I apologize for the 2x zoom on this, but that's how I'm planning on displaying it eventually on dA/PJ; so, I'm trying to look at it at the right zoom level throughout the whole process to keep in mind that idea.
By a rough guess, you're currently using either Graphics Gale or Photoshop, right?
May I recommend
Grafx2? It has the interesting option to set 'pixel scale' (ranging from 1x1 to 4x4), which applies to the entire GUI including the image display. When you combine this with the split-screen zoom, it seems very useful for constantly keeping a good sense of the picture's appearance at 2x. (since '100%' zoom becomes that 2x, or whatever, size.)
(ah, also, do you realize PJ has zooming built in too?)
@jengy: At first I thought your suggestion was dumb, since I had the anatomy right already... but then I realized how wonderful your idea was. You'll notice that I rounded out the butt more in my latest quick edit, and it looks a lot more interesting now. I've never taken any art classes before, so I have next to no teaching on perspective (I'm going to fix that this summer however!), but from that simple edit you made I feel I've already learned to think in more of a cross-planar way, so that every plane (i.e. the one created by the back legs/butt, the side of her coat, the ones created by the sections of her face) works together with the other planes in a fluid motion.
It's like I said when someone asked how I did the fur so well on
this -- "I just run [curved] lines through everything and make sure it all flows together". Actually, I didn't say that last bit. I think they would have got the idea better if I had
@yaomon17: not exactly the style I'm going for, but I find it interesting how you shaded the tail in general (same with the mane), it'll help me when I finally get around to taking what has been Ai's suggestion for a few posts now and make it into reality 
@Ai: Not a fan of the dithering in the shadow, but I think I may have to add a darker shadow shade in there somewhere to define it better. Thanks for the tips on the colors, it prompted me to "research" into color theory at school today, and I changed the palette around a lot. I think that after this edit that I've gotten much better at picking colors with the H/S/L values, and I've realized that I was using insanely saturated colors (and I played with them as a result). I didn't like how you used blue as the outline, I settled with more of a color that had a hue closer to the orange color (it ended up being something like a hue of 230 IIRC) and I think it's a bit less radical against the orange while still having the shadowy effect.
Sure, all of my edits are approximate. Like, I didn't intend to suggest using dithering per se, just the idea of a better defined shadow + that it should use a cloud tone mixed with a body color. You've achieved better contrast with the colors you chose, actually -- I had a hard time keeping the shading from looking overly segmented, so I ended up with low contrast
Also, what Conceit said. 3d shading isn't too much of a problem, since the ponies of FiM are surprising anatomically correct -- in a SD way -- but you still need to think about the lighting and shapes 3d-ly. (I maintain that my more recent edit of the lower leg is correct.)
Note that now you've changed the colors, the eyes are drawing a lot of attention since they stand out. This is an overall picture balance issue... mainly brought on, I guess, by using FiM style eyes unchanged while upping the realism on the rendering of everything else.
While I was writing this I notice you made another update on the color. haven't looked at that one yet.
Oh.. have you looked at the
r/MLPdrawingschool/ 'Useful links'? We recently got some nice color theory info links there (
http://www.huevaluechroma.com/ was my contribution).
@Regulus Awesome: I would do MLP-styled clouds, but first of all those are really simple and boring (IMHO), and I want to kind of place Scootaloo in a bit more realistic environment ^_^
As for what I know I still need to do for sure:
- Anti-alias clouds completely
If you're willing to add a few more shades, you could make the BG cloud decently defocused, which would add to the sense of perspective.
- FIX HER TAIL! 
(been lazy on this one, I'll admit)
- Anti-alias different shades in Scootaloo, A-A her against the BG very slightly, and selout her outline (on second thought... just read a few topics here about selout. Probably not a good idea to use it for this, or really at all. Helm seems to condemn it for making ugly pixel art, and from the insight he gave I'm just dropping the idea)
Yeah, selout's not useless.. but it's a visual compromise that it's preferable to not make if you can.
Also, the idea of having selout on something that is not a sprite (ie. has no transparent parts).. is an idea that doesn't compute anyway -- we only have a name for this effect because it's noticeable in sprite edges when placed on a significantly different BGcolor than what they were designed for.
(note that 'shaded outlines' is not exactly the same thing. It can be used on things that are not sprites, and for sprites, it has much of the same effect of preventing the sprite from merging with the background that selout does. Also it usually doesn't look ugly.)
I think a fair gauge for the completedness of this is probably around 60% ^_^ I'm excited with how this is turning out, and the incredible amount of things I'm learning from you guys. I honestly have no idea how I'd learn so fast without you.
You contribute to that too, y'know. It's a lot easier to put the effort into doing edits when I can tell the person who's going to be looking at them is genuinely interested and willing to learn.
