Posts

@Zincy  
Oh, Folk Metal is what I grew up on. In Extremo, for example, is one of my oldest favourite bands, I haven’t been listening to much Folk Metal lately though. It’s kinda hard to pass by when you are German and a Roleplayer ;)
 
I mean, the town where I live has every year a collective concert with nothing but Folk and Folk Metal Bands, not to mention that you see these guys with acoustic sets on every medieval market.
 
Though, I must admit, I don’t think I know any Folk Metal bands from outside of Germany. In Extremo, Schandmaul, Schelmish, Subway to Sally, Saltatio Mortis, etc. (I just noticed that most of them start with an S, huh.)

@MoogSourceVermona  
I am personally not too fond of this subgenre (what’s it called? Core?).  
I prefer me some power metal, heavy metal, hard rock and some thrash metal.  
And ever so rarely some death metal (thanks to Metalocalypse).
 
Oh, btw, anyone know Metalocalypse here?

Ah, yes, thank you, that is what I was looking for :3

Hello, I was wondering if there already is a tag for ponified flags, counties, coat of arms and the likes. Examples: >>835202 >>768752 >>705495  
If not, I would like to request that one is been made, thank you :3

A youtube playlist of various Meat Loaf songs.

@SquiggyBomb  

 
I think you got your answer right there.  
Arttheft is a dick move. Don’t do it.

Well, usually my fav ship would be CheesePie, but since the amount of quality of fanart comes into account, I am gonna go with RariJack.

@luna the great!  
Thank you and yes, that’s why I made this blog.  
Gotta love and tolerate the shit out of them!

@Background Pony #0BF4  
I think that would be impossible, given that some haters seem to pick on some designs just because they can :I But yeah, I am trying UvU

@Latios381  
I am sorry, but your submission doesn’t meet the blog’s standards, neither in quality of artwork nor in terms of design :(  
If you want, I can tell you how to tweak your OCs design though, if you are interested.

Hello everyone :3
 
I started a new blog with the purpose of showcasing well designed MLP OCs mainly so that people who have problems designing their own have a go to place for good examples. Also, as a counter project to all those “Your OC is s***” blogs.
 
http://goodponyoc.tumblr.com/
 
It would make me very happy if you would check it out and spread the word.

@And Brother I Hurt People  
Why, thank you :)

A useful tool that most people use wrong.  
Also, some aspects of the program need tweaking, such as the outline colouring (it simply makes the outlines darker than the main colour, while in the show, the outlines are also stronger saturated and sometimes, if ever so slightly, vary in hue).

So we can post here anything about the topic of metal, yes?
 
Obvious pun first: A metal thread is called a wire.
 
Now, back to the actual topic:
 

@PacificGreen  
Ah, I see, no problem ;)
 
You know, this website should introduce a tag which people can use on their OC designs if they want to get specific feedback on the character’s designs. I bet that would help so many artists. More than often I find myself looking at an OC image here and would love to put my citique about the designs in the comments, but I never know if it is welcome or not :/

PS: My point is, that the better designed an OC is and the better it fits into the show’s style, the more positive the reactions to it will most likely be.

Disclaimer: For the unlikely case that any of the owners of the OCs are going to see this post: I chose your OCs as examples because they where the first that came to mind. This is not a critique to any of you as a person or for what you do in the community, I am simply my personal judgement over how your characters look from an artist’s perspective and nothing more. All of the following solely based on my personal opinion and taste.
 
@PacificGreen  
Well, I said most OCs featured in that animation, not all of them.  
Though one could argue that using absolute black as the mane/tail colour is a bad design choice when speaking of the MLP art style, but it works with his own style, so you got that.
 
What I am mainly referring to is the overabundance of red eyes, too strongly saturated colours and unharmonic colour palettes. As a positive example I would like to bring up DigiBrony’s ponysona:  
 
The colours harmonize well with each other, you can tell that the coat isn’t simply grey but a desaturated purple, the hairstyle is unique and yet toned down and the cutie mark, while featuring a lot of different colours, doesn’t pop to strongly. The design isn’t perfect, but it’s definitely one of the better ones out there. If I had to tweak it, I would maybe change the eyecolour to violet or yellow and rework the details on the CM (remove the outlines, redraw the magnifying glass, etc.)  
If you would put him into the show, he would fit in just nicely.
 
On the other hand you got IloveKimPossibleAlot:  
 
This design is just all over the place. None of the colour harmonize, the contrast between the eyes and the coat is almost indistinguishable, the colours are to strongly saturated and the cutie mark pops too strongly.
 
The way to fix this is a bit too complicated to explain, so have a quick altered version:  
This is of course not perfect, but better than the original, imo.  

 
I hope you can get an idea of what I mean here.  
Of course having saturated colours isn’t a bad design choice per se, but in the context of MLP it is, since the entire show’s aesthetics is based on pastel colours. In order to design a fitting OC one must uderstand how the other official characters where designed. The best test to see if your design is good (= fitting for the MLP show style), is by putting your oc next to a bunch of official characters and if yours pops out too strongly, you should probably tweak it until it doesn’t anymore.

Well, I guess you could kinda count Luna’s buttox-mole the same way you count Applejack’s freckles …? Of course one could argue that this is part of her cutie mark, but let’s assume it isn’t.
 
If you compare their colours to the rest of the designs, they do not pop. and that part is important. First of all, they do not contrast with their ground colour (white on light gamboge and black on dark sapphire). Also, both colours are found somewhere else in the design (white eyes and black accessories). Big Mac’s freckles are white as well even though they contrast stronger on his crimson coat.
 
So here is what I get from this: Always use a colour that is already in the design and make sure it doesn’t contrast too strongly. It probably also helps to stick to black/white though I have seen OCs with coloured markings that looked good as well (usually it was a lighter version of the coat’s colour, i.e. light lavender on medium lavender).
 
If you want to stick strickly with the show’s style give your character identical freckles as Big Mac and Applejack, then you should be on the safe side.

Ships are good by default.  
Thou mustn’t be pickyeth bout thy ships.  
Ship all the things.

I guess it’s a mix of multiple factors. Aside from the obviously lazy Pony Creator screenshots and bad recolours, it is usually a mix between fitting into the show style and originality.
 
I found that usually the OCs that pop out while not being overdesigned (read as: overloaded and/ or Mary Sued) find the most positive responses.
 
Then you of course got the well promoted OCs, such as Fluffle Puff, Button’s Mom and basically any popular Brony YouTuber’s ponysona. These are well liked because they get comics, animations and and that stuff with them. And to be fair, most popular ponysonas are a complete design disasters (just look at Animated James’ Beat It PMV, most OCs/ ponysonas clash really badly with the official characters).
 
Mostly it comes down to that most “artists” have either not enough experience with design, don’t understand the aesthetics of MLP and/ or simply have bad taste. Usually it’s all three of them.
 
I would like to assume that the quality of the artwork itself also plays a defining role, but if someone can draw well, they usually are also at least ok at designing characters.

I use both Paint Tool Sai and Gimp.
 
Sai is awesome for lineart and also very inexpensive.  
And for everything Sai cannot do I use Gimp. It’s a bit wonky and slow, but it’s for free and like they say, you don’t look a gifted horse in the mouth.

I am not sure if this belongs in this thread, but I would very much like it, to make it a set rule to tag your image as #traced or something similar if it is traced.
 
More than often all the traced stuff drowns out all the wonderful original works here, which is why I would like to have the ability to hide the unoriginal ones.

Seriously, what is up with that?  
Most of it is emo or dreaded “fashion-punk”.  
I humbly request to create a separate tag for that stuff.

Like the other’s said, it fits with the athlete stereotype.  
I would like to ad though, that this also fits with the tomboy stereotype.
 
But even if she has bigger breasts, she would probably wear a sportsbra, which would make her rack look smaller than it actually is. But as a woman I can tell you, big breasts and sports do not work well together (a friend of mine back in school had to hold her breasts while running, that’s how big they where …).
 
Also, being sporty usually comes along with a low body fat, which also results in smaller breasts.
 
So yeah, chances are high that RD would have rather small breasts if she was human.

In show style, everything gets purple-tinted but not that much darker, even the night sky is purple.
 
Here is a coparision image of the Canterlot library/ city gate:
 
I hope this helps.