Dessa

That demotivational poster is GOLD.

THere are just too many songs, and not enough poll options. "Cupcakes" is another popular one that can't fit on the list.

I didn't much like "At the Gala." And as far as "Evil Enchantress" goes, I just love the Flutterguy version too much to give Pinkie her due.

I was close to picking the CMC anthem... Very close.

Hi! Good to have you here. If you wish, there's a space in your profile here for "Steam ID" (the numbers after the last slash on your steam profile homepage). If you fill it out, it puts a little link to your steam profile below your image on every post. Yeah, our mods are awesome like that.

I liked every episode in this poll.

The last poll was the one that gave me the difficult choices. A couple other people had problems choosing in the first two polls. I tried my best to keep the popular episodes separate in the first round, but tastes vary so much! I gave everypony three votes just to cut down on the "I can't choose!" effect, but y'know, this is a show full of great episodes, thus this is a poll full of tough choices.

But it's gotta be done. This board must continue its march toward choosing a Best! Episode! Ever!, and casualties are inevitable (Feeling Pinkie Keen , A Dog and Pony Show , Show Stoppers , and probably now Griffin the Brush-Off ... There's no RD sad smiley, that's the closest i could get).

I know Griffon the Brush off isn't going to make it out of this round, but I'm the only vote so far? I thought it would be more popular than that. I guess I'm glad Pinkie is well represented by Party of One.

Fourward: http://www.canterlot.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2230

I'll upgrade the bracket tomorrow.

This post is part of a multi-post polling bracket, the full details of which are here: http://www.canterlot.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2021&p=25724#p25724

Almost done with round 1!

Pick up to three favorites. You may change your votes as many times as you wish, but polling will close 5 days after this posting, after which your votes are all locked in.

Links to episode videos here: http://www.canterlot.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1870

I think about a pony tat sometimes, but then I worry that season 2 might suck or something, then I have a tat of a ****ty show.

I'll do this step by step style. Maybe people are interested in the process?

Original Image:

Goal: Render a finished version of this in 100x100 size (The max size of most BBcode forum avatars).

First is some image processing. I shrink it down in paint.net, and then fiddle with the filters to make the dark lines darker and the light lines lighter:

This makes it easier to see what's going on when you're zoomed way in. A bunch of floating feathery greys gets confusing fast.

Then, I import the image into ProMotion (a spriting program) and reduce it to few colors. Usually 4. While a ton of grey gets confusing, no grey at all makes it impossible to render subpixels.

Next, I draw over it with black and white pixels only. The point of this step is to cut shapes. I clear away all the mess so you can see where the lines are. I dont bother with trying to make sense of the shapes quite yet.

Apparently, I lost the paining that illustrated this step. Bummer. Well, it looks way rough, with a bunch of odd shapes that could be anything.

On a scratchy sketch like the above, this step is hella confusing. Having the original handy for reference is a lifesaver.

Now it's time to make decisions. After some thought, I start to move lines around to make the shapes into something recognizable. At this point, I realize I want to draw the entire figures in the image, so I expand the canvas. This board goes to 125x125, yes? Pretty sure it goes higher than that, even. Now it's 100x125. This sort of pixel counting is always necessary. Had I been truly stuck to 100x100, i would have had to shrink the image down and redo a bunch of work.

I noticed a bunch of anatomy problems too, so I went in and tweaked things. I spend a lot of time on this step because changes are much easier to make now than later.

I consider this step done when all the lines look clean. Straight lines look more or less straight, curves lines don't wobble oddly, etc. This is tricky because some line angles work better than others. 45 degree angles and horizontal/verticals are pretty much always clean. Some angles wont ever look clean until you alias them (and even perfect aliasing will never make them as pretty as those golden angles above -- so consider it when you're composing an image).

Mudbug's hair is particularly confusing in the sketch, so I went and found a reference of Mudbug:

I tried to stick to the original (Bramble Rose) sketch's style as closely as possible (Bramble Rose's hair is more flowy, most notably), but this was good for filling in details I couldn't make out. Edit: Thank heavens! A simple cutie mark! Complex ones pretty much have to be fudges at this size)

I also picked colors from this image, as well as from another Silver Lining image above. I kept the colors very basic for now. Adding a bunch of other tones can wait for later.

Inevitably, I notice things after coloring. Still, it's not an unbearable amount of effort to fix anything at this stage. Mudbug's head was is too big above. This ate up the better part of 30 minutes to fix, but it had to be done. Luckily, I was able to slide some stuff around and make it work. Otherwise, i would have had to make a head from scratch, which I always find hard to do when the rest of the image is already there.

At this point, it looks pretty nifty, but there's another layer of polish before I declare the simple colored line-art finished.

Time to anti-alias this *****! I build color ramps for each of the colors that share a border (which you can see up and to the right of the ponies there. I keep one on the canvas for easy eyedropping, and to help me conceptually arrange the colors), then I futz around with any line that looks jagged. The risk here is overdoing it and making a big ol blurry mess, or using a few to many visual tricks and breaking the consistency of the line. Sometimes though, it rerally does look better to break the rules. This is what makes the pixel artist better than the PC. The PC can shrink an image very well, but once it gets to a certain size, the only proper judge is the human eye. Also, I can get a small curve done with fewer colors than the average PC algorightm.

This skill comes with observation and practice. Thisi is about "finding the pixels between the pixels"

I'm not done with this step yet, but I've finished aliasing Mudbug here. This is where I am currently:

It's subtle, but it makes a big difference, no? Look at muddy's eyes in particular. Those big flat curves don't take well to pixels. With aliasing, they become bonafide curves. Note that I don't alias the outside edges. This is so that it appears unartifacted on different backgrounds.

After I finishing smoothing out Silver Lining, it's on to shading. I might think about some background details here. Maybe the tree that was in the original. Maybe a mudpit. Not sure yet. Then I'll add some text, just for ****s and giggles. Something like "Sky and Soil" or "Clouds and Clay" or something. Cutie marks are one of the last things I put on a pony. Often, they are too detailed for any real faithfulness. When possible, I try do do something iconic. Martini Paradise, above, demonstrates this. The Martini Glass was drawn at a 45 degree angle (remember what I said earlier about 45 degree lines?), and abolutely everything that might obscure it shape has been removed completely. You might not get a real impression of what martini's CM looks like from that representation, but you'll see a pony with a martini glass on its bum. It's the little challenges like this that I think make spriting fun. This would be MUCH easier, and much less satisfying, at 400X600 or w/ev.

1919 root beer.

Jarritos.

Mountain Dew distortion.

Dragons seem pretty assured of not going hungry, if Spike is an example. He likes gems the most, but he also seems to eat hay and muffins. His incisors would suggest he eats meat as well. It would appear that dragons are some sorts of super-omnivores (given that regular omnivores font typically eat minerals beyond salts).

While gems don't seem as rare as they are in our world, they seem rare enough to be prized nonetheless (Rarity's name and cutie mark would suggest that they're at least not common). Dragons treat them as a delicacy, and the Diamond Dogs don't take them for granted, at least.

I'm not sure what this says about the geology of Equestria, but it's food for thought.

Hi! I'm here to provide you with an excuse to pose, so as to facilitate your membership here!

So, a video game brony, huh? That's pretty cool.

You know, I'm not a big basketball fan but I guess I've never looked at it that way.

Likewise, I'm not a big baseball fan these days, but then there are always those special moments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdYBEJzy-F0

The latest WIP:

Pencil: Bramble Rose

Rear pony is Mudbug's design.

There are some weird problems with the rear hooves there that need a second look. Not sure how to position Silver Lining's right rear leg there. The faces need tweaking to get the character of the pencils better.

You know RCT, you always mentioned the styling of the ponies hair and other mods, but I never really got a sense of how much work you put into them till these pics and discussion.

Keep up the good work!

Word. Mad respect for the hair skills.

Sports: The stories you can't predict. I don't watch sports as much as I used to, but I love sports. As a child, baseball was my love. How could it not be? The home team won 2 pennants over 5 years at my childhood's height. Minnesotans aren't used to winning the big ones, so it was a huge deal when it happened.

As a player, I've always had love for soccer, and always will. There is no grander event in the sports world than the World Cup! It's all about the passion, the nationalism and politics, the stakes, the history. As for the game itself, I see how people can say it's boring, but I can't make sense of how it being low-scoring makes it so. A low scoring game is always close. True, better teams usually win, but even down 3 points, it only takes 30 seconds to get a point. Soccer games are rarely over until that final whistle.

Football, Basketball, love. I like football's tension. With 16 games in a season, there are few throwaway games, and every playoff game has the potential to be a team's last. And the Super Bowl is akin to a holiday. Food, time with friends and family. LOVE the Super Bowl. In basketball, blowouts can be rewarding as well, as teams start to play loose and show off. I can't think of another sport that has the creative potential of basketball. Just look at the slam-dunk competition.

Hockey is low on my list of loves, but even then, when the stakes are right, it can be exciting. Playoff games are fun in ANY sport.

Every sport has the potential to be exciting, even if it's normally super dull (Nascar...) ♥ Sports.

I'm the fSecond! Wahaha!

My OC, Silver Lining. She's a loose concept, and I invite artists to change or add whatever.

Since you're looking for scenes to depict, could you draw her collecting silver from a cloud?

References

Original:

(Eternally unfinished!)

Inspired by brianblackberry's cut:

brianblackberry's cut

Bramble Rose's cut. (She's on the bottom/left)

Mexican/Kosher Coke. It's all about the real sugar, and the no sodium added (they add sodium to most Coke so you stay thirsty).

Yay! An art pony! Welcome to the herd!

I like the psychodrama in the mecha fights too. What would Evangelion, Escaflowne be without it? Boring, IMO.

Round 1, Poll 2 (Canterlot) is closed!

Threeward! (Appleoosa): http://www.canterlot.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2146 (Closed)

Those last two aren't likely to get many votes. Appleoosa and Manehattan are packed tight with greatness, and less popular episodes are going to have a hard go of it.

Then again, my predictions have been moderately off, so who knows?

Cutie Mark Chronicles will probably win the whole damn thing. I voted for that for sure. SUCH a great ep.

A Dog and Pony Show. Rarity episodes should have gotten free promotions.

The tough choice was Green Isn't Your Color vs. Sonic Rainboom. I settled on Green, mostly because of "FOREVERRRRRRRRR"