Owner: sweetspea  
Gender/Species: Male/Pegasus  
Name suggestion(s): Sphinx, Nightfall Flash
 

 
For my shipping grid adoptables ^^
 
For this, I was asked to make a male pegasus, who’s a competative flier specializing in record breaking speed, and a “rough n rumble kind of guy disguised as an upstanding gent”.
 
So for this I actually started with the body-shape rather than the color scheme, as is my usual method. To show of his speedy-ness, I gave him a very lean and angular shape, with a sort of thin yet square-ish muzzle. His wings were also very sharp compared to my usual more rounded shape. For the mane and tail, I tried several different ideas. It needed to be practical as to not get in the way when flying, and I also wanted it to look…. speedy. I eventually settled on just having a sort of simple mohawk shape. It’s practical, yet always appearing to be swept back by an invisible wind. The tail could be a bit longer, to leave a nice trail when flying (like Rainbow’s rainbow trail). I decided to give his colt-version a long mane though, sicne I thought it’d be a fun contrast. ^^
 
I then started on the colors as well as looking for ideas for the mark. Originally I thought of owls, as it’s a very famous a nighttime flying animal. Or maybe falcons, if I felt I could move away from the night theme? Did he need an obvious night connection? While I was thinking, I made him a brown color, as I felt that would fit with whatever animal theme I went with, and looked like if Fluttershy’s yellow had been darkned. I also gave him a dark blanket marking like Luna, but decided to make it more stripes rather than blobs, to again bring speed to mind. Racing stripes.
 
I was working on what to do with his mane colors (see, surfing around on wikipedia, looking racoons or something), when I decided to look up moths. Now, moths are not really known for their speed, but they are butterfly-looking night creatures. There also happens to be a family of moths, Sphingidae, commonly known as hawk moths -and hawks are known for their speed. (Hawkmoth also happens to be a villain in a cartoon, but I’m trying to not let that association bother me here.) Turns out, Sphingidae is known as some of the faster flying insects, and contains some of the few nectar-feeding sepcies capable of hovering. The last bit isn’t as relevant here as the first, but still fun. Some articles actually claim they are the fastests insect, but I am dubious, as those articles are of the “Top ten blabla you didn’t know blabla”-variety. Still, worth looking into for inspiration.
 
Many of the species in Sphingidae tend to be either very drab or very green. But I eventually stumbled on the white-lined sphinx, who, and here I kindly ask you to look at the image labeld “Female dorsal”, does not only have white lines, but also a very very pink section. Now that’s pretty; the varying shades of brown, the pitch black, contrasted with the white and bright pink? I wanted the wings. So I made the wings. I usually make the wings on my ponies pretty… boring. Just a lighter or darker version of their coat color. But in this case, I decided to forgo that for a bit more flare. So, brown outer side, with a bright pink and white, tipped with dark brown. The tips are dark because I already decided to make the wings visually interesting, so why not go all out, and because bird wings often do have darker tips on the feathers -not always, but often. From my understanding, the melaning helps make them sturdier? So the wings here would look interesting, yet slightly more realistic.
 
And since the wings were to complex, I wanted the mane to be simpler to not overwhelm the design. So that’s where I put the black from the night sky and the black from the white-lined sphinx’s colors. Just a bit a gradient with a pink hue, and some sparkles, and I think it turned out pretty nice.
 
The mark was easy to decide on since I’d already based so much of the design around hawk moths. I went with a silhouette, with a pink moon visible on a dark sky inside. To make it stand out, since the moth would just be mainly brown on a brown surface. The moon makes it look visually interesting and ties him more obviously back to Luna ^^ And lastly add some speed lines, as well as having the wings of the moth pushed back, to show the racing aspect of his talent.
 
For the names… Hawkmoth is obvious, but I cannot not think of a man in a purple suit and a metal mask when I hear it. So. Another common name for Sphingidae is sphinx moths. So Sphinx is one option. Nightfall Flash is a more generic pony name, just incorporating the night and speed, while sounding nice when saying it ^^
 
 
Thank you so much for the donation and for being patient :) I hope you like him! :D