Step One:  Prepare Your Artwork!

If you are satisfied with your completed art and you are ready to submit, you will need to place it in the templates provided by Howrse for you to use.  If your art is not inside one of these templates, you will not be able to submit it.

Here are the links for the templates on US Howrse:

Golden Apple

Helios’ Ray

To place your work inside one of these templates, you will need to crop and resize it as necessary.

  • Golden Apple:  maximum 300 x 300 pixels.  It must be on a transparent background so make sure your image software supports this!
  • Helios’ Ray: EXACTLY 2006 x 840 pixels.  Remove the image of the black horse and the square around it before submitting!

Once your image has the correct dimensions, open the template in your image software and copy/paste your artwork into the center of the template.

Your artwork must not overlap the black lines at all.  It can only be in the transparent center of the template, so make sure you have it perfectly aligned!  Otherwise Howrse will not allow you to upload it.

Your image should look like this when finished (except for the signature and it being your art, of course!)

ShireGASig

VERY IMPORTANT:  Save your final product as a PNG image or your transparency will be lost.

Step Two:  Using The Black Pearl

Once your art is in the template, navigate to the Black Pearl page.

There is a slew of rules and regulations that you should have read prior to starting your art, but it doesn’t hurt to look over them again to make sure you haven’t missed anything.  I will do a blog post about those rules and what they mean in the future.

Underneath all the rules, you will see the Submission area.  I will add screenshots in the future when the Pearl is available again.

First, you need to tell Howrse what kind of creation your art is.  Is it a Golden Apple coat or a Helios’ Ray background?  Select the one that applies to your art.

Submitting a Golden Apple Coat

  • Select what category your creation falls into.  Is it a Riding Horse, Pony, Draft, Unicorn, Winged Unicorn, Pegasus, or Donkey?
  • Choose a name for your creation.  It cannot be taken by anyone else.
  • Decide if you want your coat to be limited or unlimited.  If you want a coat that will eventually retire, select a number of uses from the dropdown menu.  Regardless of how many uses you choose, a limited coat will reward you with only 20 passes instead of 40 for an unlimited coat.
  • Pick up to two dominant colors for your creation.  This will help players search for it by color.
  • Lastly, upload your artwork from your computer.  Howrse will do this for you – you do not need to put it on an image hosting site like Photobucket.  Once the art is uploaded, Howrse will preview it for you on both a light and dark background.
  • If the art does not upload, it is probably overlapping the black lines on the template.  Make sure it is only in the transparent area and try again.
  • Howrse will remind you of the rules for submitting art.  Make sure you understand them and say you have read them.
  • Pay your two passes and you are good to go!

Submitting a Helios’ Ray

The Helios’ Ray process is much simpler than the Golden Apple as backgrounds do not have categories or limited numbers of uses.

  • Choose a name for your creation.  It cannot be taken by anyone else.
  • Pick up to two dominant colors for your creation.  This will help players search for it by color.
  • Lastly, upload your artwork from your computer.  Howrse will do this for you – you do not need to put it on an image hosting site like Photobucket.
  • If the art does not upload, it is probably overlapping the black lines on the template.  Make sure it is only in the transparent area and try again.
  • Howrse will remind you of the rules for submitting art.  Make sure you understand them and say you have read them.
  • Pay your two passes and you are good to go!