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*hat tip* 
but of course I am pleased to help and further pleased when ponys show gratitude to my aperseasion and feed back.
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Deviousness `anmari has been spreading her infectious positivity throughout our community for over 6 years. Throughout this time Ana has been at the core of all things devious, passionately developing an eclectic gallery, helping organise devmeets, participating in chat events and also recently completed dedicating her time as a Community Volunteer. We are absolutely delighted to bestow the Deviousness Award for May 2013 to `anmari, congratulations! Read More
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Sta.sh
I feel that we can go farther with the shadowing here. Only in a few areas so I see the shading to be dark enough to be read as a shadow. While I notice that RL lighting doesn't produce dramatic shadows often, I notice that it's usually because RL lighting gets super complicated with a zillion light sources and a zillion objects around that can really scatter colored light everywhere. I see that this setting is much simpler. I would say there are two major light sources here: the sun (presumably), and the white snow to reflect sunlight from. I think we can get plenty of clear distinct shadows here, maybe.
Also be careful about the hair. The texturing is there, but if you stop and think about every strand of hair, where they start, where they end, and how they all create the forms as a whole, it doesn't make that much sense. Be wary of areas that makes the hair look flatter than needed, especially areas which two hair shapes border.
Be careful where you place your highlights as well. Highlights appear when a light source hits a surface at fairly specific angles as far as I've figured them out. I figured that it would be more useful in the end to understand the physics behind highlights so here's something which I picked up some knowledge from: [link]
The vector style gets away with their style of hair because it's done in a way that the viewer doesn't interpret the information literally. This particular style of hair is starting to make the viewer interpret the information literally, so at some point we will run into a couple of troubles. I find that it's usually more convincing if hair is done in a way that the viewer is free to imagine all the hair strands to be there instead of literally rendering them. It saves time too.
The funny thing about giving believable form to cartoon ponies - you have nothing to directly reference so you're essentially on your own. I think the best way to be able to draw believable form to cartoon ponies is to referencing from real-life stuff and apply what you've seen to ponies. Heck, I feel that I know a bit more about lighting simply from familiarizing myself with the physics behind it, something I will not get through 'practice'.
As for the background, I really like the frost-covered trees and snow covered ground with her hoofprints trailing her that makes it look like she's enjoying a trot through a winter wonderland. I also really like the night sky and especially the ambient Aurora Borealis-like montage of colors in the lower atmosphere. Rarity's nearly-white coat was a little hard to make out against the pure white snow, but that can't be considered a fault considering the context of what's going on in this image.
If I could offer a critique, the clouds in the background are very nicely drawn and consistently colored and lighted, but appear a little too perfectly round and widely curved. The coloring method used for the eyes, while very true to the original source material, seems a little cartoonish compared to the breathtaking realism of the rest of the picture. Perhaps a softer and more realistic technique could be applied to the irises to make them better blend into this pic.
Overall an amazing piece of work and I hope to see more like this :3
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