(Originally posted at my main gallery, ~WolfenMoondaughter )

FULL-VIEW NOT DIAL-UP FRIENDLY!

Custom "Mars the dog" My Little Pony, with Santa Hat, dog food bowl with kibble, rubber ducky, x-mas lights necklace, and Rabid Breakfast Squirrel. Fans of actor/director David Hewlett have been pitching together to give a big donation to Doctors Without Borders as a wedding present [link] to him and his wife Jane Loughman. Their movie A Dog's Breakfast [link] was recently released on DVD; a friend of mine, knowing what a big Hewlett fan I am, surprised me with a copy. Now, I've donated a little to the charity effort already, but my friend's generosity to me (as well as other kindnesses I've received of late, including =DAnnsCreations renewing my devianART subscription) inspired me to "pay it forward", as it were. (That and hey, with all the medical things I've had going on this past summer, I can readily appreciate the need for assistance from someplace like Doctors without Borders! I'd have been in a lot of trouble if not for public aid!)

My eyes happened to fall on my pony Seashell one morning (who was looking quite poorly), and suddenly I saw her as Mars the dog, from the movie. Now, I did a t-shirt image to help promote the movie at Dragon*Con, in which I had drawn a squirrel hugging Mars (as fans who post at his message board are referred to as), so I decided, since I had to use Crayola Model Magic to make his ears anyway, that I would make a squirrel like the one in my drawing. I had considered doing a duck as a "cutie mark" (mark near a hoof on an MLP), a Santa hat & xmas lights on one side for a symbol, and a bowl of dog food for the symbol on the other side. But when I finished painting Mars, I decided it would spoil him to paint symbols on him, so I used more Crayola stuff to make the ducky and bowl and sewed together a Santa hat. (The necklace of x-mas lights is something I already had.) All these things are representations of things in the film -- anyone who's seen it should get the references. On the bottom of his left forehoof is my MLP sig mark, a W over an M, made to look like the alchemist symbol for "prosperity".

This puppy won $66 for charity! Actually, more than that, as the gal who bought it didn't actually want me to send it to her (she told me to either send it to David, keep it, or put it up for auction again), so I applied the shipping to the charity, bringing it up to $72!

If you go to Dragon*Con this year, you will be able to buy it at the American Heart Association auction in honour of the late Don S Davis -- signed by David Hewlett and Kate Hewlett!!

You can see pics of David and Kate signing Mars, and their signatures, here: [link]

And if you're interested in learning how to customise MLPs, I'm holding a class at this year's (2008) Dragon*Con: [link]