My Little Pony XCVIII: Still Haven't Caught Up on Season 7!

[Douglas]

You gave Discord magnificent antlers by the way. The right one seems to be so big that it is close to shedding, so this must be happening in winter, though of course I'm not an expert in cervids and I'm not even sure what kind of antler Discord is supposed to have and whether he sheds it and when he does.

Discord sheds his antler whenever he wants to, regrows it whenever he wants to, and twists it into a balloon animal whenever he wants to. This is Discord, logic and nature have nothing to do with him.

[zimmerwald1915]

Spoiler: Friendship University

Show

Uh... hmm. Okay, I stand corrected. They did everything except the part about being cuffed and carted off to jail.

I'm sure they'll look good in matching orange jumpsuits.

What jail? This was a civil matter at equity, with a judgment of restitution. Criminal penalties were never a possibility.

[zimmerwald1915]

Thanks! An idea that I was unable to articulate fully, because I had to rush the fourth page (the reason why it has so little dialogue and it has poor line execution), is that Discord intentionally riled up the ponies in order to show Celestia how much her closest family and friends trust their Diarch.

To an irrational degree.

[Rater202]

For the people insisting that Cozy Glow is gonna turn out to be a villain for whatever reasons...

Spoiler: Nothing for sure spoilery, but just in case...

Show

Apparently, it's been stated that she was inspired partially by Baby Doll.

That is to say, the Batman: The Animated Series villain. the woman who had some kind of genetic defect that prevented her from fully maturing even as her mind aged in real time, leaving her looking like a small child well into middle age, played a five year old girl in a TV Show, when she was 20, and went insane as her popularity declined.

[Aotrs Commander]

After 100 hours of BATTLETECH, starting to get a bit repetitve, so I thought I'd have a brief break. Thought about Civ IV, decided I couldn't be arsed to a) spend £15 on re-buying it on Steam or GOG and b) couldn't be arsed to install and faff about using my discs for Win 10. After a bit of thought, I suddenly remembered I HAD bought the expansion for Civ Beyond Earth on sale at some point, so I might as well try it.

Won't start. Verfiied files, started to update graphics driver... Geforce Experience having kittens. Finally fixed that, and now I have to go through all the faff waiting for the driver to install, before I can see if Beyond Earth will dain to work.

*sigh*

Why do I even BOTHER.

[meto30]

After 100 hours of BATTLETECH, starting to get a bit repetitve, so I thought I'd have a brief break. Thought about Civ IV, decided I couldn't be arsed to a) spend £15 on re-buying it on Steam or GOG and b) couldn't be arsed to install and faff about using my discs for Win 10. After a bit of thought, I suddenly remembered I HAD bought the expansion for Civ Beyond Earth on sale at some point, so I might as well try it.

Won't start. Verfiied files, started to update graphics driver... Geforce Experience having kittens. Finally fixed that, and now I have to go through all the faff waiting for the driver to install, before I can see if Beyond Earth will dain to work.

*sigh*

Why do I even BOTHER.

Hmmmm, interesting. I've been having problems trying to start up Beyond Earth recently; I thought little of it so I just uninstalled it (I had successfully played Beyond Earth long ago when the expansion pack first came out), but maybe it wasn't an isolated incident.

I re-did and re-uploaded the fourth page of ATG2018 prompt#13.

Spoiler: ATG2018 Prompt#13 page4 redo

Show

[Aotrs Commander]

Hmmmm, interesting. I've been having problems trying to start up Beyond Earth recently; I thought little of it so I just uninstalled it (I had successfully played Beyond Earth long ago when the expansion pack first came out), but maybe it wasn't an isolated incident.

I re-did and re-uploaded the fourth page of ATG2018 prompt#13.

Spoiler: ATG2018 Prompt#13 page4 redo

Show

Seems to be twitchy. But after a Nvidia update, it seems at least to have booted (though I did fire it up out of Nvidia experience, rather than Steam client. (Didn't know you could do that...))

Haven't played since before the first expansion when I got fed-up with waiting for them to fix the the "attack animations disappear after a while running" glitch.

[meto30]

Spoiler: My entry for the 14th prompt of ATG2018, a crossover with my own D&D campaign

Show

[Derjuin]

Spoiler: My entry for the 13th prompt of ATG 2018 - this might be for you, Derjuin!

Show

Since I was almost out of time for the 13th prompt I ended the conversation there, but to properly close this mini-arc and also explain in more detail what I was getting at with the conversation, I'd need to flesh-up the fourth page and possibly add a fifth page of conversations. I might do that on the makeup day.

<3

I would love it if you drew more Celestia, she looks fantastic in your style!

[DigoDragon]

Spoiler: Hearthswarming Club

Show

Missed opportunity:

What jail? This was a civil matter at equity, with a judgment of restitution. Criminal penalties were never a possibility.

Need to move to Equestria. Seems like punishment by "slap on the wrist" is all you get up until you threaten to murder ponies, at which point it's banishment/imprisonment at Celestia's leisure.

[Forum Explorer]

Need to move to Equestria. Seems like punishment by "slap on the wrist" is all you get up until you threaten to murder ponies, at which point it's banishment/imprisonment at Celestia's leisure.

Please, Starlight tried to destroy Equestria, and she was punished by...well she was never punished at all was she?

Spoiler: How Shining Armor got a scholarship

Show

[zimmerwald1915]

Please, Starlight tried to destroy Equestria, and she was punished by...well she was never punished at all was she?

She was on parole for a whole season.

(Also, our society is much too punitive.)

[t209]

She was on parole for a whole season.

(Also, our society is much too punitive.)

Well, she's like Professor Zoom and Barry to an extent in Flashpoint (like Barry decided to every pre-New 52 to save his mom, later retconned as Dr. Manhattan's plan).
And it would be classified as alternate history, so not sure how to classify "averted temporal crimes".

[meto30]

<3

I would love it if you drew more Celestia, she looks fantastic in your style!

I love drawing Celestia, too! I am rather certain that she's my third most-often drawn pony, after Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer. She is my favourite pony, after all - I just keep drawing the other two more because they feature often in my storyboard-series. I hope I'll get to share in the love of Celestia more often in the future.


Also, further on my adventures in catching up on Pony:

Spoiler: My single-line comment on "Marks and Recreation"

Show

Rumble has set the record for the character in FiM that got me to hate him the fastest.

[Aotrs Commander]

(Also, our society is much too punitive.)

I think the problem is entirely the opposite with regard to punitive measures taken on actual wrong-doers as opposed to people merely caught in the crossfire of bureaucratic ineptitude and lazy half-measures.

[Derjuin]

I love drawing Celestia, too! I am rather certain that she's my third most-often drawn pony, after Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer. She is my favourite pony, after all - I just keep drawing the other two more because they feature often in my storyboard-series. I hope I'll get to share in the love of Celestia more often in the future.

I'd sorta guessed from your avatar, but I'm really happy to find someone else whose favorite is Celestia. I should give drawing her another shot...

[meto30]

Spoiler: My entry for the 15th prompt of the ATG 2018

Show

This is still continuing the same conversation I was having with Spike from prompt 14.

I'd sorta guessed from your avatar, but I'm really happy to find someone else whose favorite is Celestia. I should give drawing her another shot...

Thanks! Let us dedicate more artwork to our beloved, caring, and glorious princess. ...Which reminds me, I need to make a new coloured drawing to replace that Avatar image. That thing is quite old, and doesn't reflect my current style.

[Aotrs Commander]

bureaucratic ineptitude and lazy half-measures.

Speaking of... Shapeways just rolled out their new websitre interface.

...

*shakes head*

You'd think, after all this time, that they might, at some point, have had some vague idea of what to do.

No.

No, they absolutely do not.

"Crap" would understating it.

On top of everything else, the new logo for their commercial website is...

Well, honestly, a gentleprimate by the name of Model_Monkey put it best:

Spoiler

Show

One of the following logos is classy and timeless. The other is not.

No kidding, this is really their new logo:

Seriously, I could do better than that.

Hell, I HAVE done than that for the Shipyards logo, and I, as we well know, commit art like other people commit crime. (But y'know what? I could do a better, more appropriate logo for a 3D printing house - I mean, for a start, maybe make i, I dunno, a BIT 3D?)

Someone with some actual artistic talent, like meto or Thanq or Digo could literally crap out something better and more sensible than that into their toliets.

[meto30]

Speaking of... Shapeways just rolled out their new websitre interface.

Someone with some actual artistic talent, like meto or Thanq or Digo could literally crap out something better and more sensible than that into their toliets.

Well.... I guess they took a literal understanding of "minimalism".

Thanks, but I think you vastly overestimate how much "artistic vision" I have. Remember that strange bundle of fabric I put on your four-legged alien gentleman quite some time ago? XD

[b_jonas]

Discord sheds his antler whenever he wants to, regrows it whenever he wants to, and twists it into a balloon animal whenever he wants to. This is Discord, logic and nature have nothing to do with him.

Normally, yes. While he's in Ponyville, no. Shedding antlers is part of changing seasons, so in Ponyville he has to match the local traditions and do it without magic, just like Twilight and Spike did. If he didn't do that, Applejack would get very angry at him for ignoring those local traditions. Discord has to wait for an event like the Running of the Leaves, probably called something like the Bucking of the Antlers. First, Applejack and his team gets their lassoes and dogs and round up all the Ponyville cervids that grow an antler and shed it yearly. The cervids are then sent into a repurposed milking shed in a single file. I presume Fluttershy stands by to help in case any cervid really doesn't want to cooperate, but I imagine such problems are rare. In the shed, a group of athletes kick the antlers off the cervids.

Of course, Discord could just escape to the Everfree Forest where the animals take care of themselves, and them shed his antler in whatever way he wants. But where's the fun in that? Imagine how much fun he could have with his friends if he added some interesting little twists to the Bucking of the Antlers instead!

ATG2018 Prompt#13 page4 redo

Nice! Well drawn. Thank you for posting it here too.

I just have two little complaints about the bottom panel of the picture. There are two short lines representing Princess Celestia's left front leg. These are close to Sunset's speech bubble, so the drawing is confusing at first, you start to read it as if Princess Celestia and Sunset Shimmer exclaimed "That is ludicrious" about something at the same time, before you realize the actually intended meaning. I'm not sure how you could best fix this. Perhaps move that speech bubble a little down, redraw the line from Sunset to the bubble so it points to where the bubble is now and make sure it's really close, make those lines for the front hind leg just a bit shorter to make as clear as possible in the available space that they're not speech balloon lines, and move Discord's speech balloon a bit down and to the right to make space. Also, in Sunset's dialog, the colon looks really strange. Did you mean to put an ellipsis there instead, or is it an ellipsis that looks like a colon? I recommend either changing it to an ellipsis (you have to shift the rest of the fourth line to the right a bit, but there is just enough space for that), or better, drop that punctuation entirely and shift the line left, for Sunset is a rhetoric (she's got lots of practice in those first few years of being Queen of Canterlot high) and can deliver the whole four lines without a pause and without making it look forced.

My entry for the 14th prompt of ATG2018, a crossover with my own D&D campaign

Nice. Very well drawn again. Also, that must be an interesting campaign.

Again I can only complain about the lettering in the middle panel. (I don't actually know anything about drawing, that's why.) In this panel, the placement of the speech bubbles are confusing, but this time for a different reason. After Spike's balloon ending in “Hey you up for a game session tonight?”, there's too much of a gap, so I mistakenly started to read Spike's speech balloon on the right (“I heard …”) instead of your avatar's reply below. Perhaps this is my fault, I'm just too used to reading balloons from left to right alternating, rather than in columns. But if you fuzzed the positions of the balloons a little so that the ones on the left are closer together, and move the two speech balloons on the right side of the panel down, making place by moving the signature to the left of Spike instead of his right, it could get better.

It should be possible to do most of this in post-processing. Perhaps for moving any speech baloon lines, it is more convenient for you to edit the original drawing, if the medium you use allows it conveniently, but move the speech balloon text and the signature by digital image editing. Or, much better, just don't edit anything, leave these drawings imperfect, and move on to drawing more. You'd learn more that way than if I get you stuck in my own perfectionism.

Please, Starlight tried to destroy Equestria, and she was punished by...well she was never punished at all was she?

She was punished by having to take remedial lessons in friendship from Twilight Sparkle, including the one in S6 E1 when she has to reconnect with her childhood friend Sunburst. The lesson was very uncomfortable to her, but both she and Sunburst gained a new friend. Best punishment ever.

I'm not sure how much you watched from the show, Forum Explorer. I'm telling the following mostly in order, so stop reading this before you get to the part that's spoilers for you if you're not up to date.

Then she was punished a few more times with similar uncomfortable lessons with good outcomes: in S6 E6 when she meets her new best friend Trixie; S6 E21 might have been the next attempt, only it got very botched, but it's clear that if Starlight tried to do it the normal way it would have been uncomfortable for her, that's why he gave that up; then possibly in S6 E25 when the whole Mane Six got themselves captured to make Starlight have to deal with the changeling invasion (you all know where they learned that trick, they did add a new twist on it though, Spike stayed uncaptured to take notes for Twilight about how well Starlight does on the lesson).

After that, Twilight got exhausted with giving Starlight lessons and decided to have a little break. Discord tried her best to troll her for that in S7 E1. Luckily in S7 E10 when Twilight didn't have to do anything except perhaps exchange a knowing look with the tree chest castle map, and then the map managed everything else including finding a lesson. I'm quite sure S7 E26 wasn't Twilight intentionally giving Starlight a lesson, Twilight was just dumb there.

But perhaps before EG5 E3 Mirror Magic, Twilight might have arranged a little something with Sunset Shimmer so that the next time anything comes up, Sunset will call Starlight for help instead of Twilight. Sunset is a good actor after all, she could fool Starlight, and she and Twilight knew Starlight would be all too eager to answer a call by Sunset. The whole “I just ran out of pages in my journal” part is all too suspicious, now that I think about it: it was a lie, the journal wasn't out of pages, Sunset just said that as a distraction to get away with going into Equestria and contacting Starlight, right in front of the unknowing Rainbooms, and it was a lie that still worked if the Rainbooms repeated it to Starlight. (Sunset might have had a backup way to actually contact Twilight for emergencies she didn't think Starlight could handle.)

And then, as you know, the tree chest castle map helped find a friendship lesson for Starlight again in S8 E8, because Twilight would still rather spend her time some other way. She still kept Starlight next to her in the castle so she could watch her, and made her report to her, because she still trusted Starlight less than Celestia trusted Twilight, and for a good reason too. I am quite sure it's definitely not just because of a housing problem in Ponyville why Starlight has to live in the castle.

[DigoDragon]

[My entry for the 15th prompt of the ATG 2018]

And now I have the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album playing in my head. Um, thanks?

Spoiler

Show

Someone with some actual artistic talent, like meto or Thanq or Digo could literally crap out something better and more sensible than that into their toliets.

And I had curry chicken for lunch.

[Aotrs Commander]

And I had curry chicken for lunch.

Case rests...



Miffed now, just FINALLY finished watching Agents of SHIELD season five (long delays even over the UK's late release) and now it's well past the point of thread necromancy limits, so there's no-one to talk to about it... And there's not really enough for me to wax lyrical on to make it worth starting a whole thread over (or even asking the mods).

Dangit.

[b_jonas]

My entry for the 15th prompt of the ATG 2018

Nice drawing again. Extra points for managing to continue the story from the 14th prompt, with a new prompt. Did you plan that ahead, as in, did you know what the 15th prompt is when you made (part of) your entry for the 14th? It is impressive either way, and worked out well.

This is still continuing the same conversation I was having with Spike from prompt 14.

Oh right. You even wrote that there. Good.

Speaking of... Shapeways just rolled out their new websitre interface.

...

*shakes head*

You'd think, after all this time, that they might, at some point, have had some vague idea of what to do.

No.

No, they absolutely do not.

"Crap" would understating it.

Sadly, most websites on the web (that I meet at least) are like that.

We have to treasure the few mostly good websites, especially the ones whose maintainers listen to your feedback and improve their website according to that, such as timeanddate.com, and acting quickly AND writing me an email thanking me and explaining that they're sorry but they couldn't do some of the changes I suggested for certain internal technical reasons at this moment but nevertheless found that part of my feedback useful too. That counts for a lot with me, because you need the feedback to know what people who actually use the website, and they clearly actually used the feedback. (There are other such websites, but I gave this as an example because it's the one I expect is useful for most people.)

And we sometimes have to deal with some of the worse websites, because they offer a service I need and the alternatives are even worse, such as certain category of online shops, or my bank, or anything mandatory by the government such as taxes and vehicle registration and you know the drill; and avoid the really bad websites whenever you can.

On top of everything else, the new logo for their commercial website is...

Well, honestly, a gentleprimate by the name of Model_Monkey put it best:

No kidding, this is really their new logo:

Someone with some actual artistic talent, like meto or Thanq or Digo could literally crap out something better and more sensible than that into their toliets.

Totally agreed. And indeed, that's their new logo, right their on their website. I checked, although in retrospect I don't think anyone could bluff or mind control you with libel like that.

[Re Aotrs's "toilet" comment quoted above] And I had curry chicken for lunch.

Lol.

Thanks, but I think you vastly overestimate how much "artistic vision" I have.

I know. I'm just seeing the very slight problems in the lettering, which is basically typography*, which I love. I'll stop giving detailed criticism about it now unless I think there is something REALLY wrong with it, or unless I do it constructively by post-editing your image to improve the lettering without ruining the drawing or the rest of the lettering too much and can show a completed example. I still appreciate your drawings and the story and the dialog a lot, and the lettering too, I was just nitpicking. Please keep posting them here.

* Rant follows. I only know anything of the European traditions of it, and only the modern slice of it, not the Arabic or East Asian traditions. And technically it's calligraphy, since you use handwritten letters, but the sentence works out better with typography. Not that I don't like well done modern European calligraphy when I meet it. It's just a dying art, because almost everyone in modern Europe jumped to do only typography instead – the previous linked example is from 1898 –, since typography is faster and perhaps easier to learn and thus cheaper, and there is no cultural background insisting that calligraphy is worth more than typography if you do them both in high quality.

[meto30]

Nice! Well drawn. Thank you for posting it here too.

I just have two little complaints about the bottom panel of the picture. There are two short lines representing Princess Celestia's left front leg. These are close to Sunset's speech bubble, so the drawing is confusing at first, you start to read it as if Princess Celestia and Sunset Shimmer exclaimed "That is ludicrious" about something at the same time, before you realize the actually intended meaning. I'm not sure how you could best fix this. Perhaps move that speech bubble a little down, redraw the line from Sunset to the bubble so it points to where the bubble is now and make sure it's really close, make those lines for the front hind leg just a bit shorter to make as clear as possible in the available space that they're not speech balloon lines, and move Discord's speech balloon a bit down and to the right to make space. Also, in Sunset's dialog, the colon looks really strange. Did you mean to put an ellipsis there instead, or is it an ellipsis that looks like a colon? I recommend either changing it to an ellipsis (you have to shift the rest of the fourth line to the right a bit, but there is just enough space for that), or better, drop that punctuation entirely and shift the line left, for Sunset is a rhetoric (she's got lots of practice in those first few years of being Queen of Canterlot high) and can deliver the whole four lines without a pause and without making it look forced.

First of all, thank you so much for much detailed feedback. It's been very difficult to get any on those pieces (because the artistic communities I'm part of won't comment much on my Pony pieces, and the Pony communities I go to, including this very thread, won't comment much on my art in general). All the issues you've pointed out have been addressed, hopefully, in the edit you can find below.

Spoiler: Fourth page of the thirteenth prompt, redone

Show

A big part of the positioning of these "study series" dialogue is dictated by the fact that I'm basically freestyling almost all the text on the spot; which is why I often run into problems such as running out of room, having to shift words in a haphazard manner between lines, having to redo the text again and again (and often leave the previous text too visible in the scan), etc. This does lead to problems, and taking your feedback to heart, I shall endeavour to run the dialogue through my head or some text form at least once before committing them to the main page.

Sunset Shimmer's dialogue isn't supposed to have a colon; in fact it is a small fragment of an "s" that used to be there before I deleted a whole line of dialogue because, while I felt it fit Sunset's (current) opinion of Celestia's rule, it was too radical in some ways. I edited the dialogue so that the issue no longer remains, I hope.

Nice. Very well drawn again. Also, that must be an interesting campaign.

Again I can only complain about the lettering in the middle panel. (I don't actually know anything about drawing, that's why.) In this panel, the placement of the speech bubbles are confusing, but this time for a different reason. After Spike's balloon ending in “Hey you up for a game session tonight?”, there's too much of a gap, so I mistakenly started to read Spike's speech balloon on the right (“I heard …”) instead of your avatar's reply below. Perhaps this is my fault, I'm just too used to reading balloons from left to right alternating, rather than in columns. But if you fuzzed the positions of the balloons a little so that the ones on the left are closer together, and move the two speech balloons on the right side of the panel down, making place by moving the signature to the left of Spike instead of his right, it could get better.

It should be possible to do most of this in post-processing. Perhaps for moving any speech baloon lines, it is more convenient for you to edit the original drawing, if the medium you use allows it conveniently, but move the speech balloon text and the signature by digital image editing. Or, much better, just don't edit anything, leave these drawings imperfect, and move on to drawing more. You'd learn more that way than if I get you stuck in my own perfectionism.

Repositioning and respacing of dialogue hopefully addressed all these issues.

Spoiler: First page of the fourteenth prompt, redone

Show

I may be influenced by the usual placement of speech bubbles in Japanese media, which follows the traditional Sinospheric writing order of top to bottom, right to left. In any case, dialogue going back and forth left to right is considered undesirable in the context of the Manga/Manhwa conventions of panel arrangement, where one would usually stack bubbles from top to bottom in a single continuous block of text; any remaining conversation would move on to the next panel. Except, in my case, there is no next panel, so only the text remains on the margins. I hope that the new positions would help the eye follow the intended ordering more closely.

Nice drawing again. Extra points for managing to continue the story from the 14th prompt, with a new prompt. Did you plan that ahead, as in, did you know what the 15th prompt is when you made (part of) your entry for the 14th? It is impressive either way, and worked out well.
Oh right. You even wrote that there. Good.

Actually all my entries for ATG 2018 are arranged in a single continuous storyboard, so all the conversations are strung together in a series; it's been a big part of my overall plan for the Artist Training Grounds that sadly hasn't been much of a hit with people watching them. :( The prompts are being revealed when the previous submission is closed, so I have no knowledge of what prompts are upcoming. All the stringing-together of dialogue is happening on the fly. Hhowever, there is a gap between prompts 13 and 14 because I skipped drawing the part where Twilight comes up to her study to scold me for fighting with Sunset and then retrieving me to the main hall where the rest of the party are. I need to draw that part, the "Twilight Sparkle Studies" session. Or maybe the Interaction Studies part 1. I don't know what artistic purpose that study should fulfil at the moment.

I know. I'm just seeing the very slight problems in the lettering, which is basically typography*, which I love. I'll stop giving detailed criticism about it now unless I think there is something REALLY wrong with it, or unless I do it constructively by post-editing your image to improve the lettering without ruining the drawing or the rest of the lettering too much and can show a completed example. I still appreciate your drawings and the story and the dialog a lot, and the lettering too, I was just nitpicking. Please keep posting them here.

* Rant follows. I only know anything of the European traditions of it, and only the modern slice of it, not the Arabic or East Asian traditions. And technically it's calligraphy, since you use handwritten letters, but the sentence works out better with typography. Not that I don't like well done modern European calligraphy when I meet it. It's just a dying art, because almost everyone in modern Europe jumped to do only typography instead – the previous linked example is from 1898 –, since typography is faster and perhaps easier to learn and thus cheaper, and there is no cultural background insisting that calligraphy is worth more than typography if you do them both in high quality.

Nitpicking is the best kind of feedback I can receive at this point, because I think I am at a stage where I need to be more mindful of the details; not that I have every "big stroke" taken care of, it's just that I think I am at a stage where smaller problems are more noticeable and must be addressed before things become too set in stone.

As for caligraphy, I haven't dipped into it much, because the East Asian tradition of caligraphy has always been more about personality expression that anything else, and it has that tremendous prestige associated with it that intimidates me. I enjoy looking at caligraphy a lot though.

Spoiler: A Sinospheric caligraphy example

Show

This is an example I pulled from the internet about my single most favourite line of Sinospheric traditional prose, recounted in a later tale about Confucius where Confucius meets a distraught man who recounts why he is sad. Rendered in an artful way to the best of my ability, it reads:

"The tree wishes to stay still but the wind relents not, the child wishes to thank the parents but time relents not."

This is one of the few lines that I sometimes write myself, but Chinese Caligraphy really isn't intended to be done with any tool that isn't a brush... and my handwriting is too poor for me to forgive it. I always end up ripping the paper to pieces in the end.

I am utterly unskilled in English cursive and I also can't read most English cursive texts, so there's a lot of things I need to learn before I actually do any English caligraphy. XD

And now I have the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album playing in my head. Um, thanks?

Spoiler

Show

You're welcome :P

[zimmerwald1915]

I am utterly unskilled in English cursive and I also can't read most English cursive texts, so there's a lot of things I need to learn before I actually do any English caligraphy. XD

The purpose of English cursive is to obscure meaning.

[Thanqol]

First of all, thank you so much for much detailed feedback. It's been very difficult to get any on those pieces (because the artistic communities I'm part of won't comment much on my Pony pieces, and the Pony communities I go to, including this very thread, won't comment much on my art in general). All the issues you've pointed out have been addressed, hopefully, in the edit you can find below.

Oh, right, feedback. This is a thing that I should do.

Spoiler: Fourth page of the thirteenth prompt, redone

Show

I don't think the design of the bags under Discord's eyes translates properly. It evokes more of a mandrill look than a tired look. I think some light line shading underneath would be more effective; it's a design trait you can be pretty subtle with while still having a big effect.

The antler horn is consistently drawn totally flat which makes it look out of place. Just some super limited shading around one side to give it the impression of curvature would make it look like less of a blob-shape.

This is a taste thing, so judge accordingly: I don't like eyes which are white circles inside white circles. A black circle in a white circle is good like with Discord, a white circle alone is good like in Luna's shocked expression, but Celestia's white-white in the second panel looks really unnatural in a way that draws me out of the picture. Oddly, I think Sunset's similarly designed eyes actually look good - I think it might have to do with the much softer pencilwork rather than the rather sharp and jarring lines used around Celestia's eyes in the same panel.

I think consistently the best thing you do is pony legs. You've edged them just enough towards realistic horse design to make them feel more realistic while not going too far and losing the show's animated style.

Spoiler: First page of the fourteenth prompt, redone

Show

I think that the final panel spike should have some basic shading. Your style looks really good with the shading done, as in every other panel, but places where you skip it look very unfinished. I like the scaling square-cut to Twilight's mane and that one curl where it slightly overlaps the rest of it, it really works with moving the show design the half step towards realism that marks most of your work.

[DigoDragon]

The purpose of English cursive is to obscure meaning.

You're not wrong.

Spoiler

Show

[Rater202]

Officially, the reason cursive is taught is in part becuase lots of important historical and legal documents, such as the united states constitution, are written in cursive and partially becuase learning to write it is supposedly good for cognitive reasons.

And also to preserve it becuase it's dying out.

The problem with that reasoning, of course, is that, copies of those documents in print script are widely available and that studies indicate that spending time practicing print writing or typing are just as cognitivly benificial as practicing cursive so really schools should spend the time teaching cursive just practicing regular writing and/or teaching typing, which is a far more voalvuble skill in this day and age.

...I may or may not have written papers on this topic while working towards my first degree.

[Aotrs Commander]

I always hated cursive writing and it did no-one any good, least of all my teachers who had to try and fail to translate it. I felt it an utterly useless and pointless exercise which added unnecessary drag to the process of writing (some might say the problem my brain runs far quicker, even that I can type, let alone write in such a fashion is a major part of the problem). The very second I felt school, and made a point of asking whether I HAD to use cursive at college (I recall the mild confusion of the lecturer's face at why this was even a question), I dropped it dead and when back to printed (and default to block capitals, if you look at any random scibble of mine or my character sheets). Heck, even then it can be prone to difficult interpretation. I was fortunate to be at the point where the requirements of word processing were on the rise, so at college and later university (and the Aotrs itself, of course), it was a requirement to use it.

You are fortunate that you get to read what I write in actual legible text - and imagine how much work it would be to try and decipher Bleakbane-script in its usual delivery volume without it...

(But I remember some resistance at my school to to doing my GCSE coursework on my Atari ST (we didn't get a PC until just after I left school, and partly because I was starting to use the computer in full) and one of my teachers grumbled about how they couldn't judge my spelling because spell-checkers were a thing (as if that stops people makin typos ALL THE TIME) which I treated with the contempt it deserved.)

[Adderbane]

Fun fact I noticed from a comment by Ators in a different thread: Q appeared in 9 Star Trek: TNG episodes as far as I could tell. Discord has had a significant presence in 13 MLP episodes by my count. Given that MLP episodes are half the length of Star Trek one's, De Lancie has almost had a bigger part here than there.