Month: May 2015

miskatonicwater:

biodiverseed:

lazyevaluationranch:

8/3 Today we picked the white apples. They have skins the color of old yellowed bones, and translucent flesh so that when you slice them open you can see the seeds through the flesh. Bone-and-glass apples, parchment apples, ghost apples.
They bruise easily, a purplish brown rather too similar to a bruise on human skin. If you pick one up, there’s a good chance the shapes of your fingertips will be marked on it the next day. I want to try writing words on them by pressing on them with a pencil eraser sometime.
They smell very faintly of perfume, maybe roses. They do not smell like apples. Apple maggots never infest them (probably because their growing time is too short to support the apple
maggot fly life cycle. It’ll be another month or two before the
rest of our apples are ripe).
They’re lovely. They are also disgusting. Mealy and soft, with no flavor whatsoever. They’re not sweet. They’re not even sour. It’s like a mouth full of wet cotton ball. I’m pretty sure I spit it out the first time I tried one.
I hope you all understand how weird this is: even the goats are reluctant to eat them. They’ll eat an apple or two, but then they lose interest (except in keeping the sheep from eating any, of course).
I have no idea why a previous resident planted the ghost-apple tree. If they have any flavor at all, only the restless dead can taste it.

Today’s Bonus Challenge is… spooky ghosty apples! In MLP!

Seeing as this is MLP this could be more literal to the name or just something like the eeriness above! Whatever amuses you, eh?

You’ve got 30 minutes to create followed by 15 minutes to submit! Have fun~

Today’s Asian Challenge is… to create a fictional character among ponies!

Like Daring Do was! (but isn’t anymore). You know, someone from a book or whatnot, the power ponies would be another example.

Maybe some legends of other species even, I’m sure ponies have all sorts of characters they think on.

You’ve got 30 minutes to create followed by 15 minutes to submit! Have fun~

About last night.

I know some of you found me harsh, or even ungrateful. But the truth is that I really care about the challenge. And sometimes I am not so tactful with unpleasant news. At such times I feel ripping the bandaid off is better than pulling it slowly and then kissing it… or something like that. Don’t like ignoring the elephant in the room or whatnot.

We do our best to bring challenges to you folks every day, interesting and fun as we can make them. And it’s not for us. We do it for you guys. That’s why we try hard to be diverse, it isn’t about us and what we want.

Doing this is rewarding. Quite rewarding. But it is also work of a sort.

Imagine planning a Pinkie-esque party but only a guest or two shows up. For a small get together it’s no sweat. But when you try to make something you think will be the toast of the town and that happens, well, it’s just not good.

It’s kind of like that when a 24 hour challenge goes poorly. It truly does make us have to evaluate how many of them we do and when, particularly when we find the idea solid.

That said, there are always factors. Many factors. Sometimes it’s hard to see the trees for the forest. You get stuck on the big picture and fail to appreciate otherwise, even when it’s pointed out to you.

I know some definitely have interest in seeing more 24 hour challenges, at the least hors does, and where there is interest we do not ignore it lightly. So what I would like to know is how many of you artist folk have a particular interest in them as something from time to time. If you want ‘em let us know, y’know? Without input we don’t know if we should put them on the sidelines or trot them out more often.

Feel free to tack on details as well, such as if you’d prefer notice of them or how frequently you’d like to see them.

Thanks for reading.

And don’t forget!

Bonus challenges were promised for this weekend after the issues with The Asian Challenge. Since the 24 hour challenge was in progress that got squeezed to Sunday. Rather than bombard Sunday though I think we’ll save one for next weekend too.

So, after The Asian Challenge there’ll be a bonus both this week and next week.

So sorry! I was doing my picture, but life got in the way (in a horrible, horrible way, just search in the news for Jalisco, Mexico). And end up only having some characterless sketches. Only unitl today could I return to draw and well, I didn’t had anything worth posting (again, since I couldn’t define the characters in the sketches). But I really want to participate in another 24 hour challenge!

Eesh, that’s rough dude. No one could blame ya there. I sincerely hope things look up in the area. I know Mexico has been having some pretty rough problems with cartels and the government these days. Stay safe!

The Roundup starts tomorrow night as well actually, so if you are bothered by not being able to finish your piece you could still do it if you like for that :3

Frankly, doing this challenge over the day, a new MLP episode comes out, was an awful idea. Several artists like to draw something about a new episode right away and might be too busy to do the challenge. I know of at least one case, where an artist considered doing the challenge but turned it down because of the new episode. Not saying that this is the sole reason, there was low participation, but I’m sure it’s a significant factor.

Seems like a pretty weak reasoning to me, given it started yesterday, before the episode came out.

Not to mention the episode didn’t even air until halfway into today.

And also given that a lot of people don’t get to see the new episode the day of and we personally keep our challenges based on new episodes until the start of the next week.

On top of that the weekend is really the only time such a challenge is feasible at all. So it was either yesterday or tonight it’d launch. And the night of the episode is a worse idea.