TThe Iron Horse: Everything's Better With Robots!
MLP: FiM
Comedy
Drama
Sci-Fi
A cute robot pony. A mysterious origin. A princess who believes anyone can learn friendship, even a cold, logical machine. A journey begins...
Twilight
OC
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Main 6
The Hat Man · 581k words · 1,251 30 · 17k views

How "The Iron Horse" Gets Illustrated! · 4:21am Feb 12th, 2016

Taking just a short break from trying to finish up this fking chapter here for a little something I've wanted to talk about for a while: illustrations!

One of the things I'm very pleased about is the fact that this story contains customized illustrations, all commissioned and done up by my good buddy Colby Green, or just "Green" as I call him. Originally, I just asked him for the cover and maybe one or two illustrations before I brought up the idea of him illustrating the whole darn thing. He was actually fine with it, but keeping up with new chapters and dealing with his own day job and other obligations means that a lot of the earlier chapters have had illustrations added sporadically. But the latest drawing as of this posting is the one at the start of the Rainbow Dash arc, "Harder Better Faster Stronger!"

So, how does this all work? Let's go through the process:

Step 1: The Commission
I give Green a description of what I'm looking for. That can be either a direct quote from the story or a more detailed direction. Part of the problem is that Green is a very... very... very slow reader, which means that, ironically, he hasn't actually read most of the story. (But we're fixing that with a little something that may or may not see the light of day. )

For this example, here's what the original commission looked like:

Turing lifting an entire wooden cart filled with weightlifting stuff. Bulk Biceps, Twilight, and Spike are on top of the cart. Turing could be lifting with just her forelegs or with all four legs.

Not much to go on, but we communicate on Facebook and Skype pretty frequently, so additional details can be covered there. Two things I had to specify were that the drawing should be fairly tall to create a sense of size and weight and the three characters should be stacked on top of each other. That was enough, and that step leads to...

Step 2: The Pencil Sketch
Pretty quickly after the commission, Green gives me a pencil sketch. This helps figure out posture, positioning, and lots of small details. Sometimes Green throws in things on a whim that I love and just tell him to keep. Turing Test's ear hinges were one such example and now they're a distinct part of the story. Other times, such details just have to be thrown out. For instance, in "Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology," Green sketched this out:

Now, I actually love that drawing, but the problem was that, in the story, the flower pot is supposed to be empty. Also, Green drew what looked more like a coffee cup than a real flowerpot. The characterization that Twilight would just plant a flower in such a thing was cute... but it just didn't work. Nor did she have (or need) a clipboard, despite that also being pretty cute. The end result of such changes:

But, as I was saying, this particular chapter, "Harder Better etc.," called for characters to be stacked on top of each other. And this is the sketch I got back:

I thought it was pretty amusing, and my only note was that he add in Twilight and Bulk's wings at some point. (For the record, he usually adds cutie marks in the last stage.)

Step 3: Progress Update
This is just where Green will show me what he has in progress. Sometimes it's a drawing that is almost finished entirely, while other times it's about halfway. This particular chapter provides a good example of the latter! Here's an incompletely colored and undetailed picture:

Now it's taking shape! Colors, shadows, and other details aren't included yet, but this gave me the opportunity to make a few other comments or suggestions. And after that!

Step 4: Finished Illustration
By this time, the picture has taken shape and will either be completely ready or will just need one or two minor adjustments. Color will be there in full, as will shading, cutie marks, and all that good stuff. Here's the final product for "Harder Better Faster Stronger."

And there you have it! Keep in mind that the turnaround on all this is about a week, sometimes more depending on whether this is an older chapter or a newer one. Older chapters are all planned out, but new ones come up once I have a good idea of what I want. One recent picture went from commission to final drawing in less than three days!

Hope you all like the illustrations! (And if you don't, that's too fking bad for you, isn't it?) Our hope is to have virtually all chapters illustrated by the time the story has finished! And if you want to ask Green for some art, go visit his DA page and let him know!