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K_Cast

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(edited)

Hello Everypony,

 

   As promised today's article will focus on another setting that will be introduced and used in Equestrian Tales. Today we will be showing you the kingdom of Dream Valley, or as its referred to in the modern stories as Old Canterlot. 

 As some of you know our story dials the clock back over 1000 years into the past of the generation 4 timeline, however we are also using generation 1 as a historical base to bridge into one My Little Pony Universe. With the the idea of bringing back some of the stories from the original generation, and telling the tales of the years before the founding of Equestria we needed a new home location. Unlike FiM where we are in Ponyville, our main cast is out exploring the living, and changing world, returning from time to time, to share what they have learned and add that to the library being created there. Thus we needed a Kingdom that stood out from the others of the time, not torn by hate or race issues that ran its course in this point in history.

 This kingdom was designed based on the location and design from the original pilot episode from generation one, Rescue at Midnight Castle. The core of the first seasons will take place in Ponyland, the original location of the generation one stories.  

 This is what the original location looked like in the show.

Image result for Dream Castle MLP

This location served as the starting point of the creation of this new city. We took the bay, the rolling hills, the green, and began to redesign the entire landscape. The challenge was to create a living, breathing town, and a kingdom from this location that would serve not only our main casts story, but to be able to use in the second arch that takes place in this kingdom. We couldn't settle for a stand alone castle, we needed to go bigger, and bring the town that would have formed around this castle to life. Ending in the creation of a forth tribe, known as the Kingdom of Harmony in the time before the founding of Equestria. The King Dusk and his wife Dawn ruled this land after the fall of another power that kept the ponies in a forced unity that ended up breaking them up entirely. The royals wanted to create a safe haven for any pony that wanted to live their lives in peace, without the forceful rule of a tyrant, or the hate that followed the end of the former empire. In this time we are basically in the pony dark ages, and to maintain a peaceful kingdom, and the safety of its citizens it also needed to be defensible, something that was never accounted for in the original MLP stories. We needed to recreate the entire design as a functioning, and very real place. Taking in inspiration from real castles around the world to bring together into this new design.

These are early concept works of the redesign process of Dream Valley-

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After a lot of thought and exploring farther into how this kingdom will interact with our story and the world we decided to go with image 3, with the castle on its defensive position looming over a bay, protecting the town and its citizens below. The waterfall adding some needed beauty to the scenes we will be building. Taking this image to color, Ruffu added the needed elements so we could get a better idea of how it would look in the living world, the structure of the castle was nearly the same as the original Dream Castle, adding some more realistic colors and elements to make it look more real. the town sits below that I'll get to shortly, and the forest that lay on its boarders, that will be a main location in the pilot episode. As time went on we needed realized the rather basic design of the old castle was not going to fit well with how we wanted to present the location, and some elements including the waterfall didn't look right what put to some testing. So the location went back to the drawing board, and became the castle that will appear in the story.

Here is both first and final location drafts (the bottom being the original design, and the top being the fleshed out version)-

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The location itself didnt change at all, only the castle was originally touched, building it more like a true castle, adding the extra details, and a proper bridge to better frame the waterfalls. After settling on this design we moved to working on the town itself, that will be used in a number of episodes and stories throughout the intended series. For this we poured over the FiM series digging up every bit of information on the cultures and architecture of the ponies of the time we are trying to show. Most of the design elements for Equestrian Tales comes from the episode, Hearts Warming Eve in season 2, we still framed every frame from the story of the founding of Equestria and brought those elements into the design of not just this, but each of the pony villages, and structures that will be within the world.

Here is some of the concept and design artwork from the location, you can also see some of the added elements from the episode within these structures-

5a9cc4c95abc5_towndesign.jpg.4c0d033ec9be285e5ce8d793b1a415ce.jpg

 

This is how these elements come together within a scene in the storyboard of the pilot-

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There you can see some of the different structures working together to create a shot. 

As time went on and our story began to grow, we developed a unique culture for each of the races represented in this time, the earth ponies, unicorns, and pegasi. We wanted to farther expand the idea of the Kingdom of Harmony to showcase these different cultures within one location, showing how they can blend and work together. So the kingdom went back to the drawing board one final time, coming to the design that will appear in the show. 

Here is the final design of the town-

5a9cc6f31abaa_Oldkingdomconcept.thumb.jpg.ab704d2fab5be9310b9e378d680d612d.jpg

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From the base design to the landscape and feel of the town, we wanted this to represent the dream and ideals of not just the rules but the everyday pony aswell, Harmony is a dream the entire kingdom shares, and we wanted this to reflect in the design and soon the color of the setting. This is not just a set piece now, but becoming a living, breathing city with shops like the image above of an herbalist shop , to signs, tree, personal additions to homes, and so much more. We want this to be where Luna and Celestia grew up, and the reason they carry the dreams of their parents with them in the current show.

 This was the first canterlot, the beginning of the ideal that one day became Equestria, fulfilling their parents dream, Celestia in honor of her family named her capital after the place they were born, where they flew above the mountains dreaming of the day they would rule the land, in Harmony.

 The stories being told within it will be some of the best moments to come from this series, and we couldnt do less then give it our all to design something that would reflect the beauty characters, the fans, and the world that sparked the idea that became Equestrian Tales.

We'd like to take this time to thank everyone who has been here through this long road, and hope you get something out of these articles. We dont want to make money from this, we want to help others reach their dreams, and help as many people as we can along the way. 

 This concludes the article for today, if you'd like to see more articles like this dealing in the design and creative process of  animation please leave a comment or a bro, we'd like to bring to you next the process of designing a character from the ground up. If it would be wanted.

 As always if you have any questions about the design of a setting, or anything else really please leave a comment, and I will do my best to answer. 

Thank you so much and keep it pony everyone!  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by K_Cast
to many drawings didnt want to over do the thread
  • Brohoof 1
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OMG love the old timey look..

So classic, original, country style, sticking to the elegance of nature yet using the core material of the land to build the structure of the ponies homes..

Genius..

 

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