Please note: this is now old, i do characters differntley and i will make a guide about it soon

Since i’m often helping newer members with there characters IV never been able to tell them how to make a good horse, so I decided to make a guide about it

In the guide I will lay out the simple steps to making a horse witch I follow
in 7 steps

So first up what makes a good horse?

It depends on the person; a lot of people think a good horse is what program it’s made on(or apper to think so), and to me its how much care has gone into the design. That doesn’t mean some fancy colours or markings…

If I had to pick my fav horses out of all of mine id say my quagga viana, stracil my przewalski, P.snow my appy, kira the quagga cross and pal the paint

Why? There’s all different, complex yet simple and all different.

A complex and simple horse sound near impossible right? Well when I say that I mean it complex as it looks almost impossible to draw, but simple as its not

You might go to viana and think she’s not easy but she is

 Her faded stripes can be made by grabbing the lightest colour of her stripe and making that the stripe colour in MS paint, for more seasoned ms paint artist you can take the time and make the stipes do the fade if you wish

Now that you have learnt what I think of when I first start a horse next step is the design

So how do you start a design?
You pick the base colour

Step one – base colour

Your base colour could be anything, I normally change my base colour, for example Skye wasn’t always a bay roan, she was a blue roan, till the last min and became a bay roan, if you cant pick a base colour think of what you want the horse to be

Snowey one of my appaloosa mares and grandmother to psnow needed to be chestnut as her foal chicka is a chestnut appaloosa but she couldn’t be to light as chicka is a light one and chicka father portal is a buckskin so in the end snowey became a ginger chestnut.

(This is also the time to look for what breed it will be)

Step two – Face markings

I always start with face markings
the face is where you can see what a horse is thinking; the ears are the mane thing also a well placed marking can show a story

Lets look at Skye
her face markings are a diamond and 2 claw marking coming out of it as well as a snip with pink nose, so what can this mean? Well a diamond is pur to most so that shows she’s has a good past but the claws show she’s had something bad happen the triangle snip complements the diamond

As you can see a marking can tell the story even is others don’t see it

face markings range from few to far so have fun with them I have horses with racing hood markings and ones with none at all, head markings can also be a joke towards the horse like a horse that hate everything could have a heart

This is also the reason I don’t like to design for others, as I have no idea what this horse is going to be like

Step three – body markings

 Body markings like face markings can tell a story but also can say a lot about where the live or use to or are a reflection of there parents or breed

For this we will be looking into crystal, tyrant and thresh

Crystal is my equinesona so she is from what I like, I love appys so she has the spots, they are in the shape of a saddle with a tail strap (or meant to) as I love riding roly-poly ponies the fire on her shoulder is from my nickname blaze

Next up we look at tyrant he only have one marking a Japanese symbol, it doesn’t say it in his bio but his father was a horse that came from Japan tyrant doesn’t but his father has the same marking witch shows he comes from there

Last up thresh, thresh is a mix for his two parents, most his marking come from his mother

Step 4 – leg markings/socks

Sock are the last thing I do unless the body marking is all over (see alahadro for what I mean) often I use these to finish off, socks can just be there to be there or tell about personally, its up to you, socks range in patterns just like face markings, i’m sure a lot think they are just like rains hooves to a spot in there legs back there not for this we look at psnow, his socks are “broken” or spotted this is mostly cause has an appaloosa and it looks good with him another way a sock can be broken is like solastorm , now his sock leads into a body Patten but its them same deal his black spot on his knee is a broken sock the same thing can happen but in another way see mela for what I mean (she’s not the best but I think she’s the only one)

And remember if you do a bay black under the sock buckskin/dun black or brown to the knee

Step 5 – mane and tail

 Mane and tail I find easy I tend to make mane and tails just darker then the base colour sometimes with highlights or black or blond depending on the horse

Some coats can only have set colours (bay always being black) so that’s something you might want to look into

Step six – eyes and hooves

Another small step
Eyes are up to you I tend to go brown like real horses or on the rare time blue (only 9ish)
but this is up to you 

I recommend looking at the coat if its dark go light if its light go dark sometimes markings can bring out the eyes, solar storm looked odd with brown eyes but when I made them blue they stood out

Hooves I tend to make darked of the base coat or just what ever I feel like at the time
I tend to make socks have white hooves (I see this in horses often)
And remember appys have striped hooves

Step seven – the bio

Bios should contain all the info about your horse that people may need if making mates ECT
The bio base I use wasn’t made in a day it took me months to find what I liked, and don’t just go to some ones and use there’s this is a good way to annoy people
I have made a small one witch covers the basics but your free to use this one and edit if you wish

Name:
age:
breed:
gender:
parents:
siblings:
mate:
foals:
Likes and dislikes:
History:

History should include foal hood, yearling hood, colt/filly hood and if the ages stallion/mare
Try to get at least 2 or 3 lines for each part but I know this cant always happen but you can always try

An remember researching is always good, there is many sites on the web to help but always check a few not everything is true