I'm not flipping burgers, I'm cleaning litterboxes and doing basic vet care like checking weights, administering medicine, bathing, using IVs, keeping records, making lists, doing photography, and way way more. But the point is even if I was just cleaning litterboxes... I love the work. I wish I could pay rent. Shouldn't I be able to clean litterboxes and feed cats who were rescued from the streets and do that fulfilling wonderful work without wondering where I'm going to live?
Shouldn't someone be able to flip burgers, make art, clean up trash, care for the oceans, teach your children, or rescue animals without being forced to choose between their job and their bills?
What if I don't WANT to climb the ladder and use my degree and search for high stress high pay jobs in order to live? What if I want the high stress job of seeing a kitten crashing below survivable temperature and bringing them back from the brink of death, knowing that I'm the only thing standing between this homeless, unwanted kitten and an early grave?
Shouldn't that be enough? Shouldn't I be able to afford food and rent by doing that?
I don't want to work at a vet office that can give me steady pay increases. I want to work here, with cats who have no owners, nursing them back to health and helping pick their forever home. I want the infrastructure to support me in doing that. I want the laws to say I can and have programs in place to make it so my shelter CAN support me. I want rent to reflect wages. I want wages to reflect rent.
I want to help the world and be able to survive doing it. I want to thrive doing it. I want that for everyone.
i'm working on my own concept for my own mlp fanlore/au and i've been inspired by your take on alicorns to make my own more unique as well. my idea is centric around the concept that alicorns are ponies who acended into what's basically pony elves that get worshiped because of the mysterious way they ascended, but idk how to really make a religion set up that works cohesively with it. i am wondering if you possibly might have some tips and tricks for how to go about my alicorn religions.
The most important thing about religion is that it's made up. If it is based in observable fact, then it's not religion; it's just culture.
Paying taxes and bowing to the king is based on observable orders. Believing that the king has a divine right to be king, or that he has powers/blessings granted to him by birth/status is religion.
In skyscraper gods, things are different because believing something about a god actually has the power to make it true, or at least influence the god's form/powers in an abstract way. My gods are influenced/given power by belief and worship.
In the human world, you can believe whatever you want about any person or god, and that doesn't make it real. If there are gods about, they are unlikely to be controlled by human religion, and definitely aren't spawned by such (or we would have a lot more gods than we do)
In a normal world, religion is not based on observable fact, and it is designed and maintained by the people themselves.
So from my limited understanding of world religions, there are four "needs" that religion is designed to fill: Community, Ritual, Meaning, and Ethics.
I went off the deep end and wrote an essay about my philosophy. Whoops, hope you enjoy:
Community
Humans need community, and many religions involve gathering and doing activities together. This makes religion incredibly important to human social health, as we often fail to fill our need for community because we don't immediately die without it. Under capitalism especially, we are incentivized to ignore as many human needs as possible in order to be productive/survive. Religion makes itself more important than simple survival, and ensures we fill certain needs by promising metaphysical rewards.
Ritual
Ritual is also incredibly important to human health. We thrive when we have a consistent schedule to the day, month, season, and year. It helps us save our brain bandwidth if we already know what basic tasks will happen today. Instead of doing math to figure out optimum times to do so, we socialize, come of age, physically touch, meditate, sing, mourn, plant crops, travel, cook, keep records, hunt, celebrate, and more according to a calendar maintained by religion. These are all important aspects of life that we need to remember to fill, either by logic, community, or religion. Science even backs up the need for ritual, with brain pathways growing best in response to consistent habit-keeping. But brains aren't observable for most people, so we have culture and religion to keep time instead.
Meaning
Meaning is a tricky one. We ended up with brains big enough to wonder why we exist; a burden few animals share. Scientifically, we thrive in environments/jobs/roles where we feel that what we are doing has value. I look at every part of my life and see the value of being a person, observing and changing my environment. Many people on earth aren't sure that's enough, so they invent an unobservable force that assigns value to their lives and actions. Meaning is easiest to keep track of and believe if others share your definition. Culturally, you have a lot in common with your neighbors, you both probably work toward similar goals (housing, stability, connection with others, secular holidays) and are satisfied when those goals are met. Religiously, you have a lot in common with others in your religion (charity, proselytizing, meditation, celebration) and are satisfied when those goals are met. Religion also provides goals for your entire life and community which are helpfully defined for you, whereas you have to come up with that on your own outside of religion. Doing so can be frightening, frustrating, and difficult, so religion is very rewarding and calming.
Ethics
Lastly, there's Ethics. Not all religion deals with ethics, but many major earth faiths do. Humans desperately need to have a code of ethics to be healthy, and society works best when we all agree on some basics. That way when someone violates a law, you don't have to convince everyone around you that what they did was wrong; there's already a standing defined agreement. Ethics is about rewards as well as punishment. For example if you're the first one to read this whole thing I'll draw a pony for you just dm me. Community ethics are decided by those in power, and "those in power" can be: the people themselves via majority rule, chosen representatives, rich aristocracy, respected philosophers, religious appointees, kings and conquerors, holy mystics, sacred texts, etc etc.
Religion comes in with a code of ethics (written by the religiously powerful) and imposes it on its followers. This is useful and generally brings community harmony when they all agree on something. Religions based on ancient texts are tricky, because old, outdated ethics have to be reinterpreted to fit modern landscape. These interpretations split churches and create sub-religions, which mutate into cults, peter off into nothing, or go to war with each other. It's great fun. At the end of the day, having a group of people who agree on right and wrong within their community is the goal. We just got lost on the part that said everyone else in the world has to obey our ethics or else we're blowing up the planet.
...
Aaaanyway, this was about.... my little pony?
Does Religion Affect Gods?
The first thing you must choose is how much the religion is based on fact, and how much is made up. In my world, there's a lot of things that are made up by ponies, that either become true or influence the god's form/powers in some way. Luna used to be silver, but now she is dark blue.
You can do that, or you can be normal about things. Typically, religion does not actually do anything. Gods are gods whether or not they have worshipers. People believe things that gods tell them, and they make up their own lore as well.
What about People? What about this and that and everything?
You need to decide if your alicorns are participants in the religion about them, or just subjects. Do all/some/any of them take their place as religious figures and command the masses? Do they speak ethics? Do they inform ponies of the powers they have? Do ponies make up abilities they think alicorns have? Do they like being worshiped, or is it more like stalking?
Some alicorns may embrace godhood, while others flee from it. The ones that get the most involved will have influence over how the other alicorns are treated.
Is there a standard to which alicorns must live, failing which they can't be "real" alicorns in society's eyes and are thus shunned/killed? Do the alicorns ever give an opinion that is taken way out of proportion and suddenly became a major religious movement? Are marshmallows illegal because one alicorn doesn't like them? Do ponies get prosecuted for stepping on "sacred" flowers which are just regular lilies? Is there taxes/tithing to alicorns? Are alicorns promoted to political office for nothing except their nature?
How do ponies construct their sermons/temples/practices to fulfill the four tenants of religion? Does alicorn worship provide them with Community, Meaning, Ritual, and Ethics?
Do alicorns actually earn any of this? Are they regular guys that just look special? Can they abuse their powers? Can ponies abuse others in their name? Do the alicorns speak to the masses or to religious leaders? Do they have any control over their legacy or is it out of their hooves? Are they in danger of their worshipers deciding they need to be freed from their mortal bodies? Do religious leaders go power crazy and use alicorns to further their agenda? Are their schisms and wars over beliefs? do the alicorns command their followers to fight each other? Do they fight with each other? Does each alicorn have a different following or are they all part of a shared pantheon? Do they respect each others' role within that or struggle for change?
And remember, what is true for one alicorn/church/sect/country may not be true for another. Variety is the key.
It's all About the Questions
The trick to worldbuilding is to ask a lot of questions. You can answer them as you go, having the answers lead to more questions, or you can ask a bunch at once and answer them all later.
Every decision you make has consequences. Big social movements affect the environment, the environment affects food supply, food supply affects social movements. Everything is connected, and religion makes those connections more magical, for better or for worse.
I love your anatomy/references posts & I love skulls and skeletons & I would love to know how you convince people to give you their animal heads to clean. Also any bone cleaning tips for suburban areas?? When I was living on a farm it was easy to leave stuff out and let the bugs take care of it but my parents said hard no to dead things bleaching on the porch
Oh this is very easy!
Find a friend or acquaintance with land and leave your stuff there. Bug cleaning and tub maceration don't need a lot of hands-on attendance so you can check in however often you like.
There's also "hot water maceration" where you simmer (dont boil!) fresh heads in hot water and remove the cooked meat by hand. Make sure you scramble the brains first and then cook away inside or with a camping stove on the porch. And "bleaching" which is done with hydrogen peroxide can be done inside since the skulls are already clean by then anyway.
I don't actually convince people to give me their pets. For livestock, I ask because most people aren't emotionally attached to their livestock.
For pets, I wait to be offered the remains. More on that under the cut.
TLDR: Know the pet owner, wait to be offered bodies rather than asking. Make sure they are always in control. Ask for livestock no problem. Don't let scavengers eat euthanized meat.
holy crap lol
I don't ask for pet bodies. The trick is to be very open and excited about what you do so that people who know you know about bones and know that you are respectful of animal remains. Then, when a beloved pet dies, they might think about you.
Open up the conversation on death before it's relevant
You can also plant the seed ahead of time during a conversation about bones while the pet in question is alive and healthy. "Sometimes I do pets if their owner is ok with it, though most want to bury. Have you ever thought about that for Baxter?" It's in SUPER poor taste to do this while an animal is dying, when you'll need to be way more tactful.
Know your friend well enough to guess their feelings on it
It SUPER depends on the person and how they view bodies and death. My ex's dog passed away and he was always queasy about corpses. I comforted him and cried with him while his beloved 15 year old dog declined and passed. I didn't ask or even mention it because I knew him enough to know that he would say no, and that asking would be painful and upsetting for him to think about. Same with my dear friend and her 20 year old cat. She had a beautiful pet graveyard with headstones and everything. You just know not to ask some people because traditionally laying bodies to rest is important to them.
Other pet owners are chill about it, ESPECIALLY if they come from a livestock background. Livestock people are used to sending their animals to be recycled into glue and wax when they die, because it's generally not feasible to bury or cremate a horse. If someone does plan to take that on, you know they are absolutely dedicated to traditional burial and won't give you anything.
Make it their choice to offer, rather than it being your request
Anyway. If you know the person, and you know they might be ok with giving up their pet's body due to how they view bodies and death, then you work on making them think about you. First, you comfort and do everything you can to help the person through their grief. If you weren't already planning on doing that, then you have no business asking for their pet. Do not comfort someone in order to get something out of them. That's disgusting. Just straight up ask them for their pet and know that they will view you as tactless and rude, but its better than manipulating them.
What I do is not manipulation, it's reminding people what you do and then letting them make their own decisions. When your friend is feeling a little better and is not crying, you can ask about logistics. I ask "What do you plan to do for burial/with the body?" and that usually makes them think about me and what I do with bodies. If they already have a meaningful spot picked out to bury or scatter/keep ashes, then that means the body is important to them and I shouldn't ask further.
At this point, they should realize what you could use the body for and think about how they feel about that. This is when my sister (who has a livestock background) offered her dog to me. We talked about how she thought of bodies, and she thought that the soul is the only thing that matters and once her dog passes there's nothing important left. I did not say anything to convince her, these were all her own thoughts.
It's very VERY important to respect and love the pet owner because they're extremely vulnerable and emotionally raw. That's why I don't straight up ask, because when you're losing a pet, you don't want to feel like someone is trying to gain something from you.
If your friend says they don't know or haven't decided what to do for the body, you can gently say "Let me know if you want me to help bury it, to take it with me, or to just be there for you." This is a close-ended statement and not a question. A question means that your friend has to come up with an answer right there and then, while an offer is actionable. This puts the power and autonomy in your friend's hands, so that when they make a decision it comes fully from their wants and needs and is not about you and what you want.
Be there for them even if you get nothing out of it
If they don't offer at this point, they're not going to. Now hold up your end of the bargain and continue to comfort and help through the grieving process. Again, if you aren't already invested in this person enough to want to soothe and comfort and be there for the human person in the equation, then you have no business asking for their pet. When a pet dies, your first concern should be to the person. If it's not, then you aren't close enough to ask for goodies.
Helping someone grieve is not payment for their pet's body. If you realize they aren't going to give you something in return for your comfort and so you abandon them, you're a terrible person using their grief to manipulate them for your own gain. Comfort is not payment. Closeness in grief is a metric by which you measure "Do I have any business to ask?"
The pet owner runs the show, not you
Throughout this process, stress that the owner can change their mind at any time. You don't want the owner to think "I hate this but I can't back out now because I promised..." Even when they animal is all wrapped up an in your vehicle and ready to go, quietly tell the owner that they can still choose what happens and if they have second thoughts, that's ok and you won't be mad.
My sister let me be there for putting her dog down and it was all about her and her love for her dog. She carried him out and laid him in my trunk and we stood in the rain and talked and hugged. She then told me she was happy that he could bring happiness to someone in life and now still in death, but that she didn't want to know anything. I agreed not to tell her or post anything about processing her dog, so for her it would be like burial. The same thing happened with my other friend's horse. She spent some time with him and then as soon as he passed she drove away and let me do what I wanted. She didn't want to hear Any of it. Again, I didn't ask or even offer, she came up with the idea of giving me the body all on her own even before I knew he was dying.
Horse people are much closer to pet owners than livestock owners, but they are used to sending their friend's bodies off to a different kind of processing (at Tallow factories, livestock remains are ground up, cut apart, cooked, and spun around to extract various substances that become soap, glue, candles, etc) so they know not to think about what happens after death. It still depends on how well you know the owner and know how they think about death, but if you offer to handle logistics like dealing with the tallow guy, they can actually save money by letting you have it.
You're actually doing livestock a favor
Livestock people are generally chill and have a much more utility/asset view of their animals. If the animal doesn't even have a name they probably don't care what happens when it's dead. In fact, most farmers will jump at the chance to give you their animal for free because calling the tallow company to haul it away costs them money. This is also why in areas with lots of livestock, you sometimes find bodies dumped in ditches or left on the side of the road, because the farmer didn't want to pay to get rid of it so they made it everyone else's problem. Even pet animals like dogs and cats are more Utility than pure companions on a farm, so you might have a better chance of getting remains from a farmer than a neighbor.
One more thing about pets and livestock.
When I find a dead deer, I flay it open and let the vultures eat it. For domestic animals, they are often put to sleep via chemical/drug.
THIS IS POISONOUS TO SCAVENGERS.
DO NOT LET SCAVENGERS EAT EUTHANIZED ANIMALS
Seriously. If you like nature, you need to protect it. Deflesh it yourself, throw all the meat/blood/offal away or bury it 6 feet down. Idk what it does to the environment so I always freeze it and then throw it away on garbage day.
Rot bacteria and beetle larvae dermestids don't mind. In fact, dermestid droppings and pupa shells can be analyzed for toxins by forensic scientists to determine cause of death. Neat! Just make sure that if you process outdoors, the remains are EXTREMELY SECURE and cannot be opened by vultures, coyotes, or wild pigs.
Remember the living, human person
I know I look very clinical by picking apart human emotions, but I respond, feel, love, and grieve just like everyone else. I didn't plan how to get any of the animals in the above stories, I just acted on instinct and these are the ones where that paid off well.
Most of the time if I go "huh. I feel that may not go over well" I can then take that feeling apart and figure out why. So hopefully explaining how my feelings work it can help you listen to your most useful and most compassionate ones.
The living person is always more important than a dead pet. Sometimes you can get the dead pet without distressing your friend, sometimes you shouldn't even try.
Respecting the dead
A final note on working with pets vs wild animals. This is someone's family member, so don't play puppet with it like you might with a skunk skin. Don't take pictures of any part of the process until they are rendered to bones. Pictures of dead pet species are even more distressing to the general public than wild animals, and sick freaks might take your photos and send them to people for kicks or attention. Better to just not have photos than for that to happen.
What processing a pet feels like
Working on a pet is always going to be different for you, the vulture, than a wild animal. Everything you see is touched by human hands. My sister's dog was... beautiful. You don't really realize how moved you're going to be by seeing the perfect amount of healthy fat covering, or beautiful muscles that speak of exercise and attention. She rescued this starving pup and turned him into the healthiest animal I have ever seen. She's a vet assistant and the care and love she put into this dog had me sitting there crying while I held his paws; with their perfectly maintained clipped and sanded nails. I'd only met the dog once for a few minutes when he was alive, but his body was a canvas and every inch was painted with layers and layers of love. It made me so, so sad that his neurological issues couldn't be helped because his body was proof of someone who would stop at nothing to cure what could be cured, and that the last months of his life were happier than he ever imagined.
On the flip side, pets whose bodies show signs of neglect and abuse are going to hit you harder than any deer could. The dog I found discarded in a garbage bag on the side of the road had rotten teeth and nails so long they curled over themselves into hoops. An overgrown and suffering deer is just the sign of nature taking its course. An overgrown and suffering dog is the sign of human cruelty, of shirked responsibility.
Most pets you get will between these two dogs. No owner is perfect. Most old dogs have lost teeth to rot, sick cats too weak to scratch properly may have overgrown nails.
Death as beauty
A pet's body usually a beautiful story full of ups and downs; of owners doing things wrong and then doing things right. A vulture or an artist can read a body like rings on a tree and feel the heart beat in their chest that tells them how strong and full of love this life had been. You need to be ready for this part. Every detail is a message from your fellow human and even though we are all animals and we decompose into the same dirt, we're meant to connect to each other here and now.
Keep your emotions open when working with remains.
this is a bit silly but i have strabismus and i never see anyone make designs with it. so thanks! it made me feel really nice!
I know four people with strabismus! It's actually really common occurrence in real life.
This particular design based on the canon appearance of a My Little Pony character.
In both canon and fandom, she is shown to be extremely clumsy, makes many mistakes, and speaks in somewhat of a monotone. A lot of people consider her autistic-coded.
Both autism and strabismus are great! But misaligned eyes have been used as a shorthand for stupidity in animation and comics for a very long time. So I don't like to pair them, personally.
Apparently strabismus does occur more frequently in autistic people! But there are way more people who have it who are allistic.
I'm of the opinion that you can pair traits together that just happen to align with stereotypes as long as you have those traits represented separately in other characters. There's quite a few ponies who are easy to interpret as autistic, but she's the only one I can think of with strabismus, and unfortunately her personality is easy to write off as "stupid." A good way to fix this without changing the character is to have a variety of other allistic characters with strabismus and other traits that don't reinforce stereotypes.
The same goes for other over-done tropes that combine traits. If your only gay character is a cop, that's suspect like you're just checking boxes. But if you have lots of gays in a variety of professions then cop becomes just one of the many flavors of gay. The same goes for childlike or autistic asexuals, and ethnic stereotypes like aggressive black characters, or tech-support indians. All of these people exist! But they also exist (much more frequently) without those combinations. So adding diversity to your world is important.
I don't think I have any ocs with strabismus, so I'll bestow the honor on one or several of them. I'm glad my art made you feel nice, I hope to do more of that in the future!
Your reindeer designs give me such childish joy I can't wait to see the rest. What's your process (aka any advice) for designing from scratch with something like just a name or concept?
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You can see my process unfold in real time by joining any tier of my patreon discord. Which doesn't even have to go through patreon! If you want, you can just pay me $20 and let you in for a year (and then lose track and probably keep you anyway)
Here's a preview using comet! (nevermind the preview thing I wrote you a whole lecture lol)
initial sketches in 2021:
Revisited in 2022 and 2023
I was constantly asking which design was the weakest, why, and how to fix it. Whenever I tested without the magical comet behind it, people could only guess who comet was by process of elimination.
I didn't want to rely on throwing icons into the design. I wanted each one to communicate through shape and silhouette alone. It would be like drawing a little cherub with a bow and arrow floating along with cupid. If you have to include a nametag to communicate, your design can be improved.
So I tried a few different strategies to say "comet" before I realized I could twist the antlers into any shape I wanted. I was worried I would have to discard the drawing and restart from scratch! Which is what I did for rudolph about 6 times before I had a breakthrough.
Then I gave my patrons a brief lesson in antlers to explain where and why I was placing the tines. When I stray from the caribou structure, I do so knowingly in order to achieve something that cannot be achieved within the caribou shape, like dancer's tutu. Know the rules before you break them. My goal is to make animal nerds (myself chief among them) happy when they see species-specific anatomy instead of cop outs.
I tried a few things before figuring out antlers could become comet
Another thing that often caribou have is an unsymmetrical "spork" that comes forward off only one antler. I figured this out by looking at hundreds of reindeer pictures and saving them to my reference folder. A few of my designs have this, that's what the little spiral is in the final comet antler design.
When I put comet in my lineup, I realized that the antlers I drew were way more stylized, chunky, and "tribal" than the others. I had already changed the proportions on one of my designs to match, so then I had to hack away at the basic comet rack to make it look natural.
I already knew that comet's colors would be easy because a basic reindeer already Has the big comet on the shoulder. But here's a peak at all the reindeer images I posted for my patrons to look at.
As you can see below, I chose reindeer markings for all my designs instead of other deer or animals. Even vixen is tied to actually possible reindeer patterns rather than copy-pasting a fox. Almost all of my designs have light-colored anklets on dark colored legs, which is very common with caribou of any color. This is the sort of thing no one tells you; you have to observe it yourself.
Ft cupid's early design! I was continually testing out my reindeer silhouettes and colors on new people, taking their feedback, and fixing what wasn't clicking.
I know I could have made vixen sexy and curvy to play into a recognizable trope, but I really wanted them to be scary and fox-like. Sometimes you gotta do what you want and not what you think will appeal to audiences. Reindeer Days is a purposeful exercise in audience resonance. Most of my art is 100% me and what I feel like doing with no regards to anyone else. So it was a fun challenge!
My patrons also got to see me making fun of corporate designs for recognizably/cliches at the expense of literally anything good
One of these is going to get a lot more "that must be vixen!" results from people who aren't constantly thinking about animal colors, markings, hunting strategies, and teeth.
And one rocks.
Vixen changed the least from the initial 2021 concept!
A Vixen is a female fox. In english slang, it means a cunning, fierce human woman, and sometimes sexually attractive or promiscuous. Quite often an insult to someone because she won't date you!
But to me, a vixen is an animal. A predator.
When designing to reference something, I like to hit it at multiple angles, referencing obscure trivia about something to delight and educate. This is done by researching a topic deeply, far below surface level and beyond what you think you need to make your design. Or in my case its just knowing a bunch of animal trivia already.
After researching/dredging your knowledge, sit there and Think. Don't draw anything. Come up with several ideas and then throw them all in at once for the ultimate trivia design.
Trivia about red foxes:
They have Long bushy tails
They have teeth that include large sharp canines, flat incisors, triangular premolars, and chunky molars with points on them that slide scissor-like with the molars above to cut meat via chewing
They hunt rodents in burrows under the snow by jumping into the air, arcing, and slamming down with their face through the snow
They are orange
They have a dark vertical stripe on their snout
They have black legs, with the backs and bottoms being orange
Translated into the design:
Pose based on a fox jumping, about to land in the snow
Antlers twisted to resemble teeth
Long (for a reindeer) bushy tail
black mark on snout
Some adjustment to the pose to be at the top of the arc and flow better.
Tinkering with the design to make it recognizable but not 100% copypasta fox
I was finally happy with a design that absolutely showed "fox" while still being creative and plausibly caribou shaped. This would absolutely communicate who it is! I thought!
The most obvious one of the bunch! After all, everyone knows what a vixen is!
Nope! No they do not
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creating Creatures and Characters
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What’s your favourite mlp species? Have you got any thoughts on kirins/niriks?
Request ponies, species, etc I havent done here
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I am both a creature and character designer, so I have a lot of thoughts about MLP world!
Paradoxically, the non-pony species interest me less than the actual ponies, because they are all really solid and well done designs. There's not a lot I would reinterpret tbh, and drawing them would just be taking what they have and making them realistic.
The non-pony creatures tend to be more detailed because they are generally cameos and don't need to be animated doing nearly as much as ponies do.
Compilations by AndoAnimalia on deviantart
The kirins are really lovely designs! I love the ankle tufts, and how the stripes on the horns glow when using magic. Really nice creature design here.
The Nirik part was a little boring, and the plot/conflict was not sophisticated enough for my tastes. But it is a show for young children, not biology majors. Lots of room for worldbuilding and headcannoning lore to flesh it out, but I prefer something I can completely rewrite. The kirin lore was fine and I'm fine leaving it as-is.
Another good one is breezies.
I love them they look so stupid. Their wings are over the top but perfectly designed to sell the "piece of lint in the wind" delicateness they have.
as for my favorite creature?
Bug momma
I really love changelings and love how edgy they are.
The reformed changelings are decent but I would have designed them differently. I may take a crack at them later on if I feel the need. I feel like they should either be pony-adjacent (with manes at the very least) or further removed from ponies. this middle ground is kind of like having a bug monster alien that just happens to be bipedal, with humanoid shoulders, arms, and hands for no evolutionary reason (the reason is practical effects and putting a dude in a costume but shhh)
all this is about creatures though, and its very important to talk about character design whenever we discuss creatures. A character's personality should be the quickest read about them, rather than their biology. If something is too complex, the personality gets lost because you have to spend your details adding ankle tufts and articulated fingers.
The mane six, and basically all other ponies, use the same base puppet, and each unique part needs its own turnaround. Every prop and hairdo and eye shape needs to be understood from every possible angle because these are main characters and they need to be be able to turn, spin, and do karate without the animators having to make up the back of applejack's hat every time she faces away from the camera.
Having the same body means animators know how to draw both rarity and rainbow dash from a back 3/4 view with one hoof raised. So from a technical standpoint, simple is best.
Even in big budget productions, where every character has a different body with different close and face shapes, main characters are simplified so that the audience can quickly read pose and expression without getting lost in complex clothing designs or face makeup. Reading poses and expressions quickly is very important to understand and empathize with the character before they've moved to the next pose. You need to understand the emotion the character is feeling and the action they are doing in a split second.
you start to get more complicated and an entity becomes less of a character and more of scenery because it has so much detail its harder to read the emotions from one frame to the next.
There's a reason he doesn't wear his funny hat for the duration of the movie! It's much easier to read his emotions without it. Adding lots of detail and weird props is something designers do a lot when introducing a character if they want to make that character feel mysterious or "other" because its harder to relate when your brain is stuck on the details. also masks just do that by nature of being masks.
where was I going with this
My little pony g4 has great creature and character design.
If it were high budget, major studio with All The Money, there might be more variety in character proportions, and more distinction between the different pony species. But its a puppet animated show that was always meant to make marketable designs to be turned into toys. We just get lucky when there's a good story to tell along the way
LOVE UR MLP DESIGNS but um. apple jack looks... weird without her hat. sorry if its rude
That's ok! My stuff doesn't have to appeal to everyone and if you think that looks weird that's fine. You can draw a hat on her if you want.
Some advice, though.
You need to learn how to not love everything without telling artists and creators that. Part of engaging with art is being able to say these things to yourself, ask "does the author need to know my opinion?" and usually the answer is no. Creators are fueled by compliments on the work they choose to do. Complaints should be reserved for things you are paying for and actually Get to customize.
Its ok to have differing opinions and to wish people did things differently! It's healthy to learn your own likes and dislikes, be able to put them to words, and then craft a healthy mindspace where you can appreciate what you like and appreciate what you don't like by saying (to yourself) "not for me!"
You're still learning this. Everyone is always learning something, don't feel too bad. Genuinely.
I hope this helps you in your media and art appreciation journey
If you want to commission me to draw applejack with her hat, my doors are open
It's difficult to update since tumblr and google are both allergic to searching ask posts, which is where most of the new content is. So I have been trying to organize everything into tags like "ssg gods" "ssg sunset shimmer" etc. But I should do even more nitpicky stuff like "ssg horns"
There's just SO MUCH stuff on this blog I want it to be easier to navigate.
Some absolutely wild users have told me they read through the whole blog. I fear them
