My Little Realistically Colored Ponies

Ok, another MLP post. I've been doing some work on the eventual My Little Pony Friendship is Magic episode between the Riding Star work.

The infamous Riding Star episode is making progress although slowly. Windows Movie Maker Live sucks. Just throwing it out there. They reduced the program to a slide show maker with almost no options for further customization or editing. However, Windows Movie Maker the older version before Live, is nowhere near as frustrating to work with. I'm an Adobe Flash person, so WMM has a learning curve. With luck I might have the review done by next week's post. YAY!

Back to My Little Pony FIS. I've been watching the show, taking notes, making the Mo puppets, researching bronie culture... So dangitt I have MLP on the brain.

Also Kelpie and DemonicSymphony have gotten me to thinking about real life MLP colors. I affectionately blame you both this week.

So here is a personal take on possible coloration of the FIM ponies. WARNING: The following contains a horse genetics geek-out. I apologize if I sound like a raving lunatic who makes no sense. We sadly do not provide glowsticks for the rave.

Twilight Sparkle

Seal Brown Roan - E( ), At( ), Rn( )
Her body is lighter than her mane and tail, and she has too much warm in her tone to be a blue roan, but not enough to be a bay roan so seal brown is a happy medium. Even, Dr. Sponenburg a horse color genetics researcher calls Seal Brown with Roan 'Purple Corn'. (Please, Dr. Sponenburg. The names! The silly phenotype names!) Speaking of silly...

Pinky Pie

Chestnut Roan with minimal Frame or Splash - ee, Rn( ) with ON or SplN
Chestnut roans are pink. XD Frame and Splash can cause blue eyes and in minimal form don't always leave white markings.

Rarity

Grey with dark mane and tail, minimal Splash or Frame - E( ), A( ), G( ), with ON or SplN
Rarity is mostly white with a purple mane and tail. So a dilution for her wouldn't work since none of them would allow a body that pale with a mane and tail that dark. So she could be a grey with a black mane and tail that have yet to follow the rest of the body. A bay base would more easily allow the body to get lighter first because of the red pigment which often grays faster. And for the blue eyes she could have minimal Frame or Splash. Poor fashionista would get gray hair soon at this phase of grey progression.

Applejack

Gold Champagne - ee, Ch( )
I have to go with Kelpie on this. Flaxen sorrel was probably the color intended for her as DemonicSymphony stated. The light mane and tail, golden body and green eyes would all fit perfectly for a Gold Champagne (Chestnut + Champagne Dilute) As an added bonus the Champagne dilute exists in stock horses like this western gal.

Fluttershy

Perlino - E( ), A( ), CrN
Fluttershy had me wondering for awhile. Her mane is too dark for a palomino even though she is a pale yellow elsewhere. Her light colored eyes made me realize that Perlino would be a good possibility for her. 2 cream genes on a bay can create a light cream toned body and almost rust colored mane and tail. It also makes those light colored eyes. I guess you could also get a palomino with pinto blues and dye the hair pink. Someone has to do that for a costume class. :P

Rainbow Dash

No clue... ??, ??, ??
Nope, no idea. If you leave a blue roan under a rainbow you might get that color for awhile. Then again, she could be the mount of the Native American Thunder Spirit (pictured above) who has a rainbow for it's tail. It is strangely fitting since she can control rain clouds...

If you guys have your own theories share 'em. Speculate the madness!

NY Ren Faire 2011 & IT'S A PONY!

So yesterday myself BeautyGirl1510 WSTopDeck and others went to the NY Renaissance Fair in the Sterling Forrest in Tuxedo NY. Im posting this to the blog since Ren Faire = horses.

I unfortunately don't bring cameras to these things but BeautyGirl1510 might be posting about it on her blog Blackthorne Studios with images of her crazy dress she made for it. It's the kind of dress that would make you want to twirl around the mountains via the way a Disney Princess would.

There was a joust, of course, and we had the brash Scottish knight who wore a kilt with his plate armor. A gaited chestnut amongst the jousting ponies wasn't happy that the humans were dawdling before he could do his job in the games.

There was Hey Nunny Nunny a comedy duo of two nuns making various religious jokes. There was Dextere Tripp the crazy stunt man who had fircrackers and explosives ductaped onto his body while balancing on a ladder. Ok that's not very renaissance-y but everyone got to put him out with water balloons.

I wish I did get a picture of this but there were two people who dressed as unicorn-girls to the faire. I possibly would have paid someone dressed as a fairy to recite the butterfly's monologue from the Last Unicorn to them if they knew it. XD

My beau also got me a Harmonic Way Epona Horse Heart Pendant. ^_^ The horses are doing a hoof bump.

"Affection for another kicks ass." "Yah bro."

And upon searching for Ren garb for said beau we found a shirt and went to pay for it. Upon handing my card over the owner of the shop (who appeared to be a relative of Professor Sybill Trelawny) they stared at the card and started sing-songing "I see a pony, I see a pony, it's a pony!" (woman after my own heart.) Apparently a pony was the secret item of the day at this shop and my American Quarter Horse Association card counted as a pony. Got a free shirt with my purchase. Yay for being an equine enthusiast!

Early 1900's Gossip

First off I want to have a huge thank you to everyone who has so far participated in the questionnaire. Suzie and Maria from Centenary, thanks so much for your kind words you guys made my week. ^_^

Just because a week has gone and a new post is up doesn't mean it's over. If you want to still participate please do! If I get enough responses I'll have a post dedicated to breaking down the results of replies.

~~~

So this past week the awesome Admin from the equine genetics forum I'm a participant on posted this interesting excerpt from Types and Market Classes of Livestock, By Henry William Vaughan. You can blame her for this entire blog post. :P

"Color With the possible exception of the saddle horse color is of more importance in heavy harness horses than in any other type The dark solid colors are preferred as being in proper accord with the elegant vehicles drawn by this horse White ankles are often favored because a horse so marked has his action emphasized and easily seen Grays roans and light colors are heavily discounted or even rejected except for certain special restricted uses such as sporting tandems road fours or cross matched pairs and in horses for ladies use even the white markings are discriminated against True elegance and good taste are wanted and this excludes colors that are flashy and calculated to attract undue attention."

This caused my imagination to kinda run with itself.
Click to enlarge or view higher quality at DA here.
Two overly aristocratic ladies gossiping over the impropriety of flashy colored horses.

Yes horses with too much 'chrome' were horribly out of fashion in those days. Meanwhile back in the 1700's white and fancy colors were all the rage. You know those Lippizans? Those uniform gray prancing ones from Vienna? This is what they looked like a few hundred years ago. Yah, crazy right?

So really if anyone was anyone back in the early past century then their horse was as plain, normal and unassuming as possible.


Ugh. A blaze and palomino? What were they thinking giving it a show. It learned to talk just to get people to look at it. Pay it no mind, and keep walking. It can smell disgust and fear.

Viggo Mortinson you attention seeking harlot of poor taste! Who let you in front of the cameras on that creature?

No more. No more! Is that purple and a horn? What in heavens is on it's hindquarters?
My weak constitution can't take much more of this.

Yah. Better to let this fall away into the aether.

~~~

Speaking of My Little Ponies, Kelpie from HGS has made us no longer need to wonder what Applejack from MLP Friendship Is Forever might look like as a real horse.

If you believe in alternate universes or string theory, this does exist somewhere.

This is Kelpie's horse Pyrros. And an interesting story occurred because of it:

"-when I showed my husband [the picture it] caused us to end up in an argument over whether Applejack is palomino or flaxen chestnut. (I maintained flaxen chestnut as her mane and tail were not white, he maintained palomino because her body was too yellow. I guess someone should jump in with "gold champagne" next since her eyes are green.) UBER CARTOON-HORSE PHENOTYPE NERD ARGUMENT."

And it is for the uber cartoon-horse phenotype nerdness that we thank you. ^_^

~~~

For more MLP color madness.
Click Here

Horse Questions / Meme

Alrighty. Mary King's Riding Star video is cursed. Pretty sure. Will get done eventually if the computer program gods stop hating this project.

Anyways.

So I've been doing this blog for a few months and honestly... I have no idea who my audience is. Comments are few and I'm just curious about the people who find this amusing enough to take a look. I have 6 followers currently and I thank each of you. I can find out what interests you on your own blogs. (Insert evil laughter)

But more than those 6 visit the site. And I want to get you guys out of the woodwork and find out more about you. What do you like? What do you watch? Various random horse related questions as well. So I made a list of said questions that I'd really truly like to know. I will be staring rudely and taking notes.

And for those of you who are artistically inclined I have a meme of these questions that you can use on DeviantArt here. You can draw. Add photos. Or create your responses reenacted with model horses (I'm looking at you Model Horse Blab readers).

So here are the questions. Please feel free to share your answers in the comments and send a link to the image version if you fill it out. ^_^

1) What is your favorite horse book?

2) What is your favorite horse movie or movie horse?

3) What is your favorite horse related video game?

4) What is your favorite horse breed?

5) What is your favorite horse related TV show? (Silver Brumby, My Little Pony ect.)

6) What is your favorite mythical horse? (unicorn, pegasus, centaur, tikbalang ect.)

7) We have reached the end. What steed would you dramatically ride into the sunset on?

VirtualPwnies In Real Life

Inspired by true events. The real world is poorly drawn. Click to enlarge. Also viewable on DA here.

Color Genetics Simulator by Jennifer Hoffman

As some of you may know, I am an equine color genetics geek. Hardcore. How genetics influence an animal's appearance and health is fascinating to me. I have old books from my mother's days in college studying pre-vet courses that I grew up reading as a kid. It is my addictive hobby that does not have a 12 step program.

So some of you may have come across a color simulator that had a 3D horse with buttons for each gene at a particular locus. The color would change on the model depending on what genes were activated. It was a bit outdated with its genetic accuracy but it was still fun to play. And I have to give kudos for it having a 3D horse with texture maps applied to it.

The only things I really ever successfully made in 3D were a coffee cup and toaster. I attempted my own horse color simulators twice. One in PowerPoint and the other in HTML for college projects, but neither were spectacular by any means. And for me coding is not a forte. So this simulator has a whole lot of respect from me.

Well, recently it's creator Jennifer Hoffman has given it a complete revamp with more colors, a 2D horse for the examples and she has been updating the genetics to be more accurate. There are all 4 options at the agouti locus, LP and PATN1 interact as partial dominants, gray actually grays out, and you can only have 2 KIT mutations at a time. I know most of you probably have no clue what I'm on about but it's really neat I assure you.

Click for the Color Genetics Simulator

Jennifer joined Horse Grooming Supplies Forum after seeing a critique of her simulator and asked the color gurus for help in making everything more accurate. Myself and the other equine color genetics enthusiasts on HGS got to help contribute information on how the genes and colors interact with each other. I asked Jennifer if I could feature her here on this blog which she agreed to.Give us a quick run down of who you are and how you got involved in horses.
My name is Jennifer Hoffman.
I'm a 3D tech artist/animator by trade (I do animation and the systems set-up it requires for 3D media). I had a horse crazy spell in middle school when I knew a few people who had horses and I could go riding with. And while it sort of tapered off when it became clear that I would never own a real horse myself, it seems like once you taste the horse frenzy, it never truly leaves you. One of my other hobbies / off and on fascinations is genetics, so its no surprise that horse genetics is something I think about from time to time.

How did you come up with the idea for the color simulator?In 2007 the game studio I worked at shut down, and in my period of joblessness that followed I played with the idea of doing web design instead. That was when I started to work on the original color simulator. I had been playing with fantasy genetics sims online and was disappointed in their lack of depth, but before I could build up the courage to invent my own genetic schemes, I thought I should tackle a project with real genetics first. That became the horse color simulator. I did eventually go on to make my fantasy genetics sim, which is a griffins virtual pet game.

What programs and methods were used to create the color simulator?
I'm sort of old fashioned with my web work, so the horse simulator was made in HTML, CSS, and vanilla Javascript by means of a text editor. The original simulator used a horse model I had made for the game studio that closed its doors, which I had extensively re-textured to cover all the variation I needed. In my revamping I switched to painted graphics so I could have more control over the subtle color changes.

What has been the hardest part of creating this project?
The hardest part of the project was, and probably still is, accounting for all of the ifs, ands, and buts with regards to genetic interactions. Finding good information on just how all of the different moving parts mesh together is tricky, and its also rather tedious to make all of the minor but important changes to the various graphics. A thing like palomino vs dunalino is subtle, but if you don't include it the genetics just aren't very solid. The duns and silvers in particular probably doubled the number of graphics files I had to make.

What is/are your favorite horse color(s)/pattern(s)?
My personal favorite colors are any variety of gray (not the gray gene in particular), and I usually gravitate towards grullo. I have a friend with a really lovely Peruvian horse which I think is a dark-maned black silver. He's got a lovely chocolate coat with a slightly more caramel colored mane and some really striking eyes. I've been leaning more towards that lately as a result, but I'll probably eventually wind up back at gray.

Who is your favorite fictional horse? (mythological/literary/movie/video game ect.)
My favorite fictional horses are actually not named characters, though they really stole my heart. They're the horses from the video game Assassin's Creed. I saw a joke once about the girlfriend who stole "Assassin's Ponies" from her boyfriend, and I think it probably applies to me. Don't get me wrong, I love the game overall, but I spent way more time than you're supposed to just riding around on their horses. It's got some of the best controls I've ever seen for horse riding in a game, including the games that are supposed to be completely about horse riding. I adore the almost imperceptible delay between when you give a command and when the horse obeys. It doesn't do exactly what you ask every time, but the result is a smoother ride where some of the idiotic button presses you make get ignored.

I have a website where I showcase my professional work, mostly consisting of animated shorts or animation-related stills: www.jenniferhoffman.net

~~~
Check out her stuff it's really neat. The moving horse animation she has done is adorable. Equine game developers take note.

He's still on a Horse

He was going to be featured here eventually. If you've been watching any American commercials over the past year and are equine inclined, you probably know of the Old Spice Guy, A.K.A. The Man Your Man Can Smell Like. He's on a horse.

Old Spice has also had equines in their marketing before. The Centaur Man was used a few years ago but didn't leave as much of an impact.

Plus there's that whole, 'is it bestiality' thing with his human wife and other stuff we'd rather not think about.

So who is this Old Spice Guy? This man we want our men to totally smell like?

He is Isaiah Mustafa. Besides being Old Spice Guy, he is also a comic book fan and takes his daughter to California Comicon every year. So he gets extra kudos points from the land of geekdome. He is also a vegan so animal rights activists don't need to put him on a list or anything.

This Old Spice Guy marketing scheme has been very notable with Mr. Mustafa, and strangely it seems to be alcoholic drinks that are trying to steal the thunder. Would be interesting to have a meeting of The Old Spice Guy, the Dos Eques Most Interesting Man In The World and Key Stone's Keith Stone. Old Spice Guy and Dos Eques Have Keith beat in equestrian ability though.



I say there should be a jousting part of said made up tournament. Old Spice Guy would probably ride backwards, Most Interesting Man possibly using ninja fencing techniques while doing dressage yoga. It shall be an epic battle my friends.

I'm On A Horse, has become a catch phrase for the Old Spice brand and they sell merchandise with it.



The original commercial has even been parodied with Grover from Sesame Street!

If you didn't at least get a smile from this yours may be a hardened dark soul.

Recently there has been a brouhaha about the latest Old Spice commercials including that face on every bodice ripper novel of the 80s and 90's, Fabio. In commercial land he apparently wants to take over as the new Old Spice Guy. The gauntlet has been thrown.

"Mine is a horse."

This has caused an uproar in the online community. What about Isaiah? Will we have to stare at Fabio now? Please no! The horror! However, that commotion seems to be the plan of the company. Isaiah is still employed with Old Spice and they admit to having more plans for him. This seems to be a ploy to get more people interested in the products and specifically the actor who is most closely associated with them in the public mind. Check out the outcry on the Old Spice YouTube page. People are pissed.

Why is there so much of a hubbub about all this? Honestly, the Old Spice Guy commercials are amusing even if they get over the top. And the actor himself is relatable as a person. He seems like an honestly nice guy, check the interview.

This combination had caused the public to like Old Spice Guy on multiple levels. Those who are attracted to him because he is attractive, equestrians because he's on a horse, and geeks around the world for he is one of their own. Plus these commercials are more entertaining than the "use our product and random people will sleep with you instantly" tactic.

... I'm looking at you Axe (Smell Like a Chemical Bath) Body Spray.