Purple Pony Creations

I noticed something about the Celestial Steed... Other than slightly floppy looking and not completely natural movements.

If you have your shadow quality turned up, you will notice that the CS's shadow looks really strange. This is because it's only casting shadows from the armored pieces and the saddle.

Also, my draenei's butt doesn't sit in the saddle. I'm floating. :|

I would provide pics of this except for one little problem, which is the mentioned "D'oh!" moment: my Flickr account is almost full. >< Now, if I can get this art project finished and some of the pieces sold, I will actually be able to afford to upgrade it ($24.95 for a year). I'll probably just eat the cost an upgrade it anyway, then write it off to myself as a "business" expense. My Flickr is part of this blog, and this blog will someday show off more things I'm making and selling so... Yeah.

In the mean time, while not working on the art, I've gone back to Bronzebeard and picked up one of the toons I had abandoned there, as well as restarting a shaman. Yes, Alliance. I may be a Hordie at heart, but I don' mind playing for the other side to see the story from their point of view.

Part of the problem I had with making my original shaman Alliance was I remembered everything I'd done leveling her as a Tauren. Honest to God, it didn't feel right. Yeah, it was the fastest way to get an Alliance 80 that WASN'T a DK short of breaking the rules and getting one off eBay... But I wasn't comfortable with it. Nostalgia every time I went through a Horde area... And my first fall off TB should have been with her still as a cow.

Anyway... I'm currently working on my little hunter, who's gained 4 levels in short time, and when not working on her, I reused the name Xantara for my shaman, and she's currently level 15.

(Enhancement, of course. :p)

All my toons are guildless right now. I don't know if they want me back in Over It, though I've said "Hi" to a couple of the members when I've seen them around, and then there's the fact it's not really a leveling guild...

I'll find one eventually.

This thing will be a work in progress for a long time, me thinks...


So I poked at it a little more today. One of the things that had been bothering me was how tall my av was, and, as I've mentioned, I prefer a shorter avatar. I pulled off the top few prims of the hoof so it would sit lower on my foot. I understand why Meph did the foot the way she did but... Not preferred for me. (I tend to forget to take off shoe bases, or I'll accidentally replace them.)


I'll eventually find an equine or other ungulate leg that I like (thinking maybe the leg on the DSD ram), but for now I have a re-textured leg from the Tokushi Chinese Crested. Super fluffy! <3 (That texture isn't the greatest, but I'm half asleep and did it in like 10 minutes. x_x)


While pulling parts from the Chinese Crested, I decided to try the arm fluff from it. Really like how cute it is, so, she gets that too. :3

The ratio of the human "wingspan" (fingertip to fingertip) to the human height is typically 1:1. If you're not sure of how ratio works, that goes (x unit) to (y unit). For an example (sorry, I'm bringing World of Warcraft into this, since it's convenient and in my bookmarks), the ratio of ACTIVE Alliance to Horde on my realm, Executus, is 1:1.5. This means for every alliance character, there are 1 and a half Hordies (okay, not really a half, but you get the idea. I could say for every 2 Alliance, there are 3 Horde and that's make more sense). On the Cho'gall realm, the ratio is 1:14.3. (Cho'gall Alliance is Hardmode WoW. I have a lot of respect for them.)

Anyway... Humans are, with a few exceptions, roughly 1:1. A few inches/centimeters here or there isn't much, and not enough to really tell.

But on SL, there's a really big problem. No one seems to realize just how SHORT their arms are, or how damn log their legs are! Okay, well, not no one, but a LOT of people. Even I suspected it, but I wasn't sure. Was I in for a shock today when I went to see.

Now, I got to looking because of a few things... When ever spring rolls around, I remember from make incidents with the other girls at school that the fingertips on a human normally sit at about mid thigh. This was the line where that our shorts and skirts couldn't be any higher than. When I see all these female avatars on SL with their asses hanging out, I always think of that. That thought reminds me of a visit to the Knoxville Zoo after they opened new birds of prey exhibits and compared bird wingspans to humans. There was a footnote about arm to height ratio on the display, and for some reason, I tend to remember random crap like that.

Finally, as I have spent more time on the grid, I'm noticing a lot of short arms.

Then I got to thinking mine are too short, so I hopped up on a pose stand... (FoxLabs has a great, 6-pose stand for free. Link to the XStreet listing at the end of the post.)



...Hrm. Well, lets find out.


I made a standard, everyday box and drug it to the center of my avatar. I used a point on my virtual breastbone to line it up with the center, but a pixel or too off isn't important. I raised it to the pads of my feet, then I stretched the box up and too the top of my head.

Then I turned it sideways...


Oh my... :x

My arms were sitting at 58 on the slider.

I hopped off the pose stand, leaving the box in place, and went in to edit my appearance. (Tip: Click on the image above the slider to raise the value by 10.)

I tried raising it by 15... then 20... then 25...


Raising it by 30 is what it took.


The result is better, but I may try knocking back the arm size a bit and raising my hand size a little. My hands are sitting at 25.

(Edit: I did cnock the arm length back by 5, but increase the hand size by 10. It's an improvement, I'm just too damn lazy to take another screen shot. :3 )

... I notice a LOT of size 0 hands around too, on non-furries even. Most furry paws are made for size 0 hands, so it's not uncommon for us to run around with small hands if we take our paws off. Most of them never know about hand size since the never edit their basic shape.

Basically, just take a look at your proportions, especially if you're an Amazon. Go hide somewhere that you can rez objects in, take off your hair and your shoes (system shoes too!) and take a look. You might be surprised at what you find.

Pose Stand (It is ONE prim.)

(I am wearing the AVentity Husky in white, but with my standard Snowhawk shape. I am working on learning recolors for this avatar and the other AVentity avatars.)

Well, I've not fixed the head textures just yet, but I have done a few things to the Snowhawk avatar (which I've been spending most of my time on).

First, I bought a halter. Horses and halters have always gone together in my mind, so I always have to buy one for any equine av I have. I remember BEGGING and PRAYING I would win a halter for my Hoof It! Pony avatar at the release party, and I did! I wasn't so lucky a few months later... But even that one got a halter eventually.

Anyway. I may have mentioned I considerably shortened the muzzle on the mare. And then I made it shorter. It's fantasy, I can have a short muzzle, damnit.

Anyway, this made fitting the halter... a pain in the ass. But I did it.



For comparison, this is the same halter, before editing, on the same avatar, before editing...



Yes, mine looks much thicker because I scaled it down so much I couldn't shrink the size of the ropes anymore. Future project? Hell yes. One more for the list.

Anyway, moving down...

I had once bought one of these tails on my Samiya account, way back when one of the Pony clubs I used to rent from was still around. Before I ever rented there. I miss that place, the people were awesome... Anyway, I did find that Yina Yao still had a store, with even more stuff, and so I had to pick up one of her wonderfully fluffy tails.



These tails are scripted to touch, and can animate the wearer too. Very fun. :) They're also scripted for color change, as well as differing bases.

Finally, I shod myself. The one I'm currently wearing until I can mod the fancier ones I bought are from Rose Evans, but I couldn't find a store LM for her. You can find them on the top floor of the Sale Barn at the FPC (yes, I had to go back, after all the crap that happened, to buy my damn shoes).



Simple, but effective. Coupled with the Pony Productions Hoofprinter (which leaves particle prints and makes a walking sound), I have fun. I don't wear the Hoofprinter everywhere, only at home and when I forget to take it off... :3

Now, you may notice a new horn in that first image. I purchased a sculpty horn and claw builder's kit from Invisible Designs (by Invisible Homewood), since it was well prices... and I can't be bothered to make a sculpty for my horn right now. This one looks much more like the one I draw on her usually. It's also got a very, very soft glow, and is somewhat transparent... And full bright, which I'd neglected to turn on. Yeah, my character's horn glows. I'm a bit of a sparkle dog (...mare) at heart.

Also, in all the images of the modded avatar, I'm wearing a slightly modded "Layla" from Sirena Hair. I streatched the medium size, since it was just a TAD too small, and the large was too big, then I moved the bangs a bit, since they covered my eyes. :)

I'm going to go back and update the previous AVentity avatar post in shortly, since I FINALLY got the images uploaded to Flickr.

Still working on getting pics together for the last review. I've been busy with another project...

Which I'm gonna show you here!

So, as I said, I got some L$ for my birthday, and I send some to Snowhawk so I could get her an Aventity horse av. Again, these aren't the ideal avs for this character, but I can make them work.

This is what I got:


Simple, white horse av.

First things first, change the shape! ... And wow did I look weird. Again, this is a tall av, 7'5", so the attachments are big. Scaling them down was easy, then some adjustments to where everything was situated. I detailed how I go about making the feet, leg, and arm/hand attachments even sizes when I did the Rez Fantasy kirin av, so I won't go into that again. (Too lazy to do it again. :p)

Now, my character is VERY purple. Like.. All over. Except her eyes and horn. And a little white snip on her nose. But she's not just -purple-, she's grullo... Just purple.

Which means I had to retexture everything.

Let me tell you... the addition of the "Temporary" textures saved me a LOT of L$. I was constantly playing around with everything, went through three versions of the eye textures for the head... and only spent L$100 for my uploads. That's all I added. 10 textures.

The skin is three (4 if you count the "mature" version), then four for the head, one for the ears, and a flat color for the attachments, since I just did the barring she one on the skin.


It's not perfect, the face isn't quite what I wanted, and the transition between the head and body isn't quite right.

But still, this is my first major modification project where I did everything. Even retexturing the Hoof It's was easier since I had instructions.







The skin is based off one of the open source skins (Another), and I didn't have to do much to them other than add the base and lighten most of the details. Then I added the markings and fiddled around until the seams matched up as best as I could get them.

It was a fun little project. :)