[A] Barber Shop

[In Good Faith]

This really isn't something I want to see blow into a huge debate. Just a small idea I had looking at some soq around in teepees~ Use the poll if you wanna voice a negative opinion (i.e. NOPENOPE DIS STUPID GO DIE). If you have something valuable to add, use in thread~

I know the new colorists are pretty limited on what they're allowed to do, but I was thinking a cute little something that could be nice for customers and for them to make a little side gold (or even trinket shop owners?) is what could be a barber shop:

Essentially soq can "go to the barber" to get their "hair done" (i.e. change hair styles.) This does not mean it has to be a custom job. Say a soq with long straight hair was short curly hair? wham bam thank ya ma'am. If special slots are held for edited mane/tail, cool. Charge what the list price is for mane/tail edits of is caliber. Otherwise, I'd just charge a set amount for template styles.

Again: small idea, I would use it. Not looking to make anyone's panties bunched.  

[malhith]

It's a cute idea, especially since I'm (IRL) one of those people who changes her hair when bored. However, the most notable issue is the fact that you have to have the PSD for a good chunk of them. I'm not sure who all keeps there PSDs for a long while, or who's cleaned them out. If I'm not mistaken, the idea's been tried before, but floundered.  

[Kamiki]

I don't think changing the hairstyle of a Soq would be that easy. They had one of these before, and it basically just becomes a recustom. Without the photoshop file, changing the hairstyle would be very hard to do, and honestly I've rather just see the time and effort going into changing hairstyles on existing Soquili into freebies or customs.

If you really hate the hair on your Soq, you can always try for a recustom, and then make them have whatever super rad hairstyle you want. I have several older Soq I hope to recustom one day.  

[In Good Faith]

I was thinking of that as well~ which is why I wanted to first mention colorist could do it. ouo The pieces that would need to be fixed: such as, say, the tendrils pulled back for the long hair; once removed, they leave places that would need to be replaced. That would be connected layers from a soq template for just that area, and re-colored to match the pattern.

I can see the doubt, but its doable if a colorist knows how.  

[Zaikt]

Just gonna breeze on through here with my two cents. 8'>

In order to patch the gaps left behind by modifying the hair on a PNG-only pet, you'd have to either entirely recolor the pony, or recolor the parts to match the rest of the pony. In some cases, that's gonna be pretty difficult, especially when there are pets out there with fancy lighting and texturing! It might not look spot-on all the time, as it's also hard to mimic other people's styles of doing things unless you've had experience with it. Then, you'd also have to match the shading color, which is a lot of colorpicking and crossing your fingers when you can't just turn the multiply layer to normal to see what you're working with. But--all of that makes it a bit more intensive than a template swap job, and with the workloads some colorists are taking on, that's gonna be out of the realm of possibility.
Beeesides, in order for it to work out, colorists would probably have to charge more for those, which would be unfair to the owners just because the PSDs for their ponies aren't accessible. I know Soq doesn't exchange PSDs among colorists, so if your colorist left, you'd be out of luck.
Finally, how much would be an ideal amount to charge for a PSD patch like that? :'x It'd vary too much, in my opinion.  

[ATh e a r t]

Let's just say this, slapping on a templated hair with ONLY the soquili body base is easy enough. Of course there's always the PSD.

Then you need to throw in colors, what color the shadow layer was, who was the colorist/their shading preferences, having to recolor/recreate parts of a pony...

Overall, this idea would be a lot more difficult than just switching templates. Look at the ringlets mane vs the forever foal mane and that shows how hard it could be already.  

[Jackariah Beckett]

Well, if anyone ever found an 'easy' way to do it, I would use it =).


It would also be fun *if this idea ever becomes more than an idea* to maybe use berries to 'dye' the hair a different color =).

Maybe even add a little makeup corner to it to add little face markings or like some horses have those handprints or other such Indian designs using berries and such.


I can easily see it be a little corner of the template shop to have a few openings for 'templated' markings a few times<3.

-shrugs-I dunno if anyone else would be interested in something like that owo?  

[tani duh!]

Would be a really neat idea, but I do wish it were easier to do. I would love to get newer hairstyles for some of my ponies!

And yes, it's doable if someone "knows how" but here quality is key. And especially with something delicate like that you'd need only your best colorists working on it to make it all fit perfectly.

The berry handprint / marking idea is pretty good too.

Perhaps in the future we can look into something like a barber shop, as it's a really great little concept, but I feel it would require saving a "bald" pony image.  

[slimycrow]

I could see this working for some tails or bald ponies because of the above-mentioned ideas.  

[one over three]

I don't see the hair working for the reasons folks already pointed out.

But the paint markings seem easy enough. You'd just have to add an extra shading layer over the pony, then slip the tattoo under and set the shading layer to clip to get it to match the regular shading.

I don't know if it would happen, but it's defiantly possible!  

[ATh e a r t]

I want to say the tattoo part is do-able since we already have scars ouo  

[Feydrah]

I really like the idea of tattoos/markings. But honestly before any other sort of customization was instated, I would like the existing trading post items to be more available. The idea of customizing existing Soq is awesome, but there is already such limited availability.  

[Master Wild Mage]

I would definitely use something like this. I don't know how many times I've thought I'd love to get Sylmeria's mane and tail changed. She was the very first set of usdias from the Cinco de mayo event in 07 and there wasn't any variations for them yet. Now there's so many awesome new templates for them I'm jealous. She'd look so cute in curls or braids.  

[mindsend]

Sadly, this is physically impossible to do on a fullscale unless the soquili is bald to begin with. And, all things considered, I think for that sort of thing it might be a one time thing for baldies to get a "hairtonic" of sorts to end up their permanent 'primary' do IF we were to do it.

I have been pondering 'weaves' (adding TO an existing style) in my Acotas thread. Wouldnt take away but might add little custom locks to it. But, nothing official as of yet: Prices and limitations would have to be figured out etc etc.

Both are things I've been brainstorming to do as my own little side thing and not an official whatever, however I'd rather work on getting customs made for people before I think about adding new stuff to the Acotas shop (And I need to open it more often in general). A colorist who's an edits or unedited colorist could, if they wanted to, do a "baldness tonic free giveaway" for existing baldies who want to grow some hair.

However fully and completely changing hairstyles for soquili that exist and already have a full head of hair require recustoming as the entire pony would have to be remade, No matter what.

Tattoos meanwhile, could work similarly to Scars and are managable (besides, scarification tattoos are totally legit possibilities already)