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Being big is all it takes!

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A Discord server put me up to this.

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A gift for @takashi0, proof that there are still sane people left on this hellsite. Make your birthday a good one! 

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It occurred to me, I never made a reference sheet for anthro Nimby. Might need to fix that one of these days.

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Let us stay together, and help pave the way for new generations of fans. So that they can experience the magic we felt.

A belated, small token of appreciation for my very generous fellow brony.

…What a wonderful community we all created together. What a fantastic experience this has all been. It feels so unreal at times. But we did a pretty gosh darn good job of creating real magic in real life. When will we get the chance to see that again?

Hopefully, every single day, if we’re up to it.

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I definitely need practice with backgrounds, but here’s a Nimby beaching it with a cocktail that is indeed served in a hollowed out coconut shell.

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Let The Magic In My Heart Stay True

So during my mental breakdown, I had designed a bunch of new OCs to try and replace Nimbostratus. The replacement was Miss Goldie, and while she had her fans, most people I spoke to, were not in love with her design. Instead of asking for pointers, I just ignored those comments and kept going. And much like when I was drawing Nimbostratus, I made it a routine, and while I tried some form of monetization, there was no cash flow for anything. After a few attempts at commissions, it hit me... I lost everything. I felt like I didn’t matter, I was irrelevant, nobody gave a rat’s ass about me busting my ass at this. I would still draw Nimbostratus occasionally for the Derpibooru collab, but it was obviously half-hearted.

By this point, I decided to focus on drawing for cons, but every time I came up with a plan, something went wrong. Either somebody would back out, or I would not be able to go through with it as again, this was starting to turn into work. I just backed out and decided no more, I was done. No more convention plans, no monetization, I’m just drawing for myself. Even my love for ponies felt routine at this point. I still loved the show, but it felt like week after week, watch an episode, and discuss it among friends. I felt like I was falling back into my old self. Brain melted, heart empty, just... existing. 

Then I had a chance moment in Spring 2019. A friend invited me to join him to MLP-MSP 2019, the final year of that particular convention. For me, it was a chance to get away from my current home and have a little vacation. By the way, I wouldn’t recommend living in Minneapolis unless you love dealing with confused infrastructure, and an eyesore of a stadium. Anyway, I went there, I was enjoying myself at the convention, bought some stuff, commissioned a few artists, and as time went by, something happened. 

When I was a young artist, I would often commission others to draw Nimbostratus, and was told about how much people loved Nimby’s design. What happened when I commissioned artists at MLP-MSP? The same compliments from all those years ago. Then on Saturday, I attended a panel hosted by Pirate Rainbow Dash, one of my favorite tumblrs from back in the day, and one of my early followers. So, during the prompt, I stood up and introduced myself to the room, and was asked, if I could give him a sketch in his sketchbook. I was very glad to do so. After this, I retreated to the game room for a bit to come up with something to put in the sketchbook. It was then I heard a familiar tune... The Magic Inside Me. I needed to walk out of the room and listen to the song myself. But I needed to do so in private, as that song would always make me get very  emotional. I cried... hard. 

I realized I had a good thing with Nimbostratus. I met great people, I pushed myself to improve, Nimbostratus was my happiness, and instead of taking breaks from time to time like everybody was telling me, I tossed the character aside and went to a similar routine. I found myself not just drawing Nimbostratus for an acquaintance, but a follower, and more importantly... I regained the will to draw Nimbostratus again. It felt great... I actually enjoyed drawing Nimbostratus for a change. That convention did so much for me. It wasn’t just a vacation, it felt like it was an intervention. I socialized, I enjoyed life, and I fell in love with my OC again, and wanted that tumblr back after it was nuked.

I may not know what the future holds, especially with G4 coming to its end, but I have the desire to bring Nimbostratus back into tumblr, and maybe I will learn to enjoy it, and not fall into a routine. No more money chasing, but maybe a tip jar. No more overworking, but most certainly no slouching! And certainly no fast tracking with unreasonable deadlines to make an update, but any stories will be carefully written out. I want to enjoy Nimby’s World.

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Fractured Pony Tales

Sigh. Remember how I said my writing was really lousy? Yep, it’s time to scrape what I felt was the worst content I ever put out on Nimby’s World... THE STORIES. Much as I hate how this stuff turned out today, back then, I felt like I was on the verge of something great, and needing the push in the right direction. Sadly, I should not have rushed into these comics because, as you might have guessed, they were first drafts that were rushed as all hell.

So in total, I had about 6 different stories. The first story was, obviously, about Nimbostratus’ botched sex change. Since I wasn’t comfortable with doing comic pages, instead used to just panels and panels alone, just about all stories were 3 panels with text. What was this story missing? Well, the reason why Nimbostratus was smitten with another mare. That was missing COMPLETELY so it makes her reason 100% entirely superficial and makes Nimbostratus look like a complete idiot, suggesting she never interacted with Sunny Smiles. The real idiot here is me thinking that story was a good idea.

The second story, I received some assistance on, it was a big Christmas related post about Nimbostratus attempting to avoid his parents, who are trying to patch things up. Remember in the previous post I mentioned the relationship with Chai? Yeah, Chai was not present in this story. Instead, it’s Sea Shell who gets irritated with Nimby’s childish behavior. This culminates in Nimbostratus trying to apologize to his parents only to find out they went to the hospital. Why? Because Nimby’s mother gave birth to a new foal, named Stratocumulus. So there are a lot of holes, and the story is rushed largely because I wanted to end the comic on Christmas day. This would also be the end of stories and posts regarding Nimby’s gender identity and would instead degrade into generic shit.

For a mini story on Valentine’s Day, I decided to show how far Nimbostratus was willing to go to show his love to Chai. Not much in the plot, but it was also an excuse for Rarity to make a cameo in helping Nimbostratus come up with a look to impress Chai. Quick throw away story.

Story four would be the big one. See, I had talked to a friend about Nimbostratus and the Wonderbolts, and it was decided any character becoming a wonderbolt would be seen as being too sue, because it means they’re too good a flyer. So, it was obvious Nimby could not be a wonderbolt according to this advice. So what did I do? I wrote a story where Nimbostratus has the potential to become a Wonderbolt, but blows it due to his own stubborness that 12.5 wingpower is not good enough. This results in Nimbostratus actually suffering a broken wing which would reduce his wing power into the 7′s. In this story, I tried to have some contrast between how Sea Shell and Chai are observing the situation. Unfortunately, once again, Chai doesn’t get near the screentime as Sea Shell. Gee, it’s almost like I cared more about Sea Shell than Chai. Much like the Christmas story, it was rushed as all hell, but unlike that story, this one was written as I went along. Absolute mess.

The next story, followed that one up shortly. Instead of going for the comic layout, I went to the post format for this one, as it was meant for me to close that loop between Nimbostratus and his mother to confess he could never be a wonderbolt. It was directionless, but not without merit. I did get some cute pictures of Nimbostratus and his little sister Stratocumulus. And if you’re curious, the only smart thing I did was name the family over cloud formations. Nimby’s father was known as Altostratus, and the mother was Cirrostratus.

The final story, which I never finished, was meant to tell about Nimby’s first day in Ponyville, how Nimby met Sea Shell and Chai, and how the mohawk came to be. Sadly, this was the point where I had completely suffered from total burnout as having stuck to drawing Nimby for 2 years exclusively was starting to wear thin on me. It was also the point where I felt I had nothing more to offer in terms of direction. The tumblr got stale, my art got stale, and I needed to retreat.

As much fun as drawing Nimbostratus was, it felt like it was turning into work, which I wasn’t really getting paid for. For two whole years, I ran a tumblr for free at no cost, and it was killing me. I fell out of love of drawing ponies and had convinced myself that I needed to get away from ponies completely and focus on anthro and anthro alone because that was where the money was, as my friends were telling me. 

After all the frustration, I viewed Nimbostratus as the problem in my art, and I needed to wash my hands of it. Despite leaving the tumblr up, Nimbostratus was then tossed aside... and I have nothing but regrets over it...

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Poor Character Relations

Ah, one of my favorite Safe for Work posts on Nimby’s World. So you may be wondering who the hell the zebra is. Well, her name was Chai and she was a zebra who ran a local tea shop in Ponyville (and yes, this was before the tea ponies in Discordant Harmony were a thing) and she and Nimbostratus were in a relationship. Unfortunately, it was about as shallow as you would expect, and not many other character relations worked out all that well for me.

Biggest problem with Nimby’s and Chai’s relationship? The two were in an open relationship as Chai could never truly commit to Nimbostratus, and Nimbostratus was taking the relationship quite seriously. But then of course, there’s a wrench in the whole ordeal. A unicorn mare who treasured Nimbostratus as more than a friend.

Oof, that old art of mine. This is Sea Shell, a pony who grew up along the shores of Horseshoe Bay. She ran a local exotic goods shop in Ponyville, She was kind of a voice of reason for Nimbostratus, being more grounded in reality than Chai ever was. If this is sounding like a harem anime with ponies, it was kind of bordering on that, yes. So to make a long story short, because Nimby and Chai’s relationship struggled to move forward, Nimby and Sea Shell would often spend more time together.

The idea was that Nimbostratus had to eventually make a choice between a pony who truly loved them, or a zebra who saw them as nothing more than a best friend. Boy, Nimby was terrible at relationships, weren’t they?

As you can imagine, more of my sloppy writing got in the way of my success because I made things needlessly complicated as a substitution for “depth.” Things would be much different now though, as I’d have Nimbostratus actually being in a committed relationship that wasn’t some nonsensical love triangle.

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The Failed Reboot

Somewhere in 2015, I had planned to take Nimby’s World into a different direction in that she would go to an academy to pursue her cloud sculpting dreams. However... nothing came of it. Why? Because much like Nimby’s backstory, this idea was bloated as hell, and there was no realistic way I could have kept it going for too long. Peppermint’s character would have been peppy, enthusiastic, and always looking on the bright side, kind of like best kirin Autumn Blaze. Another character proposed was Brilliant Bloom, the rich girl who believes she’s the best damn student because her father is a famous cloud architect. Her design was unfinished when I realized just how overblown things were getting. I didn’t keep it simple, but instead I only complicated things further by trying to do way too much. I bit off more than I could chew. That being said, if I reboot Nimby’s World, maybe Peppermint and Nimby will hang together.

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What Was Nimby’s World?

Well, the short of it is it was my most successful foray into tumblrpon. But if you want the details, follow the read more. Do note, I will not be linking NSFW images here, but if you wish to view them, you can find some of the posts by clicking this link

The first documented piece of Nimbostratus dates back to the artist training grounds of 2012. Has it really been that long since I first drew the character? Well, it could have just been that easy, but I decided to develop this OC further and add things like backstory, and looking back, my writing was absolute garbage. Sure, I could draw the character without a problem, in fact, people liked Nimbostratus’ design. What people DIDN’T like was the backstory.

Nimbostratus’ backstory is absurdly complicated, but I will do my best to try and explain it as I had written back in the day. Nimbostratus, aka Nimby, was a pony caught between genders. Originally born a mare, Nimbostratus fell head over heels for another mare, but was concerned about what their parents would think about two mares in love. Nimbostratus got the bright idea that a sex change would fix the problem, but it made things worse when Nimbostratus went to a cheap doctor pony, and left Nimbostratus with the front half of a mare, but the back half of a stallion. The doctor however, did not disclose to Nimby until after the rage that the change was permanent, and were stuck that way forever.

Yes, my writing was that bad, and it still might be. All that shit I wrote was nothing more than an excuse to draw a futa horse. If I could get a chance to rewrite, I most certainly would destroy all that backstory and change everything but Nimby’s design. I tried to be a complete creative in art and writing, but I could only get half the equation right, about as right as the doctor performing Nimby’s sex change.

So, why do I still look back on Nimbostratus so fondly despite how much I call it a disaster? I see it as one of the best learning experiences ever, as it allowed me to grow, and develop even more characters of my own. The other reason is because in terms of the OCs I’ve made in this fandom, Nimbostratus is still the most positively received one I’ve drawn. Most people who look at Miss Goldie go “meh,” or people who look at Sable Brush and would tell me “her interests plus the way she is designed make no sense together.” Neither does an intersex mohawk pony who does architecture.

So if I were to rewrite Nimbostratus today, the backstory would probably just be Nimbostratus is an intersex pegasus who dabbles in cloud sculpture as a hobby, and maintains a career in cloud-based architecture. I think that would be a much better written character than what I had before, wouldn’t you think so too?

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Back in the days of tumblrpon, I used to run a tumblr called Nimby’s World. It was an experiment to try to prove you could have an NSFW blog that focused less on the actual NSFW content, and more on the character itself. In all honesty, I look back on it as a failed experiment of my early days in the fandom. 

Needless to say, I still adore my OC to this day, and would love nothing more than to take another crack at tumblrpon. Maybe next generation, who knows? I’m still looking to draw this pony, so maybe I’ll start a new tumblr sooner? 

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2019′s Artist Training Grounds has been one of my most productive moments in a long while. While I missed a few prompts due to outside circumstances, I got most of them done! Now that the ATG is over, it’s time to get back into full effort pony art!

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Scoots scootin’ along.

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Princess of Friendship in control.

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My favorite thing about the brony fandom is the artistic side of it, for so many reasons. It was because of many of the artists I’ve spoken to that I’ve been able to grow. The advice I’ve always been given is: never give up. It’s an uphill battle, but you’ll get there!

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The fandom needs more cosplaying ponies!

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