Pix3M

I guess. I was imagining something rigid enough to be in its intended shape, so there wouldn't be much folds. I only use one layer of shadow. My darker colors used in the hair and coat is a bit like reflected light. However, I realize that i need to learn how shadows work a bit more before I can figure out where I put more shadows on the skirt. I dunno about highlights though. I've realize that I don't know how highlights work with cloth materials. Unfortunately, the spring thing was on the skirt because it was on the original design to start with.

link to dA: http://fav.me/d5km6og Drawn pixel-by-pixel on a program I'd liken to MS paint with keyboard shortcuts. I kinda hope this makes it to EQD... or not because Seth has his reasons that definitely exists.... somewhere.

Haha, your proportions were divided by zero by Pinkie Pie. I think this looks totally nonsensical, but that's probably exactly what you want anyways.

"...because inside, I don't wanna grow up. I am a manchild born in the wrong body with an interest with other men. I wanna play with toy ponies and brush their hair all day. I also join the brony community because I'm lonely. Nobody ever wants to talk about hair braiding with me but now I have friends to braid hair with!" Obviously, this sounds utterly ridiculous. If you're ever trying to present other people's logic (e.g. during a political discussion), if it sounds ridiculous to you, chances are you don't even understand what you are criticizing. People in general are not stupid. People likely have their own reasons for being how they are. Have a nice night.

Not exactly accurate. They don't explain proportions at all and it shows when their mare nose examples are exaggerated in size. Its example drawing with the red pony with goggles also has log-shaped legs. Show-style, I am certain, has legs that start thin from the chest and flares out in width at the hoof. Huh... what a head scratcher. On the example this artist have for the lower body, the front legs are short and are bent too far back so our pony does not appear properly balanced. What it looks like is there being an imaginary force holding our pony from the chest and the pony is holding their front legs back. The artist also doesn't really show much understanding of the underlying bone structure which is stylized from real horses. Pony front legs are analogous to our own arms - their 'forearm' is much shorter, their 'lower arm' and 'wrist' are much longer, and the last joint is basically one fat finger with a giant fingernail. It shows when their front leg examples only show one major joint analogous to our wrist while the first joint analogous to our elbow is missing. There's something about that that feels a bit off, but once I get off this comp on another machine more suitable for work, I can see for myself how accurate this is. The back legs on this one looks very off balance. I believe any useful drawing tutorial has to cover proper balance of a figure so it does not appear a figure is tipped over. The largest section of the back leg is slanted forward too far. Show-style ponies have that same section completely vertical when standing. Look at the bottom of the tutorial - it's clearly not a guide to drawing them totally show-accurate but just a rough guide to getting something close enough. I'll still stand by my point that guideline ideas offered in so many tuts can help, but they're not the best approach if you want something totally show accurate as even the writers of the tut don't really reach that ideal.

I don't remember seeing a tut that replicates in exact detail but instead close enough to pass off as decent, not for ponies yet at least. Surprise me with something?

I would not recommend tutorials for drawing ponies as it's not a good approach unless you want your own style of drawing ponies. If you want results that most resemble the actual show, get a picture of a pony in a fun pose and copy that by eye. Using help lines will in the end still make you draw what you think a pony looks like.

But can I have not just impressive, but more impressive? I think that's a perfectly reasonable goal. Besides, if I notice a potential issue and I can easily just go fix it, I will do exactly that.

Nah. I just listed stuff that I feel could have been improved to better go with what I want. The things I listed are things that make me less satisfied with what I want. Being a pixel artist doesn't mean that they necessarily have high standards. Most bronies into pixel art are ones who just sticks with desktop ponies and other styles comparable to that. I guess I'm just somebody who just feels like going directions other brony pixel artists haven't dared to go.

Well, it is a work in progress. If it seems perfect, look closer. You can find things to improve on if you stare at it long enough. There aren't very many perfect works out there. There might be something objectively good that can be changed. To make my point, here are some thoughts: After a couple of days of starting at this while I casually work on my ultra-precise manual antialiasing (i'll just call it AA which is regular pixel artist lingo), I'm beginning to see problems that are fundamental. There is a potential issue that the pose is kind of like pony-creator - the body is aligned to the side so it creates a weak depth impression. I could probably draw her in 3/4ths so the back legs are definitely farther, creating a much stronger impression of depth. I also did not plan out this piece well enough so I wasn't sure how fluttershy would actually look in 3D. If I planned ahead, I would be having less issues with trying to figure out shading and the positioning of the legs. I may have went with a side view for the sake of displaying a dress idea from the show that never went into practice, but still... there's a weak depth impression. Anatomy wise... Look at the raised legs... doesn't it seem difficult to wrap your head around what the leg might look underneath the cloth? I also eventually found Fluttershy's head to be a bit wide for what I intended, and after making it narrower, I found the results more attractive. Some of the legs also appear to be different lengths. Then, there is a stylistic problem found in what I manage to get done. In the version in this thread, look at the outline of her lower mane right below her eye. That line is of uniform length. I am going for an experimental outline style which attempts to add to the piece by varying in width. I've tried varying the width in an attempt of creating lines that flow more smoothly, and in the case of the tip of her nose, try to actually add a detail by merely thickening a line. What I have done to that outline of her lower mane right below her eye is make that straight line start thick from her ear, go thinner as it curves down, then thicken again. Plus, there IS a better way to do the colors. The pink in the hair basically punches through the image so it almost seems like it doesn't belong. I also found a way to ditch the darker green color in used for her eye so I can use another color for more precise AA. Pixel artists like to go for smaller color counts which usually gets you more beautiful results. The AA around the edge of her eye is also punching through the image so it looks like noise which doesn't really add to the piece. The background color is also unecessarily saturated and it is best to desaturate it as much as I can without making the red AA colors on the exterior of the outline start to punch through the image. That way, the colors used on Fluttershy will have a much stronger focus. And here's my latest version. See how I addressed the issues above by now: https://dl.dropbox.c...web/tmp/FD4.png

I don't think these forums are the best place for critiques anyways. Not sure what made this piece make people actually say something, but people normally like to be nice so people will usually either hear nice words, or nothing at all. I guess I tried to change that a bit only to find that it gets rather mixed results as it's pretty hard to tell how much critiquing somebody wants. I could tear art to pieces as I learn more and more about what makes art to be great, but I usually hold back a bit and only focus on what's most important. I remember when you said that you were a fan of my works. If it means anything, I've been on the receiving end of getting an a ton amount of critical attention which everyone was too nice or just not knowledgeable enough to give earlier. Look at the description in this deviation and you can tell that I definitely also had a bit of critiquing: http://fav.me/d5gmjhg Heh. Look at me and this thread which doesn't get any critical attention: http://mlpforums.com/topic/37832-could-use-input-for-a-new-pixelling-style-of-mine/ ...Prob because I was looking in the WRONG place to look. I could probably search up for an art site dedicated to giving and receiving critiques for the sake of improvement, but I was mainly interested in opinions the anatomical style used. I guess people were too nice. We could all have our own reasons for drawing one particular style. We all have our own preferences. I for one like styles that sit between realism I find dull and animu that I find hardly believable. I think we also have to remember that our audience also have their own preference - they have their own sense of aesthetics. While people do seem to have their own reasons for wanting to draw one particular way, it's probably fair to say that there may also be reasons why people like particular styles over another. Some styles are more serious, others more whimsical, and so on. Heck, I also stupefied myself when I made a little something cute for my sis as I know that a cute art style will work the best. Here's the exact deviation: http://pix3m.deviantart.com/art/Birthday-Gift-Flutterdash-Icon-326344739 Then, I watched it turn out to be one of my more popular works and amazed myself with the fave spam I get on dA. It basically overshadowed my other individual works that the same amount of effort put into it. I guess the biggest lesson we can learn from here is just to know what people expect if we wanna make the most out of our audience. We can draw for ourselves ans satisfy ourselves, but it seems that things are different if we're dealing with an audience.

If you're still doing video game remixes and manage to make them pony-inspired, I could probably offer some pixelated stuff for nostalgia's sake. Or... is that not a direction you're interested in going?

Shading is difficult, and ponies have no third dimension. I don't think we need to get into shading just yet as I think our pony proportions can be improved. But... drawing something entirely show-accurate is still difficult albiet not as hard as mastering shading. Even if you are not interested in show accuracy, drawing them show-style should help you know which parts of your original pony style is different from show style. Right now, what I'm seeing is is a long neck, thin front legs, small eye that's placed a bit far in front of the head, large flank, and wings angled rather high. I believe the best way to learn how to draw ponies is to get a picture of a pony, and copy that by eye. You'll get more accurate pony proportions into memory this way.

Oh the fun drama over art. Eh... I've been annoyed by critiques of others before anyways, so I've been on the receiving end also. I think there should be less experimentation and just look at what works for other artists. If you want realism, you can just find a picture and try to copy by eye (grid optional and can be helpful). If you want anime, look up drawing guides and see what sort of shortcuts you wanna take, and see how your results compare to other artists. Then again, what I seem to hear often enough is that learning realism always helps with drawing anime as anime is inevitably based off of real faces but exaggerate or simplify certain parts. You also have to realize that babies proportionally have bigger eyes, and as we grow older, our head grows a bit faster than our eyes (dunno if eyes grow at all honestly). For this reason, we seem to subconsciously see large eyes as being younger, so anime styles have a tendency to shrink eye size to show age. (Fun thought: MLP completely flips this idea on its head, but they use roundness of eyes to show youth instead, I believe.) If there's a reason why Rarity looks like a child, it's probably either 1. because Motion seems to like more realistic styles of human drawing while you are more interested in something stylized or 2. because that's what large eyes do to how young somebody looks... *edit* or 3. Because her face is rounder than a lot of women in the age range you're thinking. I don't see her as a child though.

Here's an idea... what if you show us a PNG (or jpg?) version on the forums? It's not like you'll be marked down because you showed it to forumers... I hope. All it matters is that you send the pics as a PDF.

Dem sparkles... Next thing you know she tells me in her British/South African accent "Hey! My eyes are up here!". Them sparkles like to attract plenty of attention to themselves, heh.

What I meant by 'high society' is a stereotypical one with snobby people with top hats, British accents and such. I wasn't really thinking of whatever we seem to have these days (not that I pay attention to celebrities anyways). iirc, that trope was based off of capitalists from a time when the UK was a world superpower with enough colonies so the sun never sets on them. Eh, I guess we're thinking in totally different time periods.

?? What is it that makes it important to mention race in something that shouldn't have anything to do with race? It's a game, not a social studies class, haha.

Rarity is formal, more mature than other ponies, and has a very high interest in Canterlot high-society culture. Mohawks can be associated with delinquency, immaturity, violence and rebellion which doesn't really fit in with the 'high-society' trope at all. Just my own thinking, and probably others too.

To add to what another person said, I would darken body outlines to feel just as dark as the outlines on the hair. You have very clear contrast from hair to its outline but you don't see the same contrast from body to its outline.

Rough edges??? All I'm seeing are either overlapping lines, or the computer's antialiasing not smoothing the edges of the line adequately enough. Doesn't seem rough to me. At least your motor skills seem finer than my own.

I think the thing that keeps people from liking human versions of ponies is usually the fact that it's difficult to make a pony look like a human. You have to change the facial structure, the eyes, and the hair in order to make it make sense on a human being... you know? While adapting human stuff to ponies is a real challenge itself, it seems that adapting ponies into humans is a whole different challenge.