Our Favorite Art: Horses Part 2

At long last, here is the final installment of our favorite HI2 profile artwork! Julie already tackled the first 10 of our favorite non-draft horses, so I get to start mid-M. 

Morgan

Oh, the Morgan: compact and sturdy yet fancy at the same time, thanks to their luxurious manes and tails and that pretty head carriage. We are so glad HI2 portrays them like this rather than in that often awkward high-stepping horse stance. (Many Morgans aren't gaited, after all.)  I think these horses have some of the nicest faces of all the breeds represented on HI2. <3

Nez Perce

This Felicity's favorite breed on the game with good reason - their artwork is gorgeous! With the Nez, you get an overwhelming variety of meticulously colored (and often spotted) coats on an alert, athletic, beautifully proportioned horse. If that isn't cool enough, they can also have blue eyes and varying degrees of hoof striping.

Peruvian Paso

These horses seem pleasantly rounded and especially muscular on their front half, just like real Peruvian Pasos. We love how their manes and tails are long, full, and just a little messy. Their arched necks and expressive eyes give them a noble look. My one minor complaint is that I'm not wild about the resting position of their ears being so far back - hopefully they're listening to something behind them or are a bit sleepy, not annoyed. XD

Plateau Persian

It's been over two years since this breed joined the game, and we still don't have one of these classy desert horses in our herd. *Sighs* They look friendly, happy, and confident, and they have endearingly messy, windswept-looking manes that are actually longer on stallions than mares. As an added bonus, they come not just in solid colors but also in cool rabicano and sabino spotting patterns.

Rocky Mountain Horse

So much awesome hair! (And yay, no awkward back legs despite being gaited!) These horses look curious, thanks to their raised heads and pricked ears, yet also pretty chill. Both mares and stallions have manes lying on the right side of their necks, going against HI2's norm and therefore making them extra unique. Alas, we still don't have one of these horses in our herd yet either.

Salernitano

Sals have been on the game ever since we started playing HI2, and despite all the newer breeds added since then, they remain one of the most highly sought-after breeds. It's easy to see why - their artwork kicks booty, plus it comes in a wide range of colors with or without sabino. These horses look well-put-together, but in a quiet, unpretentious way. Maybe it's the mildly messy manes and thick, wavy tails, their relaxed, natural posture, or their soft, trusting eyes - whatever it is, Sals ooze appeal. 

Shagya Arabian

Like Julie said about the Morab, it's also a shame that HI2's Arabians don't look more like the Shagya Arabian! The Shagya has the unique, beautiful conformation of the Arabian and rocks the Arabian-esque dished face, silky hair, and high tail carriage. As an added bonus, these shiny-coated, spirited-looking horses come in sabino as well as solid colors.

Standardbred

I love the picture-perfect pose that HI2's Standardbreds are in. There's nothing particularly exotic about them, but their proportions seem exceptionally well-balanced and eye-pleasing. They strike me as happy, athletic, and serene. All of their coat colors are beautifully detailed, plus they come in roan and tobiano in addition to solid colors.

Warlander

The artist did a fantastic job of creating a horse that looks like a cross between a furry, light draft Friesian and a noble Iberian horse (Andalusian, Lusitano, Alter Real, etc.) HI2's Warlanders look hardy, yet still nimble and elegant. We love their upright, arched necks, their bright eyes, their light feathering, and their wonderfully full manes of tails. Our favorites are the tobianos, but they are stunning no matter their color.

Westphalian

HI2's Westphalian rounds out our top 20. They have a different look than HI2's other warmbloods, though I couldn't tell you what exactly it is that makes them stand out. Whatever it is, their well-groomed, silky manes and tails are perfection, and their various coat colors are all beautifully detailed, and their faces are refined and expressive.

There, I hope you enjoyed our little speeches about our favorite HI2 artwork! Well done, whoever the artists are! I can't imagine having the skill to create any of it, even our least favorites, on a computer. So far we haven't even dared buy the art kit on HI2, for fear of the monstrosities that may result...

Our most noteworthy horse from this past week was not any of our top 40 artwork breeds, but another +5/6 Bashkir Curly. Cheeto and Felicity fluted him on Thursday night.

Felicity got pretty excited at first glance, but those stats only add up to +44. So, off to the auctions he went. It's a shame - Curlies are so cool. 

Things are not looking good for us finding a new 80+ stat mare in July. It's already the 21st, and we know we aren't going to have much time to play again until two weekends from now. (My mom and her family are going on a much-needed 5 1/2-day vacation starting next Friday afternoon; my sisters and I will spend that stretch camping in the backyard also taking a break from technology.)

So, what to do? Lily, of course, is strongly advocating doing nothing. She says that some month in the future, we're bound to find more than one horse we want to keep and will be happy to have an extra slot saved. That's smart, I guess, but it's so hard being patient!

Felicity, Julie, and I are more inclined to think, Yay, this means we can keep one of the nice mares that wouldn't otherwise quite make the cut!

To recap, the ones in contention would be:

(Would make Quincy really, really happy)

(We don't have any of these in the herd yet)

(Highest stats, unique avatar, and pretty cute)

(Great stats for only being +4/6, my favorite color of the 4)

This would be a really tough choice. Maybe Lily is right and we shouldn't go there? *Sighs* Oh, Coquina, this would be the perfect time for you to make your miraculous appearance!

The Waler and an Effective Rock

Hello, all. Felicity here. I know I usually type in green, but I'm making an exception for this post. I'll explain why later on.

First for the HI2 news. With the July update on the 7th came a new breed, the Waler! My first impression of them was Wow, these horses have solid legs and feet! Nothing delicate about those babies! They also seem to have quite short, upright necks, fairly small heads, and small eyes. They've grown more harmonious to my eyes the more I've gazed upon them to make this post, though. 

HI2's Walers come in a wide range of solid colors, including rarities like mushroom and silver. Here we have mushroom:

And here is a chocolate silver:

Sooty palomino and dun are extra cool on Walers because they come in more sooty and less sooty varieties. Here are the two versions of sooty palomino:

According to Wikipedia, when real-life Walers were used in the Australian cavalry, only solid-colored non-gray horses were selected. HI2 has opted to exclude gray Walers also, which is a bummer, but they have included some roans and tobianos! Yay!

Like those two sooties, roan Walers come in more and less extreme versions of roan. Here is honey roan as an example:

Tobiano Walers display one of the three cool spotting patterns. My personal favorite is the first, but they are all lovely. Here is what they look like on seal:

Two noteworthy days came and went last week: 7/11 and a Friday the 13th. We were hoping for some nice mare flutes to commemorate them.

Bethany and Promise's 7/11 flute by the mini playground on Dumbbell was, well, promising...

Wow, what a gorgeous gray! She would've made a stupendous 7-Eleven to go with our 7Up.

Why, conformation stat, why? *Sighs*

Friday's flute was not the tiny 0/6er that Lily and Vixen predicted, but instead a big blond Suffolk with fairly decent stats.

Aw! It's a shame for Quassia's sake those stats don't add up higher.

And now to explain the orange. You probably haven't noticed, but we only have one horse in our herd that wears exclusively orange tack: Solitaire. All the other horses who wear orange have at least one other color going on in their tack with the orange. 

We've steered clear from solid orange out of respect for Mom: she has disliked the color orange ever since she was little. So why the orange text?

Well, first off, Mom very recently changed the background on Milton, her laptop, to this:

Not orange. I know. Stay with me.

This rock was on the ground near one of the lighthouses Mom visited last summer. Mom probably figured, oh, why not use the photo as Milton's background for a while? I've been daydreaming up new stuff for my stories lately. It fits.

Little did she know that it would trigger a streak of her remembering her dreams... and set the stage for a doozy of a nightmare that would make her seriously reconsider her orange aversion. 

It all started as a fairly typical, boring dream for Mom. She was outdoors in a crowd of people donning either yellow or orange shirts, and she - shocker - chose to put on a yellow one. She soon realized that the people were gearing up to play team games of some sort, at which point she was like, nope, not happening, and started looking for escape routes. 

I'm going to let mom's journal take it from here. (You asked for it, Mom, leaving that Word document open.) Disclaimer: I've rated this dream retelling PG13 for scariness. Read at your own risk.

"The dream made one of those strange, nonsensical shifts, but as usual my dream self just went with it.

I was a princess. The details were hazy, but from what I’ve deduced from later events, I think I was the last living member of the royal family left. The kingdom was now being ruled by a non-royal middle-aged dude.

I was still trying to get away from crowds. My wanderings outdoors in the bright sunshine didn’t last long, however. A woman I overheard in passing told her companion (with a knowing glance at me) that royals tend to have quite short lifespans. She went on to say that one now-deceased young princess had even carved a bust of herself out of stone to adorn her grave before she died.

Right on cue, I came upon – what else? – a graveyard. Not just any graveyard, but the royal graveyard, which was inexplicably located inside a large, dimly-lit tunnel. Through the gloom, I made out the shapes of large headstones, and sure enough, one had a roughly-hewn stone bust perched on top.

My dream self was not about to enter or even linger near this tunnel of death, but as you’ve probably guessed by now, it was already too late. Just before I made it past the tunnel, a huge, dark-clothed, axe-wielding man appeared out of the shadows. We’re talking a medieval-looking jumbo axe here, and I knew I was the target, so I ran.

My surroundings became indoor ones then – probably a bustling castle or palace. I booked it down long hallways, wove my way through throngs of people, and went through random doors - anything I could think of to escape the axe man. I ended up in a bedroom with tons of stuffed animals jammed under the bed. I moved out a few larger ones and crawled under, pulling them back in front of me to hide myself. It was a really stupid hiding place. Even in the dream I knew that, but it was too late to come up with anything else. Two young women entered the room and knew I was there immediately. I started to crawl out, but they seemed to be on my side and told me I’d better stay hidden.

The dream skipped ahead then. It’s probably for the best that I didn’t have to experience being caught, but somehow I was. I was not swiftly axed upon capture, though, because in the next “scene” I was still very much alive. 

It was my execution day, and everybody present in the castle or palace or whatever it was seemed okay with it, or at least resigned to it. I was not tied up or in chains, nor did I seem to have been previously harmed in any way physically. I just started walking up a big stone spiral staircase towards my doom, a tall, stern woman following behind and watching my every move to make sure I didn't try to escape. I was utterly terrified but determined to keep my head high and carry myself like a princess all the way until the end. I understood like never before how Harry Potter felt as he walked to his presumed doom near the end of book 7.

Once I’d reached the top of the stairs, I surveyed with horror an assortment of large wood and metal contraptions that I assumed were instruments of torture. Past them was a platform displaying a deluxe white, satin-lined coffin surrounded by tons of pale flowers. Lots of people were also present in the expansive room, including the gleeful new ruler, who was eager to get on with the execution. My death sentence, I swiftly learned, was lethal injection. This was probably way quicker than many of the other possibilities, but I was still petrified.

Without preamble, men started closing in, one with a syringe. But then, just when it seemed like it was all over, two young women came on the scene, both of them dressed in all orange, including fancy floor-length orange skirts and large orange hats. I’m not sure if they were the same women from the stuffed animal scene or not, but I knew immediately from the looks they gave me that they were there to try to save me. I think they were posing as members of a kingdom-wide feminist movement that dresses in orange? At any rate, they claimed that they were the ones who should get to execute me. 

Their plan seemed obvious to me: they were going to inject me with something that wasn’t lethal and fake my death. My mind raced. How quickly did the real stuff work? Would the fake stuff do anything, or would I need to feign suffering and collapsing? Would I be able to make a believable show of it if I had to?

I didn’t have long to consider. I tried to resist, but someone held me still while one of the women injected me in the arm…

…and then I woke up to my alarm going off: exceedingly happy to be alive and safe, mildly disappointed that I didn’t get to find out what happened, and a quite a bit fonder of the color orange."

So there you have it! Maybe Mom will go out and buy an orange shirt now? Or at least a pair of orange socks?

Our Favorite Art: Horses Part 1

Julie here with installment number 3 of our favorite HI2 equine artwork! I will cover the first half alphabetically of the light horses, riding horses, non-draft horses, or whatever you want to call them. Bethany will finish up with the second half. 

Alter Real

I think of Lusitanos and Alter Reals being very similar in real life, but their HI2 artwork is quite different. I find the Alter Reals to be exceedingly easier on the eyes, the most obvious difference being their much more pleasant faces! They have shiny coats, lush manes and tails, beautifully arched necks, and that unmistakable baroque horse look. 

Appendix Quarter Horse

These horses seem look long and lanky to me - mostly because of their long, outstretched necks, I'd guess. I'm not quite sure what to make of their expressions. Are they laid back and mildly curious, or are they possibly submissive or apologetic? At any rate, they have great manes, they can come in a wide variety of colors with or without cool pinto patterns, and they look like they're built somewhere in between Quarter Horse and Thoroughbred, as they should. 

Argentine Polo Pony

We decided to include these guys with the horses rather than the ponies because, contrary to the name, most are horse-sized. HI2's Argentine Polo Ponies give off the impression of being alert and ready for action. They are lean, muscular, and long-legged like the Appendix, yet they seem more compact and maneuverable - just what you'd want in a polo pony. Even though equines being used in polo in real life often have their manes roached (practical but unattractive), I'm very glad the artist let HI2's have a little mane.

Calabrese

Because I've seen so few photographs of real Calabrese horses, when I think "Calabrese" I now picture them in HI2 form. This is definitely not a bad thing! In real life, the breed has been influenced by the Arabian and the Andalusian, so I appreciate how I can see a bit of Arabian in their faces and the set of their heads, but also some Andalusian in their bodies and their thick manes and tails. 

Grade Saddle Horse

HI2's Grades look well-rounded, gentle, and happy. They also have great hair - I love their luxurious tails and the cute tufts of fur on their fetlocks. I really hope we get to add ones of these to our herd someday!

Hackney

The Hackney has our favorite artwork of all the high-stepping horse breeds on the game. I am not a huge fan of the fancy high-stepping horse build, but I am quite fond of HI2's Hackneys. Somehow the artist has made them look classy. In my mind, anyway, they pull off the high tail, high head, and "fancy extended back leg stand" without it looking awkward, silly, or haughty.

Hanoverian

Lily would not let us leave the sleek, sophisticated Hanoverian out, of course! I think their relaxed stance and the pretty arch of their necks are big parts of what makes us so fond of them. 

Kinsky

HI2's Kinskys strike me as confident, athletic, and beautifully proportioned. If it wasn't for their mane cowlicks, I'd call them sport horse perfection. =) Thanks to the cream gene, there seem to be lots of shimmery light-colored Kinskys on the game, but they come in tons of other lovely colors too, including this striking dapple gray.

Mangalarga Marchador

The Manga's sturdy, compact body, its alert, friendly expression, and its gorgeously long hair make it one of our all-time favorites on the game. Better yet, they come in all sorts of colors and pinto spotting patterns. 

Morab

It's no coincidence that we have 4 of these in our herd. The Morab definitely makes our collective top 5 artwork-wise. (It’s a shame the Arabian itself doesn’t have artwork this nice!) Their hair, their stance, their beautiful Arabian-esque heads… it’s all awesome!

Before I go, there’s something else I want to share. It was my birthday yesterday, which means I got to flute my entry for our sisterly birthday flute contest.

First, here is my birthday calendar page:

How lucky is this? I get a whole herd of possible matches!

And here is our entry! Parallax and I fluted her out by the grassy mounds on Prairie Isle. Her avatar isn't super exotic, but as far as browns go, she's on the more interesting side.

Here she is up close, and adorable Datong with awful stats! XD

All of the equines on the calendar page appear to be horse-sized rather than pony-sized, which may count against me. Still, she does look a bit like the chestnut behind the buckskin, or possibly the chestnut behind the appaloosa, though you can only see the top of that one's head...