I draw green on pipbucks, the pointing is more horse-y (and just something I like to add to my characters) and it isn’t boring.
Is it easy to animate/simple? No, but it can be. I’ll always be a browngrey littlepip drawer, I want to get to a point where I make little sheets like this for a lot of FOE characters.
I also hate BlackJack’s design with a burning passion and want to redesign her, please for the love of god pure white on characters is not and is never good a a a a (I’m kidding, make whatever design choices you want it’s free real estate)
also, have my thoughts on blackjack. Soley aestetics based since I have not read that fic
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I noever saw it that way, but it kinda makes sense
Edited
Prescicely! A mullet seems to fit him perfectly.
Edited because: Grammar
yesss! I imagine him with a bit of a mullet
I also imagine him with facial hair.
And I can’t help but visión him with long hair.
thank you!! I always imagined Calamity being smaller than velvet, just because I imagine velvet as a big lady. I think some funky markings on him would be cool, I also really like it when he’s drawn with facial hair.
Reading Horizons was my best mistake, I still regret it. Beside that have you tried Murky number 7, I loved it almost as the original. Murky is the best, right beside Threnody that is.
Edited
Minus the scars all over her face (Only the neck one is remarkable), your design could be perfectly canon too.
honestly it’s just a stylistic choice - I find it easy to read as “horse”, at least to the same degree that mlp ponies are, like let’s be real they’re so far removed, even down to things like the joints on the back legs, forward facing eyes, shortened bodies, Flesh Hooves, no fetlocks, etc etc. Like we can slap a horn, wings, bat wings etc on it and somehow it’s still a pony, even if it’s cloe That’s how I like to draw them, with my personal taste in artists leaning more towards styles that move away from the show like yakovlev-vad and syruppy who sometimes don’t draw noses on ‘em at all. Just personal taste though, really! I’ll for sure take the nostril thing into account though, that’s kind of interesting.
Edited
I really disagree on the “free real estate” part, but that’s been a pet peeve of mine with a lot of fanart for a long time. Not to pick on you in particular, but if it wasn’t for the horn, what would sell these headshots to the unfamiliar viewer as “pony” instead of “cute doggie?”
Horses also don’t have tufts of fluffy fur poking out at the angles of their contours. I’ve seen a lot of people draw them with a split philtrum like kitties, probably because they don’t know any different. But all of that conspires to fight the underlying “horse” part of their designs, rather than communicate it through the layers of abstraction.
Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talkI’ll shut up now.agreed! I was going to attatch versions for her fresh out the stable compared to towards the end of the fic, but more or less ran out of time. There is an alternate version of her without the scars! My main gripe with her original design is the colours, the grey ends up looking blue and I don’t gel with it
oh! I didn’t know she had that character detail! Then again, I couldn’t get past chapter 1, so it’d be lying if I said I had any clue about her canonical visual appearance.
I don’t know, I kind of disagree - pip did live a sheltered life for the most part, so I think using scars as visual storytelling could be really interesting and introduces a lot of potential - it shows what sort of a pony she is, getting into fights and scraps and fighting for what she thought was right was a big part of her character. Designs that are busy for the sake of being busy, yes, but I don’t think that’s the case when design choices have meanings behind them, even if it’s just to break up the colours a bit or to direct attention somewhere else, especially considering actual horses don’t tend to be solid colour.
It just comes across as busy for the sake of being busy. Especially for a character who canonically led as very sheltered (relatively) life for the most part.
ya, the story is a slog, It has a lot of good parts, and the setting is fun, but it’s unfortunately dragged down by lots of bad things in the story. Oh BTW, her name isn’t actually Black Jack, it’s Go Fish. XP
oh lord there is so much i could have to say about blackjack’s design, that being said, I haven’t read that fic because I can’t stand it. I do, however, have this! https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/590129445919260683/1147584148194729994/image.png