[Updated] Black Pearl Clarification

By Ow, 28th July 2020 10:33:59
67

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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By Hayila, 11th January 2025 21:28:09
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I do have screenshot proof from a time when voting and two similar ones were in the same round!
Hayila
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By Royale, 11th January 2025 22:18:00
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Hayila wrote:

I saw at least 5 of the same or very similar horse while voting! Is that legal?


It depends on a couple of things. If they were identical other than something small like one had wings one didn't, or one had X color scheme and the other had Y color scheme than that is allowed (assuming they are the same creator) Coats like this are called twin coats.
For example these coats are very similar but have been in the CS for a long time.

Click to display
Same coat different colors:

Click to display
Same coat one is a uni one isn't:


There are also cases of the same lineart being used by several different players. This is also allowed as long as they are only using the same lineart and not copying another coat that already exists. For example same lineart different ideas and artists:
Click to display


If the coat really is intentional with no differences to another coat in voting than that is NOT allowed and you can report it while it's still in the creation space. We had a group of coats pulled a while back because they were all identical, they were under different species but that didn't matter since there was nothing to differentiate them.
Royale
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By lassling, 11th January 2025 23:46:33
Hayila, I think you're correct about at least two coats - when I look at all the new creations from this month, and narrow it down to just "Riding Horse," the creations "Souky" and "Spix" look the same to me. They are showing on different pages, so there may be subtle differences, but they look the same in both line art and color.

From the all new creations page, I can't select any individual coat - would the correct way to bring official attention to it be to just vote until one of those coats pops up as an option, and report from there? What's the correct way to handle something like this?
lassling
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By Ravenknight, 11th January 2025 23:50:48
The artist can make different species coats. I regret selling arabian magic a limited use riding unicorn coat but going wild by brimmerd? Is a unlimited riding horse coat. They are exactly the same except for the horn.
Ravenknight
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By Royale, 12th January 2025 03:00:49
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lassling wrote:

Hayila, I think you're correct about at least two coats - when I look at all the new creations from this month, and narrow it down to just "Riding Horse," the creations "Souky" and "Spix" look the same to me. They are showing on different pages, so there may be subtle differences, but they look the same in both line art and color.

From the all new creations page, I can't select any individual coat - would the correct way to bring official attention to it be to just vote until one of those coats pops up as an option, and report from there? What's the correct way to handle something like this?


I found the coat you are talking about and brought their photos up next to each other, they are identical. If you're on classic view when you go to view all the creations there is a link at the top right of each illustration that says 'report abuse'. I'm not sure where it is on mobile, but you may have to wait until it comes up in voting again. I went ahead and reported it as well but it might be good if multiple players report it.
Royale
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By nowherekid85, 12th January 2025 11:58:11
Other things to add--the guidelines for submission say that backgrounds need somewhere for the horse to place their feet on, and landscapes that don't have this, and just have a horse floating in the middle of the image still end up making it to voting.

Also being able to view all of the submissions *is* nice but it would be even better if you could view all of them on one page, or have like five times the amount of shown per page. Rather than have 53 pages of submissions to click through.
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By c(=Mieez, 14th January 2025 04:52:05
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nowherekid85 wrote:

Other things to add--the guidelines for submission say that backgrounds need somewhere for the horse to place their feet on, and landscapes that don't have this, and just have a horse floating in the middle of the image still end up making it to voting.

Anything in the right format can make it to voting. They're checked after the voting phase. Maybe it's less effort and they focus on the reported drawings. (Years ago, they checked submissions first and after that the voting phase started.)
Also, this guideline was introduced when the Helios Ray just made it into the game. If I remember correctly, there was not even a button to lower the boxes on the horses page, and there was no option to move the horse.
Now you can move the horse and there are several winged horses out there which don't actually need the floor just below their feet. Even some normal horses might just be floating between galaxies. I guess that's why they're not that hard about backgrounds with your horse floating.
Of course it's still up to you whether you want to not vote them or maybe even report them because technically they don't follow the Black Pearls rules.
c(=Mieez
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