SeanMirrsen

You can simply dump water onto it with buckets. I don't remember if designating flat ground as a pond works, but you can always construct some quick walkways above the farm and designate the empty space above. For this to work you need to designate (with "i") zones: one on/above the farm, as a pit/pond, and another over a body of water, as a watersource. Once that is done, any dwarf with hauling labor and some free time will start making rounds with a bucket (you should start with at least one, and a carpenter can make one from wood rather easy). The benefit to this is that buckets don't cause much of an overspill, and you can quickly turn the process on or off by activating or deactivating the pond zone, without deleting it.

I don't suppose you have already discovered the two pony mods for the game yet?

As for not starving in the first year: it's kind of easy, once you know what you're doing. All you need is: a farm, a farmer, seeds, (maybe)water, and some time.

Now, the actual skills involved don't matter for the mechanics of it, so for the purpose of this assume that when I say "farmer" or "plant gatherer" I don't mean a dwarf skilled in Growing or Herbalism, but a dwarf with the Farming(Fields) or Plant Gathering labors enabled. Having the skills doesn't hurt though. ^_^

First, you need a farm. For this you designate a farm plot, with "b"-"p". The interface will tell you where it's possible to plant a farm - usually this is soft soil with no rocks. For seeds you bring with you at the start, this must also be underground, otherwise you'll have to gather and eat/brew the plants from the surface. You will also need some water if you're planting outside, where there may be no dirt or mud for the farm - just spill some onto the floor, either with buckets or a cleverly positioned pump. Once you have the farm designated, if you have a farmer he will run to it and "set it up", but it will remain empty until you choose what seeds to plant on the farm through the four seasons. Press "q" to enter building tasks mode, and put the cursor over the farm. Press "a", "b", "c", and "d" to see the list of seeds you can plant on the farm plot in those seasons, and select which kind you want planted with "Enter". And that's that. Once you unpause the game (it automatically pauses in any designation mode), your farmer should start running back and forth planting the seeds. They take some time to grow, but once they do either a farmer or a plant gatherer will run over and put them in the nearest food stockpile - assuming you have one set up.

To get seeds from the plants, they must be either eaten or brewed - cooking seems to consume the seeds as well. If you get a cloth or leather production running, make some bags - otherwise you'll have single seeds stored in whole tiles of stockpile space, which is kinda inefficient. Keep several farms running at once to make use of all your seeds, make sure at least one farmer dwarf has no extraneous labor settings so that he can focus on the food production, and as few as two 5x5 farm plots could feed a whole fortress indefinitely. It really is rather easy, just keep an eye on it once it's set up to see if it isn't going horribly wrong at some point (which, this being Dwarf Fortress, it is very much prone to do).

Tied between INTP and ISTP, "Engineer"/"Architect", which I'd say is quite accurate.

...and by the pony table posted earlier, that makes me Spike and Twilight Sparkle... that makes this the fourth internet pony personality test that pins me as Twilight - and one was strictly based off my name (and only got a name in return, no personality). I'm sensing a pattern here...

It helps if you ever ask an artist to draw your OC in the process of using magic. Though in my opinion it usually defaults to either eye colour, or the primary colour of the cutie mark.

But how can people comment individually and Like individually if they are not in the Gallery?

Um, post here? This is a forum, supposedly, commenting and expressing one's impressions on the works is, nominally, as easy as hitting the "quote" button. And I could never get the point of "likes", personally. If you actually like something, you comment on it. A "like" is nigh useless to an artist who wants feedback.

Anyway, I know you did a request for me before, but would you like to work on a fanfic cover for me? I might be able to add some $$.

*points at the catchphrase mentioned above*

I can certainly try, but I won't promise that I'll be able to get it done, let alone on time if there is a deadline.

(And I don't accept payments, unless you can send to WebMoney... and that's assuming I can even remember my account information. I usually work under the assumption that it's for free.)

Okay, long time since I posted here last, let's see what accumulated in my art folder in the meantime...

Aha. Going in chronological order of pictures being started on:

The circus pony OC seen earlier, whose name is... Nightshade? Something like that.

Two versions, because the first was deemed a little out-of-character by the requester.

Okay, this.. er, this is not pony, but was made due to a comment on our #ponythread IRC channel.

Nutmeg, were-timberwolf pegasus OC

An.. alicat, basically winged cat, done as practice for a bigger picture.

This is one of the two pics I'm working on right now. OCs Second Hand and Midnight, plus Vinyl Scratch, all being dressed up by a grown up Sweetie Belle.

Quick OC picture for Topaz

Some attempts at designing a wrestler pony character, as a request.

Picture with said wrestler pony character. Tell me if it looks inappropriate please, though nothing of the kind was intended here. Wrestling is just a very full-contact sport. Which I know rather little about, admittedly, but still.

Earlier-mentioned "bigger picture", in late detailing stage. That background is going to be the death of me.

Random pic of my OC, Southern Sky.

Attempt at drawing Cadance. I really need to work on an good alicorn design template.

My OC, Southern Sky, next to another OC referred to as The Ponithid. It's a long story.

I've left out some of the more random ones. ^_^ The two big pictures are the ones I'm probably going to work on in the immediate future, but if you have character requests, I'd be happy to try my hand at 'em. Even if my catchphrase is "I don't promise anything", my track record has been holding at "decent" so far.

And, er, I decided I'd be just wasting yer server space if I upload all this to the Gallery. This isn't an imageboard, it's a forum, having a gallery seems... I dunno, superfluous? I'd rather keep everything in one place.

Pen pressure suddenly stopped working >.>

Can't see the image for some reason. Got it to work from the parent site though. Just in case anyone else can't:

More of the pony Mask☆DeMasque.

Glad you like these. It's good to make a few consistently nice drawings for once, normally my art quality is all over the place.

Ideas, though, usually keep a consistent, low to moderate level of inanity, with only short spikes - such as this latest one.

Some of you may be familiar with the character concept of "futashy". If you aren't, consider yourself lucky and don't look it up. (it's NSFW)

Ostensibly, the character was originally made simply due to the pun on Fluttershy's name.

Recently I realized that there's more than one pun to be had here.

(image safe for work, maybe a little not safe for sanity)

Yes. Footashy.

May have been done before, but if it was I haven't encountered it. Still, kinda... interesting.

Well, it's not quite a pony, it's a pony robot. It's also a teutonic robot, as in the Teutonic Knights. The crest and armor are modeled off theirs.

Some more pics:

Kem, a griffon engineer OC for Athaniar:

Masque, an eccentric sort-of-thief OC, for someone known as Vinyl:

A circus pony OC whose name I don't recall, for Tectonic Robot and monkeyboyinc:

Maybe I should start one of those gallery thingies? I don't really need the hosting space, but at least it'll have all my relevant stuff in the same place.

How does one go about starting a gallery around here anyway?

I wanted to draw a horrorterror. The two things that immediately came to mind - a giant teletubby or a giant 3.5G pony - I couldn't remember the design of offhand, thankfully, so decided not to endanger my sanity looking them up. So I went for something randomly creepy and vaguely terrifying.

Some pictures I've done lately for a few different people:

Birthday picture for one Alex Gann, a.k.a. Slag"

Characters and scene for ShadowOfTheSun and Beeskee

Spontaneous pic for Tectonic Robot, depicted as a Teutonic Robot

Character pic and scene for Tectonic Robot

Characters and scene for Tectonic Robot and Maslab

It's my birthday today, and since I'm not about to request a birthday-themed picture from anybody (me being an artist myself), I made one myself. Sort of a quickie sketch with some linework.

Southern Sky really needs to improve her cooking skills before she tries to experiment with meteorological confections again. In my experience, meteorology and cooking are like hot and cold air currents - it's better if they don't mix.

The only thing I can think of is a pun, and sort of a reverse of what you want. It'd go with the present being sub-par.

"What? My name's is Rarity, not Charity."

There's still two whole days left. Should be enough for something.

Might be a good time to issue some PM reminders. Besides, you know how some of us creative people are. The typical modus operandi is "do anything until the last day, launch into epic spurt of activity in the last three hours till deadline, submit finished work, drop dead". I wouldn't really begin worrying until the 2-day mark.

New thing/experiment for today.

I've tried to determine the size of the ponies in relation to a typical human. (i.e. ideal-proportion 180cm-high human) The chart's in the image too, but I'm including the thought process behind it for clarity, so you don't have to read my scribbles.

The first consideration was that the ponies would look best, to us, and would have the least trouble fitting in, if their heads were roughly the same size as human heads. Altering the show design slightly, so that the pony stands at a somewhat more believable 3.5 heads rather than 2.5, we still get a pony that's roughly the size of a large dog. Hm. Well, handy at least. Perfect for children. I guess they aren't called "My Little Ponies" for nothing.

Then, Celestia I always for some reason saw as being roughly twice as high as the main characters, though it's largely inconsistent in the show. Sometimes her back is higher than the characters' heads, sometimes not... it's hard to tell, so I went with the "twice the height" notion, mostly because it allowed to put Celestia at a respectable 7 heads' height, quite enough to look into most humans' eyes, and to make them shield said eyes from her menacing horn.

So, a typical human being put at 180cm (and a typical skull size being, appropriately, roughly 23cm), we get the sizes for the "common" ponies and Celestia. Specifically, 80-something centimeters for a pony, with some variation, and roughly double that for Celestia. Whatever the in-universe evidence to the contrary, this is currently my "headcanon".

(yes, I understand that Twilight there should technically be rather larger if show proportions to Celestia are to be kept more faithfully, but that'd require altering proportions further towards realistic... or perhaps shortening Celestia's neck a bit. )

Sort-of-requested picture of MyLittlePonyTales' ponysona:

Hope ye like it.

Well, if you're looking for a Griffin, there's Kira Darkclaw. She hasn't had a proper art update in quite some time. The coloring on her current picture is actually off. Or there's Black Jack, but he's actually a Cynogriffin. Although if you really are asking for a preference, I've been looking to update the look of my Ponysona.

Not sure where I was going with this anymore, sort of a weird angle, but here you go.

About all I took from the description page is that she likes comics, and wears glasses.

Might color later, though you'd be much better off getting someone professional on that. I mostly blew my skillpoints on sketching, it seems.

My characters are all in my log, free for anyone to draw whenever they please.

Ye gods, so many characters.

Is there any one in particular that you'd prefer a picture of?

Also,

I'm sorry I really don't want to waist your time with something I don't need.Oh by the way you are a bit of an artist right because...Well you'll see.

Heh, no trouble at all. I still wouldn't mind if you got your character posted, I'm woefully out of practice with griffons. Meaning, I really only drew one, once. Trying one more wouldn't hurt.

I guess I'm interested as well. I tend to work with pencil sketches (and digital equivalents thereof), but I have some full-color works, so I'll just have to try and see what happens. Let's see what you got in mind.

Well, this is an art forum. Or subforum. So at least supposedly, it's usually full of artists, and art-related people. And people like me are usually more willing to take a stab at a random character (figuratively) if the character's already posted, without needing to commit to anything. Just put the character out, and I'm sure somebody will eventually come by and do something about him/her/it.

Been drawing things in the past few days.

Beginnings of a nice Twilight image:

Trying out MyPaint, RD done in a realistic-ish pony design style that I want to make my default.

Eenope.

To save you the trouble, it's Zeorymer of the Heavens, from the Hades Project Zeorymer manga and some SRW games.

I wanted to draw Nightmare Moon as the Rose C'est La Vie of the Moon, but couldn't find a good enough reference pic. All I got is this group shot. (Rose C'est La Vie is on Zeorymer's stage left)