Horse diversion (long post)

This is probably going to be a longer post and I apologize for me messing around with an idea on a whim- but it all began when I was animating the alien and bird animation and I'm realizing more that maybe a missing ingredient to my animation is more squash/stretch. I also have been wanting to do something with more cartoony characters or you know, just something where more exaggerated squash/stretch would look fitting.

My journey began when I thought "... is there a My Little Pony version of Prince?" because I thought it'd be funny if that symbol he made was his cutie mark. Turns out there is? I don't know the context (I'm not a brony, all my MLP knowledge comes from r34).

Source:

https://www.derpibooru.org/1027392

While researching this, I found out there's a song called "Ho[r]ny Pony" by Prince.

https://youtu.be/qEw0f5B4MaM

It's something else. This convinced me that I *had* to make a pony. Like this became my burning passion the last couple of days. I've made some equine stuff before, awhile I did a 4 legged unicorn, but I wanted to make something that was specifically evocative of MLP. So I was looking at the Friendship is Magic cartoon, some of the stuff of the 3d movie they did, fan art, all that stuff and began modeling something.

It just wasn't looking too good... so I thought "what about downloading a model someone else made and modifying it to make my own pony?" So I did. I tried a few bases, some of them closer to the FIM style, some closer to the older style of MLP. I quite liked this one:

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/mlp-alternate-model-base-v1-142eafa00d414be99e076b9cacd8d596

It was turning out kind of okay, but it was hard to make this pony thick with a large buttocks.

So then, I figured I'll just... try and do my own thing, in my own style, but something that's in the spirit of MLP. So I drew head. In my mind, I wanted to make a character that was a dollar store version of Twilight Sparkle, roughly the same vibe, like a magical pony who does magic and makes potions or whatever (I guess that's what she does? I don't know much about Twilight Sparkle). But I felt like doing purple or pink might be *too* overt (I changed my mind later, you'll see in a bit).

This is Moonlight Rump (who will become Sunrise Rump in a few paragraphs): he's a unicorn who's magical, a fairly recent graduate of the magic science college. While he's still learning and lacks the experience of a senior magic scientist, the kingdom recognized his talent and hired him on the royal science, magic and technology research group. He lives in a giant tree where he researches and studies the science of magic, sharing his findings with others for the betterment of Equinopolis (the pony town)

So I modeled the head, turned out pretty good and this has potential for a character on it's own. I experimented with the hair color:

But... I just wasn't happy with it. So I went back to a horse model I was working on awhile ago. I did a bit of work on the model, then started to rig it more. It was going okay...

But it didn't start coming together until I added in the hair from the other pony head I was working on. I changed the proportions a bit too (and also added eggs and sausage, I don't have any stills from before that but this is what he looked like):

I thought "well, this is more like it." This is what convinced me that a pink pony was the way to go. I don't have much of the process because I didn't think to document it much, but this is an earlier test (with the Spike-a-like, more on that farther down).

So I animated a pony dance, like he lifts his rear in the air and his cheeks like, clap with the clap in the music. I've attached a video of it.

But then I had a vision in my mind of a sweaty, soft pony, jogging on a treadmill. So of course I modeled a treadmill.

I animated a quick, kind of janky walk cycle to test things out, it's not super high effort. Didn't want to spend a lot of time on a test because at this point, I was still messing with bone placement and rigging a lot and had a chance of breaking the animation.

So I started rigging the junk (as of now haven't gotten to the donut yet but there's a donut). I kind of think flaccid junk instead of full-on sheath is an interesting look... idk I love the idea of some colorful talking ponies going about their magic day, the males with their junk just flopping about for all to see...

Here's a back view with the donut.

Between all this, I decided that bright pink colors didn't make sense with a name like "Moonlight Rump" (and like, I'd like to do a character that leaned more heavily into a moon theme, maybe, possibly, we'll see) so I changed the name to "Sunrise Rump" which works out pretty good because his short name can be Sunny.

The lil kobold guy

So, this character is a mixture of an old model from awhile ago (that cartoon pig I made that I never did anything with) and a cartoony kobold-y head I modeled for this.

He's a small fellow, but kobolds are pretty small compared to ponies (yes, he's small but he's an adult just to be clear). His name is Nail. One day a few years ago, he washed up on the beach outside of Equinopolis. Sunrise Rump happened to find him and performed CPR to revive him. Something happened to him that caused him to have trouble remembering his past. He only has vague, fuzzy memories that come and go, like how he ended up in ocean, his family, his friends... thankfully, he's found a nice home with Sunny who's taken him in and has started teaching him the ins and outs of magic science.

The sunglasses are just there to look cool. Idk if he usually wears them. (also no teeth/tongue yet, still haven't gotten to doing that)

The inspiration for the design was the result of saying magic words to AI. I was asking Bing image creator for stuff like "Knock off Spike the dragon from my little pony, pixar, 3d render" or "Kobold in the style of my little pony, pixar, 3d render" and was getting crap like this

(Really love the teal and pink on that one)

This is something I think AI is pretty useful for- generating things that can serve as an inspiration for a design. It thought up some pretty interesting creatures with some neat vibes.

Anyway I didn't mean to go on such a tangent... I just felt some sparks with this. Plus, I've figured out how I'd like to rig characters going forward to have better support for squash/stretch. Vid kind of showing that:

https://youtu.be/-QyGmbCNOj4

This and using lattices should prove useful for getting a nice (hopefully) more professional look to my animation.