As a follow up to my recent body size concepts, here’s a quick breakdown of the mane six’s different faces/heads in my style.

So as you know, I want to get more variety into the ponies I draw, they all have such varied personalities, it’s a shame that the show uses the same basic templates for 90% of its characters. This here’s my attempt at giving each of the Mane Six a recognizeable and unique face, you may have noticed a number of these characteristics used in the past, this is just a way for me to formalize those aspects.

I’ve put patricular emphasis on muzzle size and shape, tending toward certain race-specific characteristics like a flat-topped muzzle for Pegasi and an upturned muzzle for Unicorns, which Twilight has kept through her transformation to an Alicorn. The Earth ponies have more rounded muzzles, with Pinkie’s being a tiny button nose and AJ’s muzzle being wider and more stout. As for how this will translate for the stallions, we’ll have to wait and see. It’s not often I have to draw them but the time will come for me to pick a style.

Although they’ve mostly kept their eyes from the show style, I have made a few modifications over the years that I can’t unlearn, namely Pinkie’s curly lashes and Fluttershy’s lack of a defined pupil, she just has a loosely shaded area where the others have a clearly delineated pupil. I feel it makes her eyes softer, a bit less focused.

I still cling to a few eccentric things like this in my style, like Rarity’s plume, Flutters’ downy fur patch etc. but I’m glad I mostly embraced show style as a jumping off point, it keeps the characters much more believable in the long-run.

One thing you might notice looking back at my work over the years is that these faces have nostrils, for the longest time I didn’t draw them because I didn’t think they looked right!
-Dil