Star Stable May Blog: The American Saddlebred

The American Saddlebred

By Kyly Sheldon (Senior 3D Artist)

It was a lot of fun working on “The Peacock of the Showring”. It’s especially enjoyable to work on a breed that has very striking characteristics. In this case, the very proud upright carriage, exaggerated physicality, and the cutest little leaf-shaped ears! We put a large amount of focus into the trademark silhouette and unique movements, while still aiming for a natural feel.  I really do think we achieved that while still keeping the flashy qualities we were aiming for.

The concept of adding an extra-long tail was very exciting to see materialise. The animators did a fantastic job bringing it to life, as well as giving the horse haystacks of personality (hee hee) and beautiful, elegant gaits.'

Speaking of personality, the horse even had a top hat for a while, courtesy of one of the animators, just to add some “pizazz” while animating. That was a first! Another first on this project, yet again from an animator, was the addition of a seated one-handed trot, something that has been widely requested. It always feels great to deliver something you know players have been asking for. Lastly, in the theme of “firsts”, was a new coat in game - the flaxen liver chestnut pinto.

On the subject of coats, there was a happy and cute accident that happened when we realized that one of the American Saddlebreds had a similar face to one of the little Chincoteague ponies. Long lost cousins, perhaps?

In the early weeks, before the greyscale is complete, we paint a skeleton texture for the horse so the animators have some form of reference rather than a horse-shaped grey blob, which makes it very hard to see what’s moving and where. That, together with the top hat, had quite the regal, although spooky, feel. Sadly, the hat had to go once the manes were animated, but it did show how great top hats look on horses! I am determined to squeeze this idea into a future magic horse, so watch this space!

The funniest bug happened right at the start of production, when the horse was first implemented in the engine. The rig and animations had not been updated yet, which resulted in a deformed delight giving the “side eye”, made all the more funny because it was wearing a pink bow!

Luckily, the horse didn’t look like that for long and became the feisty, energetic cutie players now have in the game and are hopefully enjoying all things wild and western!