Posts from “25 Jan 2014”

Happy Chinese New Year! May we all receive blessings of happiness, health & prosperity in the coming new year!

This year I decided to decorate the old website with something festive for the occasion. You’ve got your regular red lanterns and oranges but this being the Year of the Horse I thought I’d do something… different.

Follow me on Twitter

Well, what else did you expect when you crossed a horse and a bird? Because if it ain’t a Pegasus I’d love to know what it is.

Icon Design

OK, let’s deal with the elephant, erm Pony, in the room: the icon is based on Rainbow Dash from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. With that out of the way, let’s talk about the design of the icon itself.

First of all, being an icon I wanted a clean, simple design. If you’ve seen any pictures from the show (or ahem watch it on occasion) you’ll notice the art style is very clean which makes it not only suitable for icons but also relatively easy to render in vector format. Look no further than DeviantArt for proof.

At the same time, I knew I had to maintain the shape of a horse. No point celebrating The Year of the Horse without the horse. That’d be like going on honeymoon without enjoying some honey *wink wink*. My first choice was to use Fluttershy but her silhouette just did not work: I found her long hair ruined the horse outline I was going for. Rainbow Dash on the other hand has shorter hair which simplified the entire process.

Finally, the wings had to come through clearly enough. I mean, it’s a link to Twitter for crying out loud so this horse had to fly! Fortunately, there are many instances of Rainbow Dash flying that I could use as a base for the icon and we eventually ended up with this:

Rainbow Dash Outline