Hello everyone! We’ve finally reached the day everyone has been waiting for. Today has been a long time coming and had several delays, for very good reason. Our art update today first includes a bit of information about why things took so very very long. Let's jump into it!

The Search

Since Solo left her role as our horse artist, we have been looking for someone to match Solo's style via job postings, asking the player base, searching through art websites, Reddit, and more. To say we covered every possible corner of the horse art (and even digital art) world would be an understatement. In our search, we had several artists try out for the position and we ended up paying for several trial runs. In the end, no one could match Solo's style. During this search period, we also tried to make our own bases using current assets to keep art updates going and on track for releasing them. However, in that process, we made one of our usual wild n’ crazy decisions.

The Crazy Decision

If no one can match Solo’s style, then why not just…pick a new one? We decided that in being unsuccessful in finding someone to match, come close to matching, or using assets to match Solos style meant that we needed to find a new avenue to getting breed art going again. We thoroughly attempted to find any possible way to keep the art style we have, but in the end, it honestly was just not possible. At this point, we had gone so long without consistent breed art updates that it was probably best to consider redoing everything just to get new art into the game. And thus, several months of artist finding and trials began. 

We decided to take a bunch of steps back and begin thinking about if we made HoFa from scratch, what we would desire in an art style, and breed art bases. First, we wanted the new style to match our current game styling which was semi-realistic but also lent itself to more of a cartoon/anime feel. Second, we decided that with new bases we can start everything from scratch…and we mean *everything*.  Lastly, we wanted to incorporate player ideas which meant reviewing notes we had as well as doing a bit of sneaking around on the forums, Discord, and social media. 

The first of our desires was easy to fulfill. We knew our playerbase liked the unique art style but also enjoyed horse art that lends itself to being a bit more realistic. We decided to keep the Disney-esque style but go more for something in the style of DreamWorks and a very specific iconic horse movie a few of you are familiar with (Kiger Mustangs when?). We also wanted the style to lean towards more realistic, so keeping these two things in mind we found several artists, trials, and ended up finding our new horse artist, ThunderboltFire! Thunderbolt has been with us working for about 2 months now and has managed to make all of our crazy dreams and desires a reality.

Creating the Thoroughbred

Many many hours have been put in to ensure our Thoroughbreds are released when we planned to. I (Curly) am in charge of planning and also many art aspects of our first new bases which meant if I was slow, work on TB bases was too. I’ve had to deal with organizing a military move, family health scares, my home flooding, my electricity and internet failing,  four abandoned kittens (I see them as a huge bonus tbh), emergency vet visits and more. I have done my very very best to keep everything rolling on time and could not have done so without help from our artist Brumby and moderator Roze. Without their help, TBs would have had to be pushed back even longer so my many many thanks to our amazing team for their work.

Part one of the new TB bases incorporates our new art style to update all existing in-game TBs. We also wanted to keep a bit of HoFa history with them so they are galloping in a similar pose to the old TB art. All in-game TBs are now updated to display the new art along with the newly adjusted tack. If you are unable to see the new TB art, clear your browser cache and refresh the page. New additions mentioned above will be coming soon.

New Bases, New Capabilities

Working with Thunderbolt, the mod team, and known player ideas, we have begun the process of expanding the breed art bases to be more dynamic than our previous bases. In doing so, we added a lot of extra time to perfecting the base coloring process, optimizing to ensure the process moves quickly, and adding in everything we think we would ever want. So, what is everything we think we will ever want? Our new breed bases will be capable of (in a future update):

- Having body, manes, and tails separate to allow for the creation of mane and tail types. Current bases have 7 manes and 7 tails which will be coming soon.

- Having all possible base color and marking variations complete so no more requesting grade layers!

- Expanded marking variations for all leopard types, sabino, tobiano, overo, rabicano, manchado, sooty, somatic mutations, body markings, and more.

- Sporting marking types to correlate with base color such as new blood marks for red vs black based greys, added new greying process for rose greys vs. other greys, dun variants to better suit dilute base colors, new dapple and reverse dapple markings (expanded to 3 types!) per red vs black base types, and more!

- Displaying new markings such as gulastra plume, frosted mane/tail for buckskins, chimeras, and face and leg markings.

Introducing new based colors such as Porcelain Grey, Dark Seal Bay, Blood Bay, Jet Black,  and more. 

Going from Here

From here on out, we plan to have new breed art bases released at least monthly. Using our new process of coloring bases we expect breed art coloring to take much less time than prior. We also have several bases on deck ready to be worked on which means now that TBs are released, the next breed has already begun the process! 

What about campaigns?

We haven’t said much about campaigns since doing so meant announcing the new art style and new bases would happen before we wanted. Now, we will begin working with campaigns to get information to Thunderbolt to begin creating your breeds. Those who have campaign art and those waiting for art to begin, be on the lookout for a forum post to begin this process.

I don’t like the new style.

We all have different tastes and we can understand such a dramatic change can bring out strong opinions. However, for my sanity maybe wait a few hours after this post to give critique on the style and what you would like to see adjusted for the next bases. We are always open to new ideas and making HoFa what our players like.

I’m having problems seeing the new art.

Try clearing your browser cache and refreshing the page. If this doesn't work, wait a few minutes and try again. 

You mentioned things coming soon. When is “soon”?

Art is currently complete for the mane and tail variations but code and final plans for this feature are coming with the next breed art update. If you have ideas pertaining to the new manes and tails you have seen displayed on the TB art, please leave them below.

New base colors require more in-depth code and time for Bed and I to sit down and go *line by line* as I explain new genes and how they should work programmatically. The biggest obstacle here is that TBs have the new base colors but other breeds do not. This requires more code on top of the new base colors’ code. We plan to have all this done with the next breed update.

When/what is the next breed?

Ahaha we have to keep something a surprise but, we expect the next breed to gallop into HoFa in ~1 month.

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We also want to take some time to reintroduce our artists to everyone. We currently have 5 artists who work on several parts of the game.

Brumby

I'm Wild_Brumby, or Brumby. I'm from Western Australia and have played HoFa since it was first in alpha as Eqcetera. At home I have 2 cats and 1 Dalmatian. When I'm not trying to tire out my spotty whirlwind I am usually gaming, sewing or drawing. I mostly work on marking designs and some recolours especially for the grade layers. I'm stoked the HoFa has brumbies in game, very few games every did when I started playing horse sims so it's great to be able to breed and train my namesake.

Thunderbolt

Hello! I'm ThunderboltFire, and I'm a digital and traditional artist from Poland. My formal education is in linguistics, but I've also been working as an artist for almost a decade now. In my spare time I like to write, play video games and paint minifigures. Horses are my lifelong passion and I'm very excited to have the opportunity to work on some of the graphics you'll see in the game!

Darya

Darya works on tack-making in real life and also for HoFa! Darya creates all our tack and decor assets. 

Elz

I'm Elz! I currently live in the US with my husband and new baby, and I've worked for HoFa for a good while now after a small break. I mainly do the item art, but recently finished icons and avatars as well. I mainly do art commissions for characters which is quite seperate (and different) to the horse work I do here, but its good fun!  I have a love for cats, too.

Chutkat

Hello I am Chutkat and have been an Illustrator for over 15 years of experience in games. I love going on hikes to nature and my absolute favest thing to draw is animals.

We hope everyone enjoys today's update and we’ll see you back here soon!

Cheers,

Bedouin & Curly