How The Hivewire Horse (harry) Came To Be.

[Miss B]

That she was. An amazing actress.

I think my favorite is still Guess Who's Coming To Dinner with Spencer, of course, and Sidney Poitier.

 

[JOdel]

That film is a classic.

The stage version plays very nicely too. I saw it back in the '80s at a waiver house in Studio City, I think. Quite a competent production. But not the film.

 

[Carey]

Now see here is the problem, now horses do this all the time and of course it looks nothing like what you have pictured here...See horse have lips that work much like a "hand". the lower lip would be right up against the teeth as it sorts of just curls under. The top lip curls up and becomes pronounced. The top lip actually almost turns inside out and again it is not so far away from the gums. Course there is also going to be connective tissue that connects the lips to the gum....

Now I fully realize not all and perhaps none of this can ever be made anatomically correct, but I as an artist this is what I want to be able to show wonderful close ups of horses in action and you are my great hope for doing this, no I will not raise all kinds of fuss if you don't cave in and take the many hours it would take to accomplish this, I will just continue as I have all these years..crying very quietly over in a corner somewhere about not having a good horse model to work with.....lol

By the by is so so great to have the opportunity to say any thing at all about this sort of thing and yes I realize I can be a real pain for detail, but that is what I do, it's my self appointed job and I am very good at it, just ask me...lol

 

[Rae134]

Actually Carey, I think Chris and Paul did a good job with Harry.

Could the top lip squish more, YES, but all in all I don't think it does a bad job. (If I was to do postwork on it, I'd use the liquidfy tool in photoshop to squish it in)
(the lips do pose separately, so you can have heaps of options.)

Unfortunately if we could have all the morphs/poses we'd like, poor Harry would be out of most of our price ranges

 

[Pendraia]

Maybe a morphs to get the bump above the teeth so it doesn't seems so far back. Wouldn't be hard to do and maybe link it to the joint so it dials in when the top lips go up.

 

[Carey]

lol, I am so wrong I am used to feeding bits of apple and sugar cubes and watching their lips reach out, but wait a minute, you didn't photoshop that did you ??? Something tells me I am in for a long search, we shall get to the bottom of this and get it straight from the horses mouth....lol

I am never this wrong.....lol Pardon me while I struggle to get this foot out of my mouth.....lol

 

[Lyne]

ROFL... horses DO do that...when they SMELL certain things... ready to go 'eeeuuuu' ?
Flehmen response - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Dreamer]

Kinda the horse equivalent of us screwing our nose up lol

 

[Rae134]

Haha, not photoshop (except to put the render and photo together to save space)

And no Carey, you're not wrong, they do stretch their top lip when reaching things, that's jut not what that pose was Lyne was correct, its the Flehmen response. They do it when they smell or taste something new, or something of interest (stallions can be seen to do it around mares in season).

 

[Carey]

Okay, it seems to me we are pretty much down to the question on whether horses have lips and how they use them and I think I have found out why I was thinking the way I was and how I was not wrong I was merely lied to...
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Yes, that is right, Mister Ed is the one that told me different for many years....

 

[CWRW]

LOL Carey!

Yes most def. horses can do a lot of pretty goofy stuff with their lips. A lot of what I gave Chris for expression references on all that were pix I've taken over the years of my very goofy Morgan gelding Tommy- he has an exceptionally mobile muzzle/nostrils and lips And he's not afraid to use them I think Chris did a fab job! No other horse model has much in the way of any morphs used for expressions.

 

[Rae134]

Good distraction Carey, that's 25 I should have been working!

Interesting fact: I was always told they used peanut butter to make him talk, but the trainer taught him to talk. Apparently he liked talking so much he wouldn't stop unless the trainer walked away That's why occasionally if you look closely you can see a silver flash of line, they had that under his lip and wiggled it when they wanted him to talk.

I had to look him up to see if I could find a pic of him in colour. In the coloured pix I found I though he looked like a Champagne more than a Palomino, so I was wondering if they had his colour listed wrong. I looked up his pedigree (his real name was Bamboo Harvester) and his dad was listed as Palomino but all of his parents/grand parents etc were Gold Champagne so I think his dad was mis-coloured too as genetically he couldn't be a Palomino as there wasn't any cream genes in the family tree.

 

[eclark1894]

Good distraction Carey, that's 25 I should have been working!

Interesting fact: I was always told they used peanut butter to make him talk, but the trainer taught him to talk. Apparently he liked talking so much he wouldn't stop unless the trainer walked away That's why occasionally if you look closely you can see a silver flash of line, they had that under his lip and wiggled it when they wanted him to talk.

I had to look him up to see if I could find a pic of him in colour. In the coloured pix I found I though he looked like a Champagne more than a Palomino, so I was wondering if they had his colour listed wrong. I looked up his pedigree (his real name was Bamboo Harvester) and his dad was listed as Palomino but all of his parents/grand parents etc were Gold Champagne so I think his dad was mis-coloured too as genetically he couldn't be a Palomino as there wasn't any cream genes in the family tree.

I used to watch Mr. Cream genes on capt. Kangaroo. Oh wait, that was Mr. GREEN Jeans! Nevermind.

 

[carmen indorato]

You know I feel silly, because I had heard there was a zebra in the works, and I had assumed it would really be just a texture add on. But I'm so excited that there will be a morph, because zebra's aren't just stripped horses.

Thanks for the family picture Chris, makes my e-mouth water seeing the possibilities.
As you develop this animal zoo from your great Harry build, and while developing the donkey and Zebra can you also look into the no longer extinct Quagga? A relative of the zebra which actually grazed with their striped cousins in huge herds in Africa and driven to extinction by the stupid white settlers of South Africa I believe, who used their meat to feed their native slave laborers, it was recently brought back from extinction by someone who went to great effort and expense to re-thread their old genetic code with the living zebra code from their ancestral locale and is growing a small herd of them again. Though the size and relative shape of the zebra, I love its unique myriad variety of possible markings and think it would be a great tribute creating it with its variety of different coat markings as a "fantasy" animal come back to the real world.
Using a complimentary birthday courtesy coupon from them, I just picked up the CP Quagga and though not very well made still looks nice for distant placement. A higher resolution better meshed Quagga from big daddy Harry, would be fun and I would spend money for it and whatever extra textures and morphs could be developed for it....along with that Bull!!!

 

[Rae134]

Actually they haven't been able to use the old genetic code as they don't have a complete non-degraded sample.
The Rau Quaggas are Zebras that have been selectively breeding back with reduced stripes to resemble Quaggas only in external appearance, but will be genetically different.

Once the Zebra model is out, who ever is doing the coat could do a Quagga coat as an extra option (as it is a subspecies of the Plains Zebra the shape doesn't really change much) which could be fun as they had a pretty good range of striping options.

This is a 5th Gen, 1 year old from the Quagga Project.

 

[Dreamer]

Actually they haven't been able to use the old genetic code as they don't have a complete non-degraded sample.
The Rau Quaggas are Zebras that have been selectively breeding back with reduced stripes to resemble Quaggas only in external appearance, but will be genetically different.

Once the Zebra model is out, who ever is doing the coat could do a Quagga coat as an extra option (as it is a subspecies of the Plains Zebra the shape doesn't really change much) which could be fun as they had a pretty good range of striping options.

This is a 5th Gen, 1 year old from the Quagga Project.

Humm I have a Quagga coat that I made for the old MilHorse, I should see if I can convert it over

 

[carmen indorato]

Actually they haven't been able to use the old genetic code as they don't have a complete non-degraded sample.
The Rau Quaggas are Zebras that have been selectively breeding back with reduced stripes to resemble Quaggas only in external appearance, but will be genetically different.

Once the Zebra model is out, who ever is doing the coat could do a Quagga coat as an extra option (as it is a subspecies of the Plains Zebra the shape doesn't really change much) which could be fun as they had a pretty good range of striping options.

This is a 5th Gen, 1 year old from the Quagga Project.

Well you may be right but in the article i read and it was extensive it was a South African guy who has worked on this for some time. He found the last Quagga body that had been in a museum (South African I believe) and was given permission to extract DNA from the body parts to use in the splicing with live local zebra DNA and according to the article it was fairy successful though as yet( at time of the article) not a complete strain and was still working on completion. But there was a small herd he had developed on a reserve set aside for the works so he could keep the "fixed" breeds isolated in order to continue manipulating the DNA strings to bring the results closer to the final Quagga breed.
I guess when they were grazing with the large herds of Zebra it is conjectured there was in-breeding and thus the variety of coats and structural differences.
Still, it was a fascinating article/interview with this guy and I was hoping for a complete resurgence of the breed.
A la Jurassic Park of sorts.

 

[CWRW]

I'm working on the zebra in between things. I have the main body almost done/still need to do the mane and his cute tail Wouldn't be that hard to add a coat option like this. Will def do some research on it.

 

[Rae134]

Yay Laurie, you're the best! (and its very hard to find a coloured photo as the think that all of the skins are faded somewhat).

This was the last living Quagga so is probably the best colour wise.

 

[CWRW]

Ah! Ok- will save this as a ref- can see having one option sort of in the middle too.