OMG SAMEEE i used to play more than 10 years ago and it was my dream back then! I actually discovered digital art through this game and look at me now, i even got a degree in the field hehe

I've been eyeing a lost golden apple for a while now, and was surprised to see it here. At first I thought there was only one author, but then I opened the picture and realized that the second version was clearly a bit.. another level. So a completely different person came up with the idea and colors and is simply selling the missing coat again? Is we allowed take some ideas and redraw it as we want?
Retired from Bluebird:


New ~Summer Fruits~ from Zephyrus23:

they have a completely different pose and the second also has some other accessoires. Art is not necessarily coming up with something completely new, but is also based on things it's inspired by.
Also, there are some more common colors for horses. I like this combination of colors and so did they, apparently. Are they that rare? (I don't know; I just was reminded of "blue roan" immediately when I saw the first one, which would be a color a horse can actually have.)

I wouldn't say it's "the [...] coat again" - there are several pearly-white coats out there, which look very different as well. Yes, maybe the artists saw the colors and thought "oooh, I like them! I really want to create a coat with those colors too!", but the pose and atmosphere feels very different to me.

Also, sometimes artists create several different colored versions of the same coat - either to submit some of them and let the community choose which one they prefer, or sometimes just to see them (not just in mind), to decide which one to submit. So they may just have had the same preference.

To me, this doesn't feel like the same idea, and even the colors seem to be a little brighter in the first one. They're the only "kinda-similarity" I see; the other things - pose, accessoires (both about the idea), tail, art style, coloring of the legs, how far the white of the head goes) - are just different.

That's interesting, in that case I think the rules aren't as strict as I thought they were. I keep hearing different opinions on whether it's okay to do that, so I'm glad I finally found a solution. So, is it possible to make similar variations (like harlequin, lava, rocks) just by posing them differently? Or take the same character with slightly different manes and tails, and pose them differently and do different ideas? That would be a huge time saver for the authors, if you think about it.

Hit 60 Days yesterday. Can you submit digital drawings? (Done on a computer)

Yes, the vast majority of the drawings are digital.

Can someone explain exactly what to do with the Helios' Ray frame when you create and upload a Helios' Ray submission?

I downloaded the file and did all my work on separate layers. I then cut out the inside of the HR frame (the white area, the border surrounding the horse, and the horse) and cut everything outside of that area from my drawing.

I'm getting the "use compulsory format" error message.

The one linked on the page of the black pearl has the wrong format.
This should be the right one. (I know where to find the link in the forums on another server but I don't know about any "official" source on this one >.<) Be careful not to damage the frame. My program did, but duplicating the frame layer was enough to help me there.

I don't follow. So the coat would be different and the pose would be another as well. But what's the similarity then? The underlying coat color?
Like a comic book character that looks the same just in different poses?

Well, when I'm drawing, the pose and adjusting light and shadow are the most time-consuming things. The idea and coat color are nothing I worry about at all. So I don't see where something like just taking the same underlying coat color would save me that much time o.O

Or maybe I just don't see what you're talking about.

Hi all, you guys were so quick at answering my last question, I'm trying this one here. I asked on the CA server and got one response that was helpful but didn't quite answer my question.

The problem I'm having is I've designed my GA coat in procreate on a transparent png file, I've emailed myself the file and opened up Microsoft Paint to upload it to the template.

To keep all the details sharp, I had to use a large canvas to draw on, I want to say 4000x4000 pixels - whereas the template is teeny tiny and 100x100 pixels.

My question is, because the canvas is so small, when I shrink my drawing it loses all quality and becomes unsalvageable in pixelation. Would I be able to match the canvas size up to 4000x4000? Or would the game reject it?

If this isn't the way, does anyone have any insight or pointers?

Thank you, just really trying to figure this out before next round.

Julia

The GA template is 400x400px (the inside area is 300x300px) and you cannot change it in any way, otherwise you won't be able to upload the coat.

I don't think Microsoft Paint properly supports transparency so you won't be able to resize and put your drawing in the template with it. I also wouldn't recommend using Procreate for resizing since it's known for butchering the quality.

You could either get a desktop drawing programme to resize your coat in (I recommend Krita, it's free), or use an online image resizer to shrink your coat and then put it into the frame on Procreate.

If you choose the second option, make sure your original png doesn't have too much empty space around the drawing, try getting the edges as close to the coat as possible without cutting into it. Next find a website to resize your image (I've seen "simple image resizer" being recommended), make sure you have keep aspect ratio on and you can just change the larger dimension to 300px then you can put it directly into the frame using Procreate, without having to change the size again.

I used procreate to draw in, I have the large file on a transparent bg, I'll try the recommended resize program you mentioned.

MS Paint does allow transparency but will not support the shrinking im trying to do either, and as you mentioned, procreate doesn't allow the shrinking either :s

Update, I've tried it and others online, it wrecks the quality so badly �

I use paint 3D. It's so simple!

Besides, how do you draw illustrations like this

Hey everyone!

I'm still waiting until I have enough days to be able to do the whole black pearl thing, but until then, I guess I'll hang out here and see what everyone's doing Back in the early 2010s I spent a lot of time in the Swedish server drawing horses and trying my hand at the black pearl

I've seen some people mention the templates/frames for Helios ray/golden apple are wrong on the page for the black pearl, is that right? Where can one find the correct ones?

I'm looking forward to be able to participate myself, it's been a while since I've drawn horses

I believe the GA frame is the right one, and here is the right HR frame, courtesy of c(=Mieez.

I did let Howrse know the issue last Creation Space, and they said they would fix it before this one, so the correct one should be on the page by now (I haven't tested it yet).

Hello,

I can confirm that the HR template should already be corrected on all versions.

Have fun drawing!

Is it just me or are their several AI generated coats this go around? There's a draft pegasus, a unicorn pony, and native draft horse and a donkey coat that all appear AI generated.

Apparently there always are. Every month there's some notification (in the announcements on discord) that x AI creations got flagged. The only thing we can do is to report them and state a reason why we suspect this creation to be AI.
As far as I know, we're not allowed to talk about our suspicions publicly - we can't know it for certain so it's just talking bad about other peoples creations, which we shouldn't do.

Thank you! Do you have suggestions on what to say if we suspect they are AI? Do you need to provide proof like plagiarism?
Thank you! i wasn't meaning to call anyone out!

I don't think we can actually prove it. We can just list some reasons, why we suspect it to be AI.
If there are obvious mistakes, like an animal companion having one hoof even though it shouldn't, parts of it being in front of and behind other parts in a way that doesn't make any sense, additional legs or something like that, I point those out. Most of the time it's the style, the pose, the head, face or eyes that give me a somehow "unnatural, *artificial" feeling, so I list those things.
There have been so many that give me an uncanny valley feeling that I somehow went from "what if I didn't list enough evidence and get punished instead?" and "what if it's not AI and some great artist receives a penalty?" to "I genuinely hope the artists save *something* to prove it's actually their work because I *have* to report these. I can't just look over them. It's too much."

Unless there has been significant changes to the way they operate, even if the artist can prove it is their work, the piece will be pulled; and if someone reports it again in the next or any following rounds, it will be pulled again, even though it has already been proven as their own artwork

Hey guys,
I don't currently have enough seniority (won't for a couple months lol) but I was interested in this because I love creating. I think I saw something somewhere that said you have to pay to do it, so I wondered if there are any advantages in the game for having done it, or if it's just for fun. Also, I have a general idea of what I want but not exactly, so I put my description into AI to get a more detailed idea of what I want and for help with posing ideas. I know submitting ai isn't allowed, but would that (art based off an AI image of the creators ideas) be allowed? Thanks!

Hello there! I've been working on a Helios Ray design for the next round of submissions and I just had a quick question. I've created my design in Krita with the provided template as the top layer. I know to remove the horse and its frame, but do I leave the larger frame that is included in the template? Or do I remove that as well before submitting? And do I just save it as a .png and I'm good to go?

Thanks in advance!

I know. I just don't want them to lose Karma, get banned or something like this. I don't like that it's still kind of a punishment for the artists, but all these AI submissions shift my priorities so that it's more important to me to report those that *may* be AI than to not report them because I *may* suspect an actual artist every now and then. =/
Maybe they could set some internal markers for the creations. "This creation has already been proven to be non-AI, no need to ban it again."

You pay 195 passes per creation you submit. If the creation doesn't get accepted, you get your 195 passes back. If it does, you receive passes depending on your creation:
2000 passes for GA coats that will retire after a certain amount of uses
3000 passes for rays
4000 passes for unlimited GA coats.
You will receive these passes instead of the 195p you would get back.


* yes, remove the horse and its frame
* keep the larger frame and be sure it's not damaged (I let the program remove all the white pixels at once which also made some of the black pixels of the frame transparent. I duplicated the frame layer and was fine.)
* png is for the GA coats. Rays need to be submitted in some jpg format