Don't Taze Me, Brony!

Last week I listened to former US President Bill Clinton play the "Not My Job" game on Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me podcast (Web). As part of the game, he was asked about a real life phenomenon called Bronies: older, usually male fans of the cartoon My Little Pony and the "magic of friendship" it represents (Web).

Well, if it happens in RL, it happens in SL, so I did a quick search for "Bronies" and found Bronyville (SLurl) where I picked up my free beta avatar, started customizing it, messed up, looked for the non-existent directions card, watched the "Getting Started" video I thought I was smart enough to initially ignore, corrected my mistakes, then sent in an alt to do it right. So now I'm a pure white unicorn while my wee pixy alt is a pixybrony.

Uccello on the left and Zyx Flux on the right at the Lesbos Secret Garden.

I bought a rainbow mane and tail but used a unicorn horn that I had made a couple years ago. When I get around to it, I'll make a cel-shaded version to match the pony body. Zyx colored one of the several tail and mane combos included with the avie and added some wings that were in the Bronyville freebies section.

My mistakes? Mostly they centered on thinking the coloration HUD worked at all or worked in a certain way. I still can't get it to apply the "Cutie Marks" as shown in the video, but since everything is Copy/Mod, changing them by editing the linked prims was easy. Coloring the eyes and the body parts is nearly impossible without the HUD due to the way they are constructed. I'd recommend taking off the mane and the tail then using the HUD, attaching everything again and coloring/texturing the rest by editing. I'm sure that when the avie leaves beta status everything will be much easier.

One thing I didn't do since I'm not feeling very social lately is hang round with the many other Bronies at the shop. Each time I visited, though, there were at least a half-dozen of them, each uniquely kitted out and fun to see. You'll get plenty of ideas for customizing your look just by walking around. In addition to the numerous freebies I mentioned, several "shops" have some goodies to upgrade your avie, like the bits I bought, and the prices are pretty reasonable.