Custom MLP: Moonlight, Step by Step

This is not a tutorial. I suppose you could learn from this, and if you have any questions I would be happy to answer them. However, there are so many excellent tutorials on the internet, and I am not going to delude you into thinking I am an expert.

But I digress.

Moonlight!!! Or is it... a very baity Surprise? This poor Surprise had many, many cancer spots, a faded symbol, and before I took out all her hair, crunchy short hair. She was downright ugly.


So, Moonlight needed her coat repainted.



...um, is it wrong that is cracks me up that the paint streaks look like weird alien blood streaks? Haha.

Anyway, Moonlight isn't done getting her Alien on, as she's about to look like an Andalite:


Next is one of the few things that I really didn't like all that much on her. I wish I had made her iris's rounder, rather than the oval shape I went with. It ended up okay with the black paint to outline it and give it definition, but when I first saw it as just the purple, I wanted to scream.




(See, the black REALLY helps)

Moonlight was designed to break me out of my comfort zone (although I wimped out on the hair, but more on that later). She is an otherworldly pony; she can travel the universe. Thus, she should shine like the stars.

Glossy!!! Also, at first I was going to leave her symbol as a simple white moon, but I thought it was just a little too undecorated.

Hair time. Wanna see a headless pony? Get ready:

Gross, man. You have to rehair them by pulling a string through their bum, along with the lock for the tail.

But, let's ditch the Military look. Let's get serious, and SEW her hair right in:




The method I use is a combination knot/sewing method. I bought a rehairing tool from dollyhair.com, which is an excellent site. It sped up the process greatly.

Finally, she's all rehaired, but not styled:


FINALLY FINALLY, I styled her hair. This is where I wimped out. I had originally intended to have a braid running through her mane, and a loose "pony tail" for her tail. I couldn't find the right color for the ribbons, and I also couldn't get the braid to lay over the rest of her hair right, so I ended up just curling it around her legs for that "traditional" G1 My Little Pony curl.


I added some clouds and a star in addition to the moon for her symbol. It felt right without being too complicated. I'm also glad I took her outside so the light could catch her hair properly; the hair color is truly gorgeous, and makes up a bit for the boring hair style.



Soon, against my better judgment, I will scan and add the concept sketch to this entry. The lineart is fine, but the coloring... oh boy. However, I intended this to be a "from conception to birth" log about a custom pony.