#project post

these ^ are the design sketches btw. kind of astounded at how close i got w the final guy haha considering i did exactly none 3d sketching out of my design at any point. hashtag winging it. you can see that late march hidey did NOT yet understand the shape of a horse's head.

process notes in the order i thought of them and then wrote them out lol:

horse heads are unexpectedly just a lot of flat planes that intersect. i ended up making a second disembodied model horse head just to keep as a reference lmao so i ideally never have to re-derive a horse head from images again

luckily a horse gets a lot more recognizable with a mane lol. like truly that's a lifesaver. there is not a lot of distance, it turns out, between a dog head and a horse head, lmao. to me. i'm sure that's not true for many talented artists out there. but to me they are soooo close to each other its terrifying lol

eyes were holes with a dot tool + little black spheres of clay

made the whole thing first and then cut it in half and then put one magnet between the two halves to mark where they should meet. i tried really hard to cut straight down the middle but. i didn't. so then i had to add more clay to keep the "seam" in the middle less visible

learned that the demagnitization temp of neodynium is 179F. get fucked lol. but i left it with my entire stack of other magnets connected and it [sort of ] remagnetized. thank god. there is a message about the power of friendship here i think. he looks so fucking funny like this. some kind of hot dog horse.

mane: do it from the bottom up because that mimicks how gravity works! i scrapped like three versions where i went from the top down and it felt "not right" -- turns out that is bc i was opposing basic physics (and because i wasn't keeping the "large locks of hair" vibe i'd already introduced into the design with the bangs lol)

ears are just circles of clay shapped into ovals and then the middle divot is done w/ a needle tool (or toothpick for the model bc it was like, idk. 2 mm larger lmao)

the tail still looks weirdly like a rooster tail to me. maybe i should have taken it falling off during construction as a sign from the universe to remake it into one single piece... alas. that chicken has flown the coop (lol)

i really wanted the horse to look like its in motion (not in the least because the musculature of a standing horse is SO boring and also difficult lmao) but was having trouble maintaining the "it can stand up by itself" property until i remembered that i could cheat and have the front of the hoof of the bent leg touch the ground. then i was like omfg i can bend TWO of its legs!

i understand why horses are hard to animate now. lmao.

i struggled a LOT to translate this guy into my style ... most of my reference images were either much more realistic or much less realistic and that ... was hard. lol. but i'm really happy with how it turned out!!!!!!

two coats of varnish bc well. i hate every varnish i have rn but i already bought them. so. guess and check every time lol

its good i learned what direction horse hooves face from watching cdramas before i made this .... shoutout 卿卿日常 lol

anyway here are the other pics lol. i feel kinda meh abt the hooves but i did nottt trust myself to do an even line about the feet and i wanted uhhh. something to indicate that i did know abt that aspect of horse anatomy.