[Updated] Black Pearl Clarification

The Black Pearl

You need at least 60 days of seniority and 5 karma points to use the Black Pearl.

We'd like to clarify a few things concerning the proposals for the Creative Space. We've had the time to see how things went and made some changes along with some additional advice.

For the Horses, Pegasus, Unicorns, Donkeys, and Ponies.


Using shadows in your creations:


We are probably going to add them ourselves in the future to have something that has the right perspective on the backgrounds, and that has a uniform texture across the coats.

You can use shadowing, but we ask that you keep them very light so that the images will fit with most Helios Ray backgrounds.

Cut out your edges more.


When we place the coats on a dark background in a lot of cases, there are stray light colored pixels all around the drawing. This makes it impossible to use on a dark background.
Tip Please take the time to take a look at your coat on a white and on a black background, in order to get rid of any leftover smudges or pixels. Also, look a little further away on just the outline. Often the coats have a smudge around the corners or along the border of the image.

Use the smudge or blur tool sparingly.


It's a pity to see a coat that has been worked on then filtered with a blur filter, and it comes out all smudgy. It's also a pity to see a coat with smudge marks on one side and not the other.

Be careful when playing around with reformatting an image.


Sometimes we get perfectly nice drawings of Sausage horses because the file has been altered, and the horse has been squashed or pulled in another direction.
This might be a great way of transforming an Irish setter into a Teckel, but it isn't very pretty on horses. Also, avoid making your resolution too low and giving the picture a pixel art look

Backgrounds


Using brushes is allowed.


They can be used as well, but we'd like to also remind you of the Black Pearl page information as seen in the quote below.

“Excess airbrushing is not allowed”. It is allowed but not too much!"

We have received tons of entries like this and have been very cool about it up until now. However, seeing the same tree used 4 times in different backgrounds is starting to get a little old.

From here on out, we'll start to be a bit more strict about this type of thing. This is due to the fact that it's unfair and the aim of the Creative Space is to work things with your own hands, not make photo manipulations. The same thing goes for photos or bits of photos.

Painting, blurring or smudging landscape pictures.


Moving forward, we'll simply remove the right to propose any creations to the Creation space forever for those who do try to do this.

Check the perspectives.


When you make a background, please consider that there has to be something for the horse to put his feet on. It's quite strange the have a picture with a nice pond in the background and the horse is floating in the middle of it in thin air.

The same goes for outer space and clouds etc. Just try and make the backgrounds usable for everyone, not just the Pegasus. Also, make sure that the horses won't look like giants in the middle of a forest when you decide to draw trees or other items.

Rules


Plagiarism is forbidden!
Respect the author's rights: we do not steal images off of the Internet; we do not trace photos; we do not use the basis of someone else if they have not given their authorization, preferably publicly.

What is plagiarism? Plagiarism is taking someone else's work and passing them off as your own.

We can take inspiration from a style, a movement, a mane or a coat without copy-pasting it. It’s the same idea for literature, graphic arts, video games or cinema - there is often inspiration taken from another creation. Inspiration is imbued with another creation in order to interpret it and create something new! Copying is recreating identically. Copying is not having a style or a vision of your own. Try to have the imagination and bring your unique personality to your creations.

Please also note that any cheating can get you excluded from proposing any artwork to the Creative Space forever and/or be followed by sanctions.
Players who submit an artwork not created by themselves, AI-generated or plagiarized will be permanently banned from using the Black Pearl.

Otherwise, all the usual rules still apply.

Before posting:


It is forbidden to mock or ridicule creations/creators
Don't post too many steps regarding your work to avoid flooding of the topic.
IT IS FORBIDDEN TO ASK FOR VOTES!

You are welcome to promote your creations or creations you voted for using #HowrseBP on social media or promote your creations on your profile page.

This topic can be used to help each other understand the Black Pearl rules with respect to your creative content.

Players who do not follow the rules are exposed to sanctions.

Regards
The Howrse team

 
Ow
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That's exactly what I'm afraid of default smiley :d
I'd like to make a couple of 100 limited ones and I just want to make sure I actually get one lol. I'm usually bad with sniping. Not like I think my design would be super popular, but maybe the trophy is enough of an incentive to make it gone in seconds.
Holone
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By Retired breeder, 3rd November 2020 15:20:42
Great jobdefault smiley :)
You can possibly ask someone with multiple editions of your coat if they could sell it to you, or just choose a larger amount to limit your GA coat too. I know 100's tend to sell out within 3-5 minutes (according to a player whose user I have forgotten) and 200s tend to sell out within 1-2 days to weeks, but it kinda depends on the quality and possibly the trophy incentive (for species/colors/etc).

Like a riding horse coat with 200 uses is going to sell out way faster than a winged unicorn coat with 200 uses, simply because unicorns are harder/more expensive to obtain than a regular old riding horse.

Different servers also might have the coat still open, on the US server, there are a lot of 100 use coats that are still open because the US server doesn't have the same kind of traffic that the INT server does.
nash12
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By Retired breeder, 7th November 2020 21:47:52
very interesting default smiley (y)default smiley (y)default smiley (y)
Weee, good to know default smiley (y)
Axilyah
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By Retired breeder, 8th November 2020 01:02:08
1
Hi I don't no what to do
From my personal experience, it doesn’t matter what the cost is. If it has only 100 uses, it’s gone as soon as the coats are released, no chance you’re getting it the next day or even the next hour. For 200, you have a slightly better chance of getting one, but again, they sell out super quick too for most.
I always put my coats at 500 uses. I will definitely get one and it’s not an enormous number of uses overall. But if you go with even 300 uses and login on the 26th, you’ll likely get a copy of your coat even at that.
It’s been several years since I’ve sniped some bc update time for me is 6 am but I’m assuming the above is still accurate.
Wolf of the North
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Heyyyy y'all. I'm trying to uplaod my GA coat and submit it, but it says the formatting is incorrect. I used the template and the pic is PNG so I'm don't know what's wrong >n< Is there anything I missed?
*Snowy_Wolf*
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Never mind, I just realized you need 150 days of seniority to make one. default smiley :$ I feel stupid now, aLrIgHt tHaNk yOu bYe default smiley (lol)
*Snowy_Wolf*
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Okay... I'm so sorry to spam messages like this, but I'm SO CONFUSED! default smiley (o) In the black market, the black pearl says "You need at least 60 days of seniority and 5 karma points to use the Black Pearl." But this post says "You need at least 150 days of seniority and 5 karma points to use the Black Pearl." So can I use it or not? Am I being dumb and missing something??
*Snowy_Wolf*
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By Retired breeder, 3rd December 2020 22:57:10
4
*Snowy_Wolf* wrote:

Never mind, I just realized you need 150 days of seniority to make one. default smiley :$ I feel stupid now, aLrIgHt tHaNk yOu bYe default smiley (lol)
*Snowy_Wolf* wrote:

Okay... I'm so sorry to spam messages like this, but I'm SO CONFUSED! default smiley (o) In the black market, the black pearl says "You need at least 60 days of seniority and 5 karma points to use the Black Pearl." But this post says "You need at least 150 days of seniority and 5 karma points to use the Black Pearl." So can I use it or not? Am I being dumb and missing something??

They changed the seniority requirement to 60 days recently. This topic's information predates that change.
Hi *Snowy_Wolf*,

The requirement had been at least 150 days for years, but maybe they changed it recently. And because you can't edit posts in the forums, that would explain the discrepancy between the forum and the black pearl page.

I'll assume that the BP is correct and you do have enough seniority. In that case, your problem really is a formatting issue. Here are a few things to check:
— make sure your drawing doesn't overlap the borders of your template
— make sure the template has the correct number of pixels (this might be affected if you resized the template itself)
— make sure the background of the horse is transparent

I'm probably forgetting something, but hopefully one of these will help you
AthenaMinerva
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Okay, thank you so much! I'll make sure to try those things default smiley (h)
*Snowy_Wolf*
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Hi, is it normal if my drawing looks pixeled? :/ I tried everything but it always looks pixeled when im drawing at the template size. I had one that was bigger and i made it smaller but then it also became pixeled. Maybe im setting up the program wrong?
Avrora
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I will look at it. Thank You!default smiley (l)
Tessadgraf
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Avrora wrote:

Hi, is it normal if my drawing looks pixeled? :/ I tried everything but it always looks pixeled when im drawing at the template size. I had one that was bigger and i made it smaller but then it also became pixeled. Maybe im setting up the program wrong?


I'm wondering the same thing, no matter what I do, whether I draw within the template or draw at a larger size then scale down, my drawing looks incredibly pixelated, with no room for details or smooth lines :/ would love to know how others deal with this. I know that when you zoom in on GAs, they usually look a bit pixelated close up, but my drawing always seem to come out worse than that, and looking pixelated even when I'm not looking at them up close
calvalvo
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The only way I manage to 'bring back' lost detail when resizing is by using Sharpen.

I always work at 300dpi and large canvas too. Idk if that makes a difference.
I can never keep it as great quality as the original but its as close to it as I can get when I use sharpen or sharpen edges.
WhiteTiger
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(I do so after resizing, not before)
Like, get the image to fit into the template as you need it to and then sharpen image. Good luck.
WhiteTiger
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Hello everyone! So, I'm new to the Black Peral and decided to upload my first GA coat! That being said, I am having some issues. The drawing I made is 300 dpi, the problem I am having is with the template format, which only has a 72 dpi allowance. Every time I resize my initial drawing to fit the formatting, it completely blurs and pixelates. Is there a way around the 72 dpi allowance to ensure my drawing retains its quality?
Kota-Bear ^.^
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WhiteTiger wrote:

The only way I manage to 'bring back' lost detail when resizing is by using Sharpen.

I always work at 300dpi and large canvas too. Idk if that makes a difference.
I can never keep it as great quality as the original but its as close to it as I can get when I use sharpen or sharpen edges.


Thank you!! I'll try that, really appreciate the tip default smiley (l)
calvalvo
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Kota-Bear ^.^ wrote:

Hello everyone! So, I'm new to the Black Peral and decided to upload my first GA coat! That being said, I am having some issues. The drawing I made is 300 dpi, the problem I am having is with the template format, which only has a 72 dpi allowance. Every time I resize my initial drawing to fit the formatting, it completely blurs and pixelates. Is there a way around the 72 dpi allowance to ensure my drawing retains its quality?


I'm not sure why it would be blurring that badly, a little I'd understand - I also don't know how you are resizing. I never create art within the template, I make it 300dpi on its own canvas and then copy the final over on top of the template canvas. I then grab the corner of my GA drawing and shrink it down to fit the GA template then sharpen to bring back detail, save and submit.

I don't quite understand the 72dpi allowance... That's never been an issue for me. Sorry I can't help further.
WhiteTiger
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calvalvo wrote:

Thank you!! I'll try that, really appreciate the tip default smiley (l)


No problem default smiley :)
WhiteTiger
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@ WhiteTiger

So the 300 dpi version[spoiler][/spoiler] has much more detail and you're able to zoom in which is just a feature of having a high pixel-per-inch ratio compared to the 72 dpi version. If you zoom in on the 72 version all the detail is lost. The only conclusion I can seem to come up with is to redraw it to format a lower pixel ratio. Nothing else seems to help not even sharpening.
Kota-Bear ^.^
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Is anyone else struggling to upload coats today?
bloodredarabian
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bloodredarabian wrote:

Is anyone else struggling to upload coats today?

last night it ate my passes and didnt upload my coat default smiley :-x currently waiting for the support team to help me.
Kiru
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