#shirecorn

[shirecorn]

How tall is Shirecorn?

It occurs to me that I never specified how tall my fursona is. Horses are typically measured in Hands, which is about the width of an adult's hand, measured from thumb to pinky and stacked like so:

The hands reach up to the withers (shoulder) of a horse, rather than measuring up to their head.

The top of the withers is actually determined by the long bones that protrude off the back of the spine, rather than the upper edge of the horse's shoulder blade. It's a bit of a misnomer to call them bones, as they are part of the vertebra, not joints connected to it.

You have spines too, but yours are not as pronounced as those of ungulates (hoofed mammals) nor as epic as spinosaurus.

in horses, the muscle that lays on top of these bones determines the height of the withers.

A "Hand," understood as a standardized unit, is equal to 4 inches, 10.16 centimeters. Modern competitions and the professional horse world measure exact to the withers height in centimeters, but your average cowboy still talks in hands.

The first horse is 14 hands, so 56 inches/142.24 centimeters at the shoulder. That's on the smaller end of average for a horse! For those whose perception of height is compared to their own, that's 4'8, so the shoulder is below the top of most peoples' heads.

The tallest horse breed in the world is the shire horse.

These massive horses can reach 19 hands tall! To make it even, let's have both our guy and our shire be 17.5 hands tall. That's 5'10, 178 CM at the shoulder and top of withers.

Where does Shirecorn fit into this?

I represent myself as a shire unicorn with fluffy feet and a blueish coat. Until today, everyone has had to guess my height whenever drawing or picturing me. I haven't really gotten into it because I knew I needed to explains hands, withers, and average horse heights. But with all that out of the way, I have created a height chart to show Bo vs a typical shire, vs a human.

Don't get distracted by the typical shire silhouette. I just threw that in there to show how I measure up.

This is me:

That's right, I am 1 hand tall. That's 4 inches, or about 10 cm, measured at the withers! If you use the top of my horn, you'll get the wrong height.

But now that you know how to measure a horse, you can picture me in all my Shirecorn glory.

Go ahead, put in pocket. Take on adventure. Set me free. Stack shirecorns up to measure horses and humans alike. The power is in your hands.

[drafthorses-official]

Draft Horses is doing an expansion for Twilight Sparkle's Secret Shipfic Folder, and you can get it RIGHT NOW!

Art by 14 awesome artists, cheaper tier for a downlaodable version, or an Alicorn tier that gets your name on the box! Check it out!

[thegrindragonart]

attack on @shirecorn of his character Half >:y >:y >:y

[jsalim-art]

First friendly fire! Been a while since I drew something equine shaped kinda rusty but I think I did this character justice.

This character belongs to @shirecorn

[bipolar-ramblings]

First attack of the year, @shirecorn's Gossamer! I saw this boy and immediately fell in love, such a pretty design! It was a bit challenging, but I hope I did him justice <3

[shirecorn]

horsey detected! enhancing...

Horsey found!

The Great Lighthorse of Lakes

Timelapse - Redbubble

Lighthouses of the Great Lakes.

by researchremora

[octahedral-chaos]

Shoutouts to the one time @shirecorn thought that I was going to draw an Alicorn who’s the god of mouths… I ended up drawing this… thing

You heard of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, now get prepared for the Alicorn of the apocalypse! Why does that actually sounds really good?

(Skyscraper Gods AU belong to @shirecorn)

[dolltwink]

Fucking incredible

Pls check out @shirecorn yall

And here's his etsy if u want ur own fucked up horsies and other rlly pretty things

[earmo-imni]

@shirecorn I adore the way you positioned my stickers. Thank you!

[sunshine-sparkle]

(OP Tags)

#not the sisters obvs#different ones#i rarely do romance but i went and invented some and now im hahhehehhoho

What if the gods kissed

[irlkanamedate]

MOLLUSK AND PUDDLESHY ARE HOME SAFE!!!!!♡♡♡♡♡ thank you @shirecorn I fucking adore them so so so muuucchh!!!!!

[shirecorn]

I can't understand a word you're saying!!!

[drafthorses-official]

Draft Horses Live!

We're doing a stream today, over at twitch.tv/timsplosion! Five artists, @shirecorn, @therealakineko, @timsplosion, @/ronin20181, and @falloutfurret, are gonna be drawing random ships, using the classic pony card game Twilight Sparkle's Secret Shipfic Folder as the generator! And with a twist - some of our custom cards are also in the mix!

Come join us for an hour or two of horse drawing fun!

[onecherrypotato]

I’m not really into mlp anymore, but I’m a sucker for really good creature design and @shirecorn ‘s designs for the ponies and the whole skyscraper gods au thing was just so good I couldn’t not make fanart lol.

So yeah, umm…also bonus doodle idea thing

[mnemonicdrew]

hi there @shirecorn I might’ve fallen in love with your mlp creature design

[lemonjestercoffee]

so i said something about alicorns being funky in my last mlp redesign post yeah? well before i get into that-

the beautiful bride and the ugly ass groom

okay okay jokes aside here's Shining's real sheets and Cadance on her own

starting off with design choice notes

Shining Armor - his was like- really hard to figure out and i didn't really know what i was doing, but i did like the concept of him having lost a leg in some sorts of battle. one thing i did know what i was doing with tho was his armor, i never really liked the canon armor so i decided to take my own stab at it. decided to make it cover the more important areas better, added gambeson underneath, put a royal crest on it, and gave them a head weapon. yes the metal horns are on all species armor, it's there not only to protect real horns from oncoming attacks but also give all soldiers an emergency weapon if they get disarmed. the tassels would be colored differently depending on rank

Cadance - the only through i really had going into her design was i wanted her to have a cloud and heart motif, but i'm unsure if the way i handled it is the best. her cutiemark is meant to resemble a Mexican sacred heart because deity of love- like come on. i also wanna kinda change the color of the carnation in her hair to stand out more, but white carnations have a different meaning so it's fiiiinee

okay now what we really wanna hear about, what the fuck did i do to the alicorns?

i decided to tamper with their lore quite a bit, as i was inspired to by the Skyscraper Gods Au by Shirecorn. now mine is no were near as drastic as that au, obviously, but it did inspire me to come up with my own quirks for them.

i went more "alicorns are more like the elves of ponies but because they can only be made by some unexplained rare mystical intervention and live for fuck off long, normal ponies see them as demigods of sorts". i've even given them things like groups or locations that they act as patrons of and prioritize above other things, but that stuff gets a little rambley so imma not do that on this post

for the anatomy tho, i can talk. i'll be using Twilight as a visual example because she's the one i've drawn in all stages

so basically the concept here is pretty similar to the canon, but with some funky add-ons.

first up- when an alicorn ascends, not only do they gain the wings/horn combo and grow an inch, they also gain some other unique anatomy from the other species.

Unicorn- along with the horn, they also receive the ear tip tufts i gave unicorns. these actually have a purpose, they're sensitive to magic energy and allow unicorns to tell where magic is coming from. depending on the unicorn they vary in sensitivity but alicorns are by far the most sensitive Pegasus- along with the wings, the get some of the extra feathers pegasai have on their bodies, namely the ones on their ankles that are used for finer trajectory adjustments in flight. they also receive the sensitivity of their hooves that's used to pick up changes in cloud texture and sense their stability Earth Pony- earth ponies may seem like they don't add shit, but they actually give two very important things. the first thing is a strength boost, as they're stronger than the other two pony species by nature. the other thing is dense as fuck hooves. that sounds kinda lame but they have rock hard hooves that allow for them to dig into dense materials and have a kick with some real bite in it that the others just can't replicate and might tear their own hooves up trying. they also add the visible fluff in the ear canal. but that's just a dust filter and if isn't cleaned properly might actually be more of hindrance

it's worth noting- if you look at Cadance and Twilight side by side- that despite being given extra anatomical traits from the other species they will always look more like the species they were before ascension. this is mostly visible in the ears, tails, and hoof shapes -unicorns have long tails with hair only growing from the underside, basic ears, narrower hooves, and usually have long fetlocks as part of their culture. -pegasai have short tails that are completely covered with hair and have rudder feathers at the base, pinned back feathery ears with restricted movement, and really shallow hooves with no fur around them -earth ponies have medium tails with even hair growth around a third of the way down, basic ears, and slightly taller hooves with varying fetlock sizes.

second up- the only uniquely alicorn physical traits that they really have (aside from height) are their hair and beards. unlike normal pony beards that are made of the same hair as their manes, alicorn beards are made of coat fur and will grow a specific length each year that marks how old they are kinda like tree rings. due to this the alicorns don't try to cut them. the manes are kinda funky cause they start out at the roots as normal hair, but then become more "ethereal" after a few inches or so. they tend to start to become ethereal roughly 10 years after ascension

they do have one more weird trait but it's less noticeable and that's the thing with the patterns. when an alicorn is first ascended they gain an extra pattern on their legs, and that pattern gains a second layer around the time they start to get their ethereal manes. you can see it happening on Twilight's lineup.

there's also a bonus thing here that has nothing to do with alicorns as much as it does unicorns- but i like the idea of Unicorn tails (flesh/bone, not hair) getting longer with age. it's usually not too noticeable because they don't normally live long enough for it to be really noticeable compared to younger unicorns, but alicorns do- so former unicorns can end up with some long ass tails in their 1000's

that's all i really got now- if i added in magic and social stuff this would have been way longer. i'm done with my rambles