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MisterAibo — Creepy Forest
#pokegirl150 #memory_lane_pictures #blaze_pen #withering_willow #my_little_pony #cinemagraph
Published: 2016-11-21 10:32:23 +0000 UTC; Views: 4718; Favourites: 155; Downloads: 64
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Description
"We came across numerous things as we delved deep into the dark, foreboding forest. Mercifully, most of my memories are those of my shaking legs and dry mouth, only occasionally broken by the faintest recollections of... other things. But even those few occasional sights, smells, and sounds are enough to make me wish for a complete oblivion.Curiously, my friend never shared this sentiment. While I was struggling even to keep my consciousness, she inspected everything with almost morbid curiosity, shaking off the most horrid sights and implications with little more other than a chuckle.
Sometimes, I wonder if it's courage or madness. Or if there is even a difference between the two."
Commissioned by PokeGirl150 , featuring Blaze Pen and Withering Willow .
Open for commissions!
Technical
Still image created with inkscape .
The animations were made and exported with aniGen .
I completely remade and redesigned my movement assets (front & hind hooves and bodies), so now I can do smooth transitions between idling, walking, trotting, running, bending forward and backwards, crouching down, and probably a bunch of stuff in between. "Smooth" is a bit questionable, of course, since I don't have a lot of experience with complex motion, but at least now I have the assets.
I also did some experiments with bulk color animation - the fastest way I could come up was linking identical color to one, single stop gradient. This allows me to animate only a single element, and having the animation translate to all others instead of copying the same animation to each individual element. Changing the animation, obviously, is much more convenient. However, this also bloats up the code a bit because Inkscape adds another gradient for every element, basically creating a scheme like this:
[ Animated gradient ] <--linked by-- [ specifc gradient with offset ] <--linked by-- [ graphical element ]
I plan on doing some more research on SVG's color-profile, or maybe color inheritance. Or maybe I can trick inkscape somehow to reduce the unnecessary gradients. Or maybe I could link directly to one of the other elements? If anyone has any ideas on the topic, I'm all ears.
LinksOriginal SVG
As always, I appreciate any comments, criticism and discussion.
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Comments: 32
That's actually a dead pony right there, fucking cockatrice
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Poor statue pony, wish they could be saved, but I think alot of ponies have found similar fates over the years
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OoOoOooooh, just found "Swamplandia" on here: tabletopaudio.com/ . Fantastic piece of ambiance for this kind of thing. By default it shows all, but it's easier to find it if you select the "nature" tab.
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Seems like the statue might be worth taking to Canterlot or a hospital? Or both?
I mean, not a lot you can do about a beheading, but she's still semi-alive? Anything would be better than leaving her in the forest.
But the petrification could well act like cryonic freezing, and you just view the beheading as a "currently terminal" condition that might be able to be cured with future technology. abcnews.go.com/Health/hundreds…
Oh, by the way, I dunno why I did this analysis, but frame 262 is where her hoof makes contact with the ground, and frame 254 is where she makes apogee from her jump (by GIMP's ordering). Assuming ponies are roughly 98 cm tall www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcLKWk… , we get ~2.35 pixels per cm at the distance of Withering Willow, and she lept a distance of ~30 cm off the ground. Using 30ms per frame, the flight time from apogee to landing was 240 ms. Given the kinematic equation d = 1/2 at^2, I was able to derive that gravity in this picture is ~10 m/s^2. Shockingly accurate for just eyeballing something. I'm a little disappointed, though - I was hoping that Equus would have like, 70% gravity or something. Xp I should go do this analysis on some screencaps...
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Sure, it could be a petrified pony hoping for rescue, but you wouldn't expect these to move. Or it's some sort of sentient, cursed statue, and bringing that to civilization might not be that great of an idea. Also, considering the fact that "standard rock" is about 2.65x more dense than human (and presumably pony) tissue (or water, for that matter), this statue weighs more than two and half adult ponies. Considering the old rule of thumb of "you can probably carry about as much as you weigh", this'd make transporting the statue hard at best, and most probably straight up impossible. And it would prolong their time in this strange forest with paths that seem to go in circles (of about 30 seconds), filled with creepy moving statues. I'd probably try to reach civilization first, tell somepony about the statue and maybe other weird stuff, and if those things sound important enough to brave the weird forest enough, mount an expedition with more ponies, better equipment, and tools. Maybe an expert on petrification.
That said, the statues' neck has several darker spots which imply petrified veins and severed throat, so it probably is a pony. You never know.
Also, the comic states a petrified pony shattered to pieces can probably be reassembled and made flesh again, possibly without killing them. While Discord states he knows what's going on around him when he's petrified, he's a god of chaos, and Twilight has no recollection of her own time in stone. That'd basically make the process very similar to straight-up stasis. Which would also, presumably, make its subject completely still and indestructible. Stone-like, even. Huh. Clarke's third law?
As far as gravity goes, I always considered ponies to be smaller than regular ponies, so less than 1.5 m to their withers. I never really bothered by how much smaller exactly, since "little" might just be a figure of speech. The animation is definitely a case of eyeballing, so it being reasonably close to regular gravity is quite understandable.
Candy cane measurement is problematic because the smaller the ponies are, the smaller their "foot" unit would probably be. It's also weird how a unit named for a piece of anatomy not on a horse would exist. Both of these could be explained by the show being a translation from an original language the ponies are using. (After all, why would little horses even talk perfect, modern English?) Just like with any foreign culture with its own culture, specific terms are mixed in, and words like "everypony" and "nopony" are added for some flare and immersion. This also explains why sometimes, the ponies say things like "on the other hand" while denying knowledge "hands" actually exist - it's either a hitch in the translation, or more likely a deviation from practice for the sake of an existing idiom. A counterpoint is the earlier generations, where actual human from actual Earth routinely travels to the pony lands and has no trouble communicating with them, but hey - food for thought.
Apple size method, just like any physics based model, depends too much on general scaling. Not only might Applejack's family grow apples larger or smaller than regular ones (especially considering the fact that they've been growing them for generations, and would like to maximize their yield), the apples themselves could have different size if the planet's gravity is different. After all, gravity seems to be a factor in growth and structural limits of sizes.
Standard door size seems fine, although it could simply mean the humans are very small. Or very large. Doors are fit for people, not the other way around, after all. Using Angel as a comparison between the world sounds legit though, so the comparative size seems sound to me.
Monarch butterfly (probably from May The Best Pet Win) and its wingspan seems the most plausible, especially considering the near-identical markings and reasonable ratio to other animals in the episode. Once again, however, size of butterflies would change with gravity (the old "why don't we have giant insects" question).
I like the economic theory on carats, considering the apparent overabundance of gemstones and their relatively small price. It might be that instead of saying "kilo-carats", ponies simply use carats as a unit. That, and Rarity's guess might be way off, although she should be an expert. Maybe she's trying to cheat Spike out of the gem by undervaluing it. Spirit of Generosity my tail.
However, the correlation of most of the theories' results definitely makes the sizing a strong candidate. Definitely better than "no data, could be anything". Either way, measuring gravity is a bit tricky to find with cartoon physics mixed in with the regular ones, animation skews the motion for the sake of comedy, and horses are somehow able to fly with pitiful wingspans and laughable flapping speed.
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That was kinda nagging the back of my mind about how heavy the statue was. Good point. Definitely good to get some expert advise on that...
Actually, ponies do have feet. It's technically the part above the hoof - skeletally speaking, it's like they stand on their toes, which have a big toenail called a hoof.
And yes, I'm very glad you see how striking the correlation of all the data is. I was quite shocked, myself, to see how much all the methods converged! Since then, there's actually been a few more very clever / rather good methods that people have proposed that seemed to line up as well, though I can't remember them off the top of my head. In the comments to that video in particular, someone actually mentioned an interesting idea: that "carats" are actually "carrots", ie, take a big carrot and it weighs equal to one gem "carrot" 
And yeah, that's the funny thing - if you take into account how everything can vary (size of apples, size of butterflies, strength of gravity for a different planet, etc), then it's nigh unto impossible to get their size unless at some random point in the show somepony says, "Oh, and we ponies are the particular size that it takes light 30.6 times longer to span our height as the period of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom (Cesium being the element with 55 protons, and protons being the nucleon in ordinary matter (such as what stars are made of) with a charge)." Pretty much then and only then could you really say with complete confidence that ponies are about a meter tall (I took that from the definition of a second, btw en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second ).
One thing that's useful, though, is we can at least rule out that they're very tiny - for if they were, say, the size of a ladybug, or maybe even the size of a mouse, then water would act distinctly different due to its viscosity: s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/o…
And if they were say, the size of an elephant, then I don't think wood would be a viable building material to hold their weight in, say, a house, or a treehouse (double the size of a cube, and its volume goes up by 8 times, though its cross-sectional area only goes up by 4 times, so the amount of pressure per area, thus the strain on the material, doubles, which is why building materials are no longer viable past a certain size or load and why steel is needed to make skyscrapers).
But, well, seeing as EQG seems rather close to our world - with internet, social media, not-Youtube, then I think it'd be safe to assume that they're roughly the size of humans, since they're so close to humans in almost every other way, save skin and hair colors.
Oh my gosh, though! I'm glad to find someone else has the same thoughts that I do - that you take things as non-literal and just part of the medium for expression, such as variable gravity and the idea that their words are translated from other languages. I think Pinkie Pie is a great example; I don't think she can actually teleport or cross dimensions or do whatever other craziness, I headcanon that that's just cartoon rendition of her to convey the point; "she's super energetic, fast, things oddly work in her favor, and she's very silly", sort of like how a cartoon version of real events might spice them up a little with cartoony elements like that.
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Biologically, yes, but I'm not sure anyone calls it a "foot" of a horse. But hey, I'm not a native speaker.
I think "carrots" would be an interesting way to get around the weird number. However, considering carats seem to come from carab seeds, owing to their weight being fairly uniform (similar to other weird units, like half of imperial system), carrot wouldn't really fit, since they vary in size a lot. Hence, they wouldn't be useful for analog weighing of gem against certain amount of some things. But I could totally see "carat" being main unit for weight, similar to what gram should be. That is, if kilogram wasn't actually the base unit because of some weird historical reason.
But for ponies? A race based in agriculture and constantly exchanging food with unicorns in their early history? Carat seems a plausible substitute for our gram. I can imagine how over the years, kilocarat might have been used more and more, until it'd be used almost exclusively. Then, as magic becomes more and more scientific, the pony equivalent of International Organization for Standardization would simply state "carat" is now equal to "kilocarat" in weigh, shifting the whole thing by three orders of magnitude to avoid having a base unit with "kilo-" prefix in it (which is still one of the stupidest thing about SI units in my opinion). Now of course, that'd lead to a lot of confusion at first, but seeing how "kilocarat" would now be equivalent to 1/5th of a metric ton, the context would always show whether the pony meant "carat" as 0.2 g, or 0.2 kg. And since most gems are relatively large in MLP universe, millicarat would get used only by professional jewelers and vendors.
After all, we never heard them use any units of weight, if I remember correctly.
Size-wise, yes, we know the general ballpark. But it's really hard to actually find out something without an experiment.
Unless we count light.
I'm pretty sure there might be a clever way to find out a "base" size by observing rainbows, reflections, lenses, prisms, and stuff like that. There are glasses in the show, telescopes... I think optics would be the best bet. Putting aside that nobody from the creators actually adheres to these things, so... you know. The results might be a bit imprecise. It might be easier to go with the "pony is a meter tall" idea.
Also, we can consider physiology as well - the size and complexity of a brain capable of rational thought and language... Maybe some hard dietary data? Now that's definitely outside my area of expertise.
Speculating is fun, as are thought experiments. It's like stretching for your brain. The problem with most "analysis" videos and articles is that they ask questions, but consider some fairly dodgy things fundamental.
I like the idea of Pinkie Pie's antics being a physical expression of her personality. It's almost like someone wrote about the ponies, and the people interpreting the text took it a bit too literally at times. "Celestia's mane flown with the wind." "Pinkie Pie bounced around crazily, grinning from ear to ear." "The magic hummed and glowed with energy." That kind of stuff.
We should really get together on Discord or something.
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Hhhmmm... Problem is, all of those things still fundamentally scale - rainbows, reflections, lenses, prisms, glasses and telescopes. Now, telescopes don't scale up very well, but they do scale down. There's a pretty wide range they're capable of, that still leaves us in about the same situation as before.
Also, neat idea about kilocarat.
As for brains that are capable of what - I really doubt we know enough about brains to say for sure. Whales aren't supergeniuses, for one, and cats can possess intellect that is sometimes comparable to a 2-year old. Obviously bigger doesn't necessarily mean smarter, though there does seem to be a strong correlation in-between the fraction of the body's mass that is brain, and the intelligence of the creature - though still, tiny creatures can have a far greater ratio but their tiny brains still aren't particularly intelligent (ex; ants) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-to… . It's a weird, complex problem.
I'll note you my Discord name
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Very well-done and quite morbid.
That quote about courage and madness was kind of creepy; you probably weren't looking for an answer, but I think there's a difference: courage is feeling afraid and not letting it stop you. Madness is tricking yourself into thinking you're not afraid in the first place, even though you are. (In this context, anyway...)
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Well, I was aiming for something Lovecraftian. I like that sort of oppressive horror, and it seeps into my work when dealing with "spooky" topics. Max terror, no chill.
I think you're right about the difference, to a degree at least. I'd say madness isn't about "tricking" yourself though - instead, I think it's (in this context) the state when your mind is wound too tight and something breaks, changing it, usually permanently. When you're too scared to keep being scared, because the emotional strain is too much on you, you burn out a fuse. For some people, that might lead to complete apathy, for others, hysteria. And some people simply lose their self-preservation, sticking their noses into everything, and others find a morbid sense of humor.
In that sense, "madness" is just as mad as "courage" - it's a natural way the brain defends itself from further emotional harm. The usual difference is that courage is admirable and even desirable, but when you think about it, a courageous person has less sensitivity, worse self-preservation, and can be really emotionally detached.
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Being beheaded AND petrified AND still alive at the same time must be pretty difficult to achieve. ^^
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Definitely a fate worse than death. x3
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Wow! A moving animation! You did fantastic on it, too, great work!
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I can't express my thanks and general awe at this animation. I love every bit of it, expesially the dynamic of these two paying off each other even if its just for a moment
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Thank you for taking the time to do it~
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Always a treat to see what little tidbits of creativity you pop out next!
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Some customers' ideas definitely spark creativity more than others.
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Longest animation you done so far, isn't it? Good work as always!!!
(Also, this animation reminds me of "Yume Nikki OST - Forest World"......)
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Thanks! Actually, the longest one (if you only count cinemagraphs) was thirty seconds - this is twenty. But I'd say it has the highest complexity per unit of time.
The music is nicely creepy. I like it.
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"Yume Nikki OST - Forest World"
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I raise you this for a "creepy shade of Everfree" ambiance - www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWoaDz…
Or maybe this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S-5ih…
Just some simple searching around brought up some good, creepy stuff.
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