Thread by @BloomMoonbeam

mega thread of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic behind the scenes art, concept art, and more!

(Equestria Girls included)

Below are some of the concept designs for G4, as you can see the art style is completely different and there are even some familiar faces from previous generations!
Obviously these designs and art style were not followed through upon,

Nicole Gauss was the one who drew up these designs and below is a statement of hers on a now deleted deviantart journal talking about her time and process

“A few years before the series started I was doing concept design for Hasbro. These were some of the one I came up with, the

new shows design is based on Lauren Fost, her husband is the creator for Powerpuff girls. It was awesome having Lauren critique my work! They gotta make things easier to be animated in Flash. I felt that the ponys needed to be bouncier and frilly, but it was still a bit too

traditional animation for quality. They need to be simplified. They were alot of fun to work on, the series (2011) you are currently watching I worked on that as well, good times! Glad you like them!”

I will now attach some more concept art by Nicole, which you can see is a lot more accurate to the final designs we received in the show!

And of course the iconic Lauren Faust concept pieces, however I’ll also include the more lesser acknowledged ones that include a variety of creatures other than just ponies!
I will also dispel some popular myths which have followed some of these,

A common ‘fact’ I see get thrown around a lot is that this concept art was of spikes mother, as cool as it would be this is actually untrue. It is just a random dragon Lauren had come up with in an attempt to make dragons for the series less scary and more majestic and graceful

Creatures!

Here were the original colour concept ideas for the mane 6,
notable aspects include the change of characters races and similarities between G1 characters in colour.
Pinkie, Flutters and Dash more closely resembling their inspirations, Surprise, Posey and firefly.

Now let’s go over some quick fire facts that I’m sure a majority of you know, these will only be discussed briefly for the most part to save time for the more lesser known aspects!
(quick facts will be abbreviated with a ‘-‘ to distinguish them)

- A massive amount of the ponies in G4 were directly inspired from characters from G1, more specifically a handful of pony figurines Lauren had growing up that she had a particular attachment with, Photos from Lauren herself along with who they inspired will be attached below

Surprise = Pinkie
Applejack = Applejack
Twilight = Twilight Sparkle
Firefly = Rainbow Dash

Posey = Fluttershy
Glory and Sparkler = Rarity
Majesty = Princess Celestia

- Fluttershy was originally an earth pony to more closely resemble her G1 counterpart Posey

- Pinkie was originally a Pegasus named surprise to more closely resemble her G1 counterpart

Some early concepts for some of our favourite birds!

Some super interesting concept art and ideas for the 2017 friendship is Magic movie!

Have you ever wondered what a concept design for the logo might’ve looked like?
Well here’s one that I actually find particularly amazing!!

Equestria Girls toy concepts

Various concept designs and ideas for tempest,
Did you know that she was originally a stallion named Cosmos who was going to be the brother of Celestia?

And no, I have absolutely no idea how that would work

Here are an assortment of various concept designs for a few familiar faces,
Did you know the season two finale's script describes Chrysalis as "QUEEN CHRYSALIS, a GANGLY BLACK PEGACORN with a gnarled black horn."

- Celestia was originally going to be referred to as queen celestia, however after much deliberation it was changed to Princess, ‘queen’ is more associated with evil forces in children’s media so Lauren proposed the idea of princess as to make it more approachable

- applejack is the only character to stay nearly identical in every iteration she is seen in, despite some incredibly minor changes her name and overall design has stayed exactly the same

Some glimpses at what starlight almost looked like!

Some fascinating Luna designs and concepts!

did you know she was originally going to be named Selena?

Some sombra concepts!

(Excuse quality, i’m taking and uploading these pictures myself from my own copy of ‘The Art of Equestria’)

Spike concepts!!

This is what I imagine is an early concept for Celestia and twilight!

Some more in depth twilight designs, there’s a lot of fascinating stuff to unpack here!

I also can’t help but notice she shares a lot of similarities to Trixie at least visually in this iteration!

Here’s an absolutely fascinating piece of development work which has a lot of incredibly interesting things to note,
For starters she has the twilight twinkle colouring which many of you may recognize as it was extremely close to being her final design, however

You may notice, which in my opinion is the most interesting part, is instead of forming a circle like we know in the show the elements of harmony seem to form an impromptu crown for twilight

Here is a really interesting piece of concept art where we see her old design with a very different colour scheme, it is much closer to her finished product but noticeably a lot more pale and similar to the earlier iterations of pinkie from previous generations

Some fascinating colour alternatives for the Canterlot royal castle

Some incredibly interesting peaks at what goes on behind the scenes,
Here we see the story board compared to the finished product!

Did you know that nightmare moon was originally going to be named Discord?
Luna was also going to be named Selena however this was changed due to legal issues.
For another piece of cool Luna facts, this is an unseen render from the episode Luna Eclipsed.

The context behind this very unusual looking Luna is that it was going to be what Luna looks like after rarity gave her a makeover! For whatever reason it was cut from the episode but this render was still featured in a flash game which is where it was discovered

Did you know that Lauren Faust has her very own official ponysona? Although unnamed, her pony that has been labelled Fausticorn, it is highly highly speculated that she made a cameo in the G5 movie as the plushy that Sunny is holding!

Although not so much a fact, a very cool amazing part of the art book for the 2017 movie is that when you remove the plastic book cover you are greeted with a silver cut out of all of the mane 6 + spike that gives a faint rainbow reflection!

Super interesting demonstration of how much the physical appearance of the ponies have evolved between generations!

Although it might small an interesting aspect I’ve seen throughout a variety of mlp concept art is how Pinkie was often spelt pinky with a Y, it’s not completely clear if this is just a miscommunication between the spelling or this was going to be the original spelling for her!

Incredibly interestingly enough despite applejack keeping up tradition of maintaining nearly identical to her original iteration these concept designs provide a more different looking applejack!

and yes I did indeed lose my shit when I saw applejack with twin braids and how much she looked like bloom
(Art on right by the beloved @ubebreb )
AHHH MY HEART!

Ok back to thread,

Some particularly fascinating Rainbow Dash concepts with some more introspective on her more solemn side, a very interesting reflection on her struggles with her insecurities!

Collection of fascinating concepts for the 2017 movie

Fascinating comparison between the TV art and the movie art!

Super interesting example of how the movie designs compared to the original counterparts!

Extremely fascinating birds eye view of Ponyville, which for some reason makes me feel really strange looking at…
But extremely cool nonetheless!

Some original tempest designs in which she was just apony who had left Equestria, and was living in the waste lands rather than becoming a villain

Some original concept designs for the storm king in which he was more of a feral being, as well as other designs where he is far more intimidating

Klugetown residence designs

Some breathtaking capper designs,
He was originally going to be named Mandax (Latin for liar)

and was originally going to be a fox, he then went through a few species changes until it was settled on cat!
His tail was originally going to be a very large part of his character too

Captain Celaeno also looked very very different in her original design!

Some absolutely gorgeous concept art for the Pirates!

You ponies seem to really be liking this so I will continue on!

Did you know that a variety of the voice actors for G4 actually auditioned for characters far different from the ones they ended up being?
For example Tara Strong who is known for voicing twilight actually auditioned for Pinkie and applejack originally!

Ashleigh Ball, who we know as Rainbow Dash and applejack originally had auditioned for the role of spike!
Side fact, throughout the series she deepened applejacks voice so she could distinguish it from Rainbow Dash and this is very noticeable when you watch earlier seasons!

For all of those jjba fans, did you know a lot of voice actors for Jojo actually appeared in the Japanese dub of friendship is magic?
Unfortunately this dub didn’t last for very long however you can still find a lot of the episodes and clips on YouTube!

i have gotten many questions as to what books i have been showing/ones i own!
these two are the ones i currently own, but i plan on buying more! :D