WIP thread: The Fullmetal Alicorn Project (Updated 6/01)

[Tabbyclaw]

I got bold this week and did some serious symbol painting. Some seriously tiny symbol painting.

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Technically, for show accuracy Al's flamel should be on his left side. But I opted to stick with my 'public vs. personal affiliation' orientation over that. (I also probably should have done the joints on his armor first, but I can work around that.)

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A little shading on Roy's pocketwatch to give the impression of the embossed chimera without going overboard. It still needs his fiery touch (like I was going to leave the Flame Alchemist's cutie mark without it!), but then his entire body will be done.

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In all her artistic aspects, Riza is the one who's going to kill me. But I'm feeling a lot more confident about tackling her tattoo after getting that chimera so clean. She'll probably get an extra coat or two of gold to really make the border of her banner stand out.

Next planned step: Break out the airbrush again and lay down the base coat for Ed's automail.

Previous updates:
4/30

Spoiler

Back for more? 'Cause I am!

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Riza is finally getting some of her symbol paint, and I think it's actually working this time. Her "affiliation" cutie mark is obviously going to be the Amestris flag as displayed in hanging banner form, eventually trimmed in gold. Which means I get to try painting the chimera crest. Yay. (Her other cutie mark, of course, will be her tattoo and scars, which is going to be an even wilder ride. Even when I first had this idea I knew it was a terrible one, and yet here we are.) I've got plans for some subtle modification to the flag to make it uniquely hers, but we'll see if it works before I say anything.

The final three ponies are all set with their base coats and eye sketches!

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Ed and his little brother, giving a perfect illustration of why I went with the Shining Armor body. Ed's beige base coat isn't meant to imitate the human character's skin tone (if it was I'd have gotten a lot closer); it's because his distinctive color scheme is hard to work with. Gold hair and eyes, silver/grey automail, red coat, black clothing. I've seen some very good fanart of Ed as a red pony, but actual red customs never seem to look right unless the detail paint on them is in really aggressive colors, and ultimately I opted for a neutral to tie everything together and keep him from standing out too much among the other ponies.

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His eye shape was also surprisingly difficult to find references for. Sure, it's plenty visible when he's in motion, but in all the screencaps and official art his bangs are obscuring the outer edges of his eyes. Eventually I put Roy on one side of him and Riza on the other and just tried to sketch out a happy medium between their eye shapes. It seems to be working out.

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Ed, on the other hand, has the easiest eye shape to sketch. Next to his picture, you can also see how much the visor band contributes to the likeness.

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I'm still preening over how cleanly I managed to sculpt the tail guard. The paint color isn't totally clear in these pictures; it's much bluer than it looks here. It's also a slightly lower quality of paint than I usually use because the color was just perfect, so he's more textured than the rest of the set. I think it works for him.

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And then there's that demure, dove grey princess body. I did promise to say more as we got there, and here we are. It's not really that big a mystery; I already said that she's the most intimidating alchemist in the series and that alicorns are those who have seen the Truth. Which leaves only one option.

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Oh yes. Princess Izumi Curtis. Not that she'd ever call herself a princess, of course; she's just an ordinary housewife. But we know better.

She's even got the footwear for it.

4/5:

Spoiler

Hello again; here I am with an update! This one is all sculpting, all the time.

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First up, the really simple bit that ended up being the hardest thing. I've already said before that I'm not good at sculpting geometric shapes, and there's no sculpting room between Al's ears anyway, so the ferrule that holds the plume on the top of his helmet involved a lot of trial and error. The ultimate solution? Pack a vaseline-coated drinking straw with Apoxie Sculpt and run a skewer down the middle, then cut it down to size and sand the end at an angle.

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A mockup of how he'll look when the plume is inserted at the very end.

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Al's armor is also getting a tail guard, and there will be a pseudo-tail made of the same plastic lacing as his helmet plume, though I'm still working on the best way to design that. I waffled for a while about a tail, asking myself if a pony suit of armor would really have one already installed and whether or not it was aesthetically necessary to add one, but ultimately I thought about how upset Al is in the series when his plume gets mangled and decided that he'd want one for appearance's sake if nothing else. The scultping on that guard, by the way, really is as seamless as it looks here. Not to the eye -- the apoxie is still more ivory than his body -- but there is no tangible transition between apoxie and plastic when you run your fingers over him.

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Ed is getting in on the sculpting game, too, with a pair of wings, which I promised to explain more about when we got here. My logic is that if alchemists are being represented by unicorns, then those who have accessed even higher alchemical knowledge by opening the Portal and seeing the Truth would be alicorns. (Why isn't Al one? Because his shape is determined by the armor, and since he couldn't do circle-less alchemy until he conscously remembered everything he'd seen, he wouldn't have been able to operate a pair of wings, either, because his soul wouldn't register them as part of his "body." Also no way was I sculpting armored wings.) As for why they're folded, there are a couple reasons for that. For one thing, it keeps him looking relatively small, which is an important design element. I'm sorry, Ed, but it's true. More than that, though, it's to do with the taboo surrounding human transmutation. Ed hides his automail because it's a red flag to other alchemists revealing what he's done. (Well. He hides it until there's an opportunity to rip his shirt dramatically during a fight.) Wings would be even harder to explain away, so whenever he can he keeps them folded and tucked under his coat (yes, I have spare red fabric from another project) to avoid attracting notice.

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One of his wings, stuck on with a piece of tape just to show what he's eventually going to look like. I'm keeping them detached for now so it's one less thing I have to maneuver around while painting him.

And as far as sculpting is concerned, this is it. (At least for the boys. I'm not going to leave Riza without her hair clip.) Everything else that makes the Elric brothers physically distinct is going to be accomplished with hair and paint. This is going to be interesting.

Next step: Airbrushing for everybody, so much sketching.

3/21

Spoiler

As long as I'm taking the in-progress photos anyway, might as well post 'em here, right?

My current project is a set of five ponies based on my favorite Fullmetal Alchemist characters. They're something of a departure for me, a "getting back to basics(ish)" set where I'm trading my usual complex sculpting for cutie marks and non-skintone paint jobs. Turning the characters into ponies, instead of turning ponies into the characters. Which is not to say that they're going to be simple; we're still talking about intricate symbol painting and trying to imitate anime hair and eye styles. And automail. And also they're my first G4s.

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Heaven help me.

Note: These ponies are all based on the original manga and the Brotherhood anime, and I like to ramble about why I made certain artistic decisions. And also I like to ramble about the series itself. Some of my talk, and possibly even the design choices I've made, is likely to contain spoilers. I figure if you clicked on this thread you've probably already read/seen it all, but might as well warn.

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The obvious place to start is with Al and Ed, though that's not actually where I started when I began this series. (I was originally just going to do Roy and Riza. You know how these things snowball.) Both unicorns, obviously; as the magic-users of the pony world they're the closest analogue to alchemists. And the title of this thread isn't just a pun; Ed is going to be an alicorn, and his wings will be sculpted. I'll explain both those choices when we get there. Al is getting made out of a Shining Armor base to keep him larger and bulkier than the rest of the ponies, and also a little bit because turning Shining Armor into a literal suit of armor amuses me. I am a smple woman. He's one of the ones where I could really go nuts on the sculpting were I so inclined, but I'm limiting myself to what you see here. A housing for his plume (still in progress), and his visor band, which I consider a vital component of his facial expressions. There may also be a tail guard; I'm still working out what I want to do about that.

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The other three heads, on a stand my dad made for me. The finished posts are fixed for holding the heads between eye coats or while styling the hair, and the unfinished ones pop out for use while airbrushing. The two in front are Roy and Riza. The one in the back is the only alchemist intimidating enough to merit a princess body. Again, more on that as we come to it.

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Remember what I was saying about imitating the eye styles?

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I think I did a decent job.

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I'm also pretty confident about Riza's eye accuracy, not that it's obvious from the photograph. My photography skills aren't great under the best circumstances, and trying to show off a partially-painted white eye outlined in faint grey on an ivory pony is not the best circumstance.

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Roy is the only one who's gotten any symbol work done on him so far. Another aspect of the "ish" part of the "back to basics(ish)" label is that each pony is going to have two cutie marks, with the right flank being their public affiliation and the left being more personal and individual to the character. Roy's affiliation mark is his State Alchemist's pocketwatch, and once I'm done it will be wreathed in fire for the Flame Alchemist.

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His left flank is his transmutation circle. It's the first part of any of the ponies to be complete, unless I get a wild hair and decide to try fine-tuning it a bit more. I took a couple liberties in making the flame and the outer circle solid rather than outlines, but other than that it's as accurate as I can get it.

Next steps: Sculpt Al's plume housing and Ed's wings, airbrush both.

-Tabby
the princess with claws

[Tulips]

I am already so psyched to follow along your creative process, I love FMA!
The eye styles you've done look great, and I'm very interested to see how you tackle Ed's Automail and Al's armour while limiting sculpting... I feel like squealing with excitement, I can't wait to see/hear more

[kaoskat]

Can't wait to see them done!

[SunPony]

Awesome!  I was really excited when you mentioned before making FMA ponies   They look great so far!  I'm going to speculate in my mind about who the princess-body-worthy alchemist might be

[Diamond]

Not familiar with the series at all but still enjoying seeing where you are going and how they come out.

[aintnobuffalo]

These are already great! I can't wait to see the final product!

[DorkyDuck]

Oh gosh you're making a Roy Mustang pony!!!  These are gonna be so rad I cant wait to see them when they are done

[Uninu]

Oh, I just love progress threads! They look awesome so far, so I'm sure they will be breathtaking once they are done!

[Oniontart]

That is very cool what you've done with sculpting, can't wait to see more

[Tabbyclaw]

New updates!

-Tabby
the princess with claws

[Tabbyclaw]

Updated!

-Tabby
the princess with claws

[Uninu]

I love Izumi's expression!

[Tulips]

Awesome update! I love the attention to detail, especially the eye designs. Good luck with the symbols

And seriously, you are right to preen over Al's tail guard. It looks perfect, I can never get sculpting that smoothly blended, I'm so jelly 

I cannot wait to see them all finished, it's fun to follow along 

[SunPony]

Woo hoo!  Looking good 

[Tabbyclaw]

Another update!

-Tabby
the princess with claws