Picture this set plus two more designs - totaling 20 unique buttons. Realistically, who would buy a set for $30 USD + shipping? If not $30, how much? I'd like to know in order to find out just how many sets I should order. It would suck if someone wanted a set and I was all out.

I have no idea how, but I'm nearing the 200,000 mark.

For the one or few that can screenshot my deviantART profile page at 200,000 pageviews and prove it, I'll design a pin for you (much like these: [link]. They'll be 1.5" at 300dpi, but it won't be the real pin - just a design of your choice. You could use it for a display picture or something.

Good luck!

That MLP comic I was talking about a while ago? It started! There's a new tumblr and gallery for it! Check it out, would you kindly?

Thank you all for the birthday wishes! I wish I could respond to each, but there really are over 100. The day was more or less typical, but hearing all the wishes really does make it something else.

Anyway, I've been working along on setting up my MLP comic series. I've kept things pretty hush-hush since I would like to finish a story arc before its pages begin to be posted (in order to keep ahead of schedule). But I think it would be an appropriate time to reveal just a taste of what I've been up to.



The blog that will archive these stories is still under construction. You can look forward to the first chapter being released in January.

To anyone interested, here's an outline of what's happening right now and what I plan on making happen, just as a heads up.

As of roughly a month ago, I started my senior year of highschool. It's heavy on the workload so I withdrew from a lot of artwork in the past while. Whenever I came back to art I found it tiring, and wasn't motivated to complete anything.

Over the summer, I had announced a few more long comics in the same vein as Heart's Desire. It may be because I am an incredibly picky editor and have reduced the story to nothing, but I also went into them knowing they would require an incredible amount of time to polish to a level I would be satisfied with. So you can consider the stories scrapped - sorry! (they might work their way into something else eventually, but on a much smaller scale)

In place of those comics, and in accordance with my storytelling fascination (and lack of available time), I've decided to shift my focus to the short, wordless comics I made a while back:



People seem to enjoy them as much as I enjoy making them, and they're often very quick to make. I have two in mind right now, and while I have no set deadline, bear in mind they never take more than a day and a half or so to draw.

I also hope to steer away from drawing MLP and fan-related artwork in the future. I think they're really limiting my creativeness, although there are a few things I still want to make sure I draw before doing that. It won't be the end for a while but it's definitely coming.

If you've been thinking about commissioning me, this is your last week to do so. Commissions will be closed in a week, and it's uncertain when they will resume (time usually comes around twice a year).

Information for commissions is found here, as always: [link]

Posting one final time on the last day of voting! If you enjoy the designs below, please consider voting for them in the We Love Fine 'My Favourite Pony' design contest.



Rainbow Dash

Twilight Sparkle

Fluttershy

It requires an account to vote, but I would really appreciate it and am eager to see these designs come to life!

My tablet isn't connecting to my computer, and I don't think it's a software problem.

It's even stranger that it worked just this morning, but won't even light up now. It's never sustained any damage, either, as I've only had it for a few months. I ordered a new cable for it, thinking that might be the cause of the problem (I have nothing to test the cable on, so I can't know). Anyway, this means I won't be able to draw anything for the next while.

My tumblr page should have all the information you need, including prices.

It's important to note that I am not taking non-canon commissions right now. This is because I want to be able to get to doing the most amount of people's commissions, and OCs usually take me a longer time. Also, most people seem to be okay with this, from the results of this poll.

Contact me privately if you are interested!

I would normally be making two or three times the amount of art right now - it's the summer, after all.

A bit of the delay comes from me doing stuff that can't be posted revealed right now: t-shirts, fan book stuff, yeah. I'm also hoping to open commissions soon.

But, the real delay is the next piece I'm working on. The dimensions are at 7680x1280. I'm at 140 characters in the sketch, with a few dozen left. So, you can tell why that would take me forever! I'd offer some previews, but that just takes away all of the fun.

I finally made one of those things. Well, I made it a long time ago, but now I'm using it.

Here it is: [link]

Someone teach me how to use this blasted thing! And give me your tumblrs so I have something to follow!

This is as close to having a unicorn in TF2 as we'll ever see, my friends.

LINK: [link]

Oh and I so want to make some MTP fanart. The flamethrower is just particularly tricky to draw.

Midwestria is an upcoming MLP con (Sept 14-16) in St. Charles, IL at the Pheasant Run Resort. They're currently looking for brony artists to attend as guests - if you're interested and think you could make it, send them a e-mail at guests@midwestria.org for more details. It can't hurt to take a shot!

Second bit of news: the seventh season of Futurama premiered recently. THE TWO EPISODES WERE FANTASTIC. If you're a fan, make sure you check them out. Even if you aren't, it's hard not to enjoy.

Progress: Applejack comic is coming around nicely in its sketching stage. Another project I'm working on involves a giant mural with virtually every single pony, it's also in its sketching stage. Neither of these will be done for a while, but I'm still hoping to get them done within July. Plenty of quick art will be posted in the meantime, as always.

Finally: my premium membership ended. How did I ever once live without premium??

EDIT: quickly fixed that lack of premium - HUGE thanks to him!

EDIT 2: just added twelve months. What an incredible dude! And he's been doing the same for a bunch of others, so respect this dude right here.

heh, my brother should know better to leave his account open in my wake >D



~Jiayi

EDIT: From now on you better be lookin' behind you when you walk. 'Cause one day you're gonna get a bullet in your back.

More like, a lack of an update. To just to keep you all informed, there won't be any new art for a long while because I'm working on four different huge pieces, which will probably be finished over the course of the next few months. No time for small fanart! (especially now that Season 2 of MLP has ended) Keep your eyes out for: a RD/Scootaloo comic, an Applejack comic, more humanized ponies, and every single pony.

I'd also like to point out that has so, so generously donated a Bamboo Create tablet to me, so if you ever have something nice to say about what I make, feel free to redirect to the man who made it possible!

Join me at my stream ([link] after today's episode of MLP airs if you'd like to watch me draw a thing-an-episode. I won't have any audio and won't be doing anything special, but if you're interested in seeing one being made or just want to say hi, feel free to drop in!

I'm no cartoonist, but I'm pretty sure someone out there is going to appreciate this (I've always wanted to make these things, anyway!). Here I go in depth about the writing and artistic process of making the "Heart's Desire" comic that seemed to be fairly successful. It's a tad long-winded, but if you're interested at all it in the details, here it is.

The artistic process was fairly simple and made easy because I had scaled down the original image. The sketches were actually twice as large, but SAI couldn't handle that size. Reducing it helped me significantly, since it was what made the whole process really fast and done in less than a week.

1. It starts off with a basic sketch; most of the scenes had already been imagined in my head, with just the ending sequence being sketched out on the whim.


2. Outlines were refined, as well as black borders. I just filled the entire canvas black and cropped out squares for the panels. Not a really good idea for comic making, but I never needed dynamic panels so it wasn't too bad.


3. Colour was added. Again, this process was really quick because I scaled everything down. My main regret was not having high resolution images to end off with, but the time saved was well worth it.


4. Backgrounds.


5. Small details; the glow of Rarity's magic, eye reflections, etc.


6. I added a red overlay and some text. I almost always use overlays in warm colours because they help make the colour scheme consistent and give a less hostile feel. The text positions had some minor changes simply due to readability.

Again, amazingly it was all done in a week (being pressed for time helps, even if I didn't make the Valentine's Day deadline). The writing process actually took the longest, which surprised myself. I had immediately picked up the idea of a Rarity-Spike ship comic after Secret of My Excess aired (who didn't love that episode?). After briefly reviewing my choices, I decided to base my comic on three foundations: it had to have the Heart's Desire, it had to have time skips, and it had to be sad. With these ideas put together, I drew a sketch at the end of 2011 for Spike's growth:



Notice, though, that Spike had wings. The original ending was very different, and I went through a whole bunch of revisions before I settled down on one. Some of them were actually quite nice, but after much consideration I decided against them. Some alternatives were:

• Spike uses it from the very beginning. The mountain sequence was originally a result of HIS use of the Heart's Desire. This is really not that much different than the current version, but everyone already knows Spike has been chasing Rarity for a long time. Having to resort to the Heart's Desire kind of cheapened to whole relationship. I was far more comfortable with the reverse happening, especially since Rarity didn't know it would end up being Spike.


• Spike uses the Heart's Desire to grow wings. Rarity was disabled after many years passed and couldn't walk. The last thing they did together before she died was fly off into the distance. Ditched because: I wasn't too fond of Spike growing wings, and it was a bit odd that I had to introduce the Heart's Desire at the very beginning only to have it used at the end. ALSO, it raises a bunch of other questions: why didn't Rarity or Spike just use the Heart's Desire so her legs would work, or something?


• This ending is similar to the previous, but instead of wings, Spike uses it to cure Rarity's blindness that is developed as she ages. Rarity grows old and Spike is desperate for them to see each other before she dies. Rarity refuses to take the Heart's Desire, saying she can already see him (she has learned to see with her heart). I actually REALLY liked this one but there was so much I had to convey, and it would have been very difficult to do with narration. I would have to bring in dialogue and a lot of explanation (also, why is Rarity getting so many disabilities?!).


• They BOTH use the Heart's Desire on each other, without each other's knowledge. It would have been a nice twist, but I felt if they BOTH kept the secret for so long, there was too much insecurity and dishonesty between them. I already felt bad for having just Rarity do it.


• This one isn't so much of an ending as it is a left out scene of the final version. Spike would have said "And that kind of love lasts forever"...followed by him mourning over Rarity's grave as a much older and larger dragon, and him saying, "...sometimes, I wish it didn't". This was too much of a sad ending in my opinion - dragons live far, far longer than Unicorns. So I stuck with the original ending, since it ends with them sharing the last moment of their lives together. Apparently that was still too sad for a lot of people, hehe.

My main concern was that the Heart's Desire couldn't actually do what it did in the story. I just played with the words in the first few panels so that they would say what they wanted, but also stay true to the Heart's Desire presented in the show.

The rest of the story was more or less predetermined. I pretty much KNEW I would have the whole growing up together sequence from Up (originally this was wordless, but certain ideas later required more information to be conveyed, so I ditched the wordless idea). I worked around a few other scenes along the way; Spike's mountain message was based off of the Futurama episode "Time Keeps Slipping", there were many references to The Little Prince, etc. Pinkie Pie's cameo was one of my favourites, and was added in later in development. It was originally just a normal restaurant, but then I thought, "Hey! why not make it Pinkie Pie with her chimicherries?". Other scenes in the growing up sequence were thought of from the very beginning. It took little time to think of them, but a lot more actually putting them together in a nice little order.

So, what's next? A lot, actually. I plan on doing similar comics with the rest of the mane six (most of them I have already planned extensively). I recently put up a poll asking which comic people would like to most see. Apparently that's Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo...the ONE story I'm least comfortable with! I'm right now in the process of all that editing so that their story will be as seemless and in-character as possible. Expect it in May...but there are no guarantees. Will you bawwww? Hopefully. Only time will tell.

Anon deviant gave me subscription? Awesome!!

I have a bit of speculation already...might be wrong, though. Anyway thank you anon

Edit: YOU'RE THE BEST, MAN

It's been nearly three weeks since I've submitted anything that took more than a half hour, so I guess I owe an explanation:

I'M WORKING ON A LOT OF STUFF

Now that that's out of the way, how'd you guys find Se2 Ep4?