SFyr

Why, though? Body-wise, pegasi seem to be interchangable with unicorns and earth-ponies, but they have feathered wings. So likely, if unicorns and earth ponies are only-fur, pegasi have both fur and feathers. Moreover, structurally speaking manes and tails are essentially long fur. It would be more likely that pegasi have no feathers, rather than no fur. And going by our real world standards, all races are just about as relatively unnatural/magical--alicorns are just the most "powerful." And, given they can have children with non-alicorns, there has to be a very close genetic linkage, if there's any notable deviation at all. I would almost suggest, unless magic is weirdly at play, each pony carries the genetic code (even alicorns) for all races, and expression/alleles or epigenetics becomes more of a concern then distinct genetic code. Which again, would suggest both fur and feathers are coded for for all of them, even if not all races express it.

In a way fur and feathers are actually pretty similar structures (same material, some structural similarities, etc); and with cartoon genetics I wouldn't be surprised if theirs drifted a good bit away from our normal grouping of what is furred and what is feathered, and how it's kept apart. I've kinda just operated under the idea that it's regional, like body hair or mammal coat patterns. Certain regions have a slightly different expression of the same code, yielding feathers on some extremities and fur on others, etc. And, at the joints in between you might get some middle ground, or intermediate structure--or in other places too, just due to imperfect expression and the like.

I am not an overly experienced writer, but to me, it seems like there's a few major points to creating an emotional scene: Character empathy or relevence; basically, make sure the characters mean something to the reader. Different characters will hold different attachment to the reader, and in order to be emotionally invested in a scene, I believe you need to be emotionally invested in the characters playing a part in it. This goes beyond being just the main character, or the character that the reader spends the most time with. Said characters simply need that built up, which can occur in minor characters, or be absent in main characters (unsympathetic or uninteresting main characters can be a bane of many stories IMO). Impact or stakes; I feel emotional scenes, in order to be impactful, need to have something on the line. Something important needs to be either at stake, or involved with the exchange. Could be life, livelihood, relationships, or feelings, but it needs to matter. Overall effective conveyance; basically, writing skill. It's pretty unavoidable that there's a lot of little quirks and skills that make the hits of an emotional scene connect, be it smoothness, effective word choice, or overall good conveyance of the scene/actions/thoughts. There's a lot of little mistakes people can make that help kill the drama, or drag readers out of the experience. Just as well, there's a lot of little details that can help pull them in. I think that's a much more complicated manner though.

@Cloggedone, sure! I'll send you a PM in a sec.

No worries at all, haha. It would be lovely if you could PM me the details of what you want (desired expression, references if you have them, etc), though to pay for the commission you'll have to go through here: https://mlpforums.com/store/category/80-sfyr/ I don't receive payment until after everything is finished, so order doesn't matter much to me--so long as it's processed before I send off the final image. ♥

I imagine so; I figure you're thinking mainly like, coat pattern/colors and maybe tail?

Wow. I don't think I've posted here in forever. Dang. Anyways, random art update while I remember! I First off, reference sheets: And some other stuff: I also have another 4 completed reference sheets to post when I get the go-ahead on that, and I have a large piece I'm still currently working on. Might take a while to post stuff of that nature, but yeah!

If you want some practice doing characters, I personally found this to be really fun: http://etyas-shenanigans.tumblr.com/post/142804660995/pony-randomizer-challenge-here-are-the-rules-you Basically to take a screenshot, then force yourself to do a new piece/new OC with the qualities/colors/etc you have on screen. Wound up getting one of my favorite personal OCs from it, myself.

More than likely it may hit a issues if it gets enough popularity, even if it's free. Hasbro might (and has) gone after completely-free projects and shut them down with cease and desist orders. I can't remember the exacts of it, but if I recall correctly, it has to do with a strange setup of how copyright and trademark laws operate--part of ensuring you maintain exclusive rights to your intellectual property and the like in particular cases depends on how you've behaved regarding protecting it in the past, as in, you have to actively defend your trademark and crud for it to keep as high of a level of protection. Even if it loses Hasbro some public favor/revenue, it's legally in its best interest to go after really notable fan projects that are infringing on trademarks/copyrights that they own, for the sake of being able to better secure their property in cases where it's damaging, or just in general. I could be wrong (I am NOT well versed in this stuff), but that's what I recall/can find online regarding the matter. Honestly I think if you want to get to completion, you're better of not advertising it/releasing it when it's already complete, or simply keep it quiet/unimpressive. Plenty of fan stuff isn't touched, it's more when something is particularly notable that it seems to get sniped. I did find a few things to glance at, though: https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/BasicFacts.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_infringement http://www.wired.co.uk/article/investigation-are-fan-games-legal And, it's noteworthy that fangames have been shut down by companies in the past even when they're free, Hasbro included. I particularly remember them shutting down Fighting is Magic, a really promising fighter using the mane 6 characters, which I think was going to be free and expanded to include other characters from the show. The staff of the fan project stopped/scrapped it after receiving a cease and desist letter from Hasbro, and went on to instead work on successfully fund Them's Fightin' Herds on Indigogo (and if I recall, Lauren Faust even got involved at that point and helped them with world-building the world for TFH). Though, I've still seen some conventions playing modified/unmodified builds of the game at conventions, as they had gotten far enough to make it playable, and people still had digital copies of the leaked build when development died.

Cuuute. Also, props for this! It's always lovely to see someone branching into writing, and I personally love works touching on Luna and the nightguard! Also, I'm still quite flattered to have North Star included. I hope you continue!

@mirroredsea! First off, I think I've told ya before but your art is just amazingly lovely to see. I'll toss a few questions of my own than I enjoy asking artists I don't know a lot about. Hope you don't mind a few different questions at once? What inspired you originally to take up art, and why did you continue with it to where you are? Like, was there a major source of inspiration starting out, or some major thing you were working towards? Do you have any major projects on the horizon? Personally, I have a bunch of ideas of huge projects I may "eventually" want to get into, and I'd love to hear what other people have planned in a similar vein. Can be completely unrealistic, like, "this would be amazing but impractical" of course, haha. What would you say is your favorite part about the whole process of creating and drawing your works?

@ZethaPondererI think there's a missing piece there, especially since actions (or results) can occur without intent, from what I understand of it. Like, lack of awareness being the result of an accident seems to be devoid of intent on the part of the person, but, it still comes from who/what/how they are. I think this is separate from intent. Personally, I see it more like this. Actions speak the loudest, sure, but they can also be very telling of the person in general; often, actions arise from people's habits, how they understand/instinctively interact with the world, and judging people on them has some basis because it judges them based on how they've carried themselves and built themselves into being. A person who is terrible at complimenting people is someone who's probably not put a ton into practicing it, and someone who comes off as rude or insensitive is probably someone who either doesn't show a strong value for empathy/pleasantry in interacting with people, or hasn't put enough effort/time into developing it yet. I don't think there's a solid dismissal of actions for being "just how we are," since so much of how we act, think, or behave in general is the product of environment, habit, and our own self-guided development as people. The person who dismisses their own faults/strengths as "just how they are" kinda misses how much control we have over ourselves. MEANWHILE. Intention seems to be the truest picture of who we are, in my mind. It's also the thing we can never truly see as outsiders, just as we will never 100% understand the person we're considering. I tend to hold people more to their intentions rather than their actions, as quite often, you get bad actions from good/neutral intentions, where actions are only bad because the person acting them out doesn't understand something or another. Additionally, actions tend to be judged from the perspective of what result they have, while they're committed based on a prediction or evaluation. And, this prediction/evaluation, the true core of actions from the actor side, are guided by intent. So, you're a lot closer to judging the person themselves if you go by intent. So yeah. I think intentions matter a lot more if you're judging people for who they are, but actions can still be telling of who they've been or how they've taken charge of their life. But, I do think it's possible for some actions/results to occur without intent, but that depends on where you're drawing the line. Someone takes a step forward with intent, however small, but someone trips without intent. That lack of awareness is habit if nothing else, but more likely situational--an "action" attributed to them when their intent did not include or effect it in isolation.