The Horse Generator - Create your dream horse
About the Horse Generator
With the Horse Generator you can design your dream horse: pick your favorite breed and combine various coat patterns and much more. You'll also find the Horse Generator's artwork inside the horse browser game EquinePassion, where you can even breed your dream horse.
How the generator came about
The Horse Generator was born during my first stint at university, in 2019. I'd always wanted to build a character generator that let you put together figures for a background or a story. But since I didn't have any drawn human characters at the time, I went with horses instead. The generator came purely out of curiosity: what can I actually do with the artwork I'd drawn over the years? What happens if I recombine it in completely new ways? Suddenly I had the ability to just try out wild combinations.
Over time, it even turned into a practical tool for me. Whenever I tested new artwork for EquinePassion, I could click through every combination in the generator and see how patterns interacted, where a stray pixel might poke out, or where something wasn't quite adjusted right. What started as a side project of the game turned into a solid testing tool for my illustrations.
Technical development
The first version was built on JavaScript and written entirely inline, with a separate JavaScript and JSON file for every color. In the rebuild, I flipped that principle around: the settings now live in a database, queried via SQL and loaded in via Ajax. The difference shows how much more maintainable the whole thing becomes when you think about the structure from the start.
Back then I also deliberately made the generator more complex: the panel had gene codes you could click directly and try out to see what a horse with exactly that code would look like. At some point that got so complex that I couldn't keep up with it in the next version.
Looking at the very first version from 2019 makes that clear too: a lot of options to click through, but without me having thought about usability at the time. That version is also still built on old artwork, from before we switched horse colors over to CSS filters instead of a separate graphic per color.
Here you can check out version 2.0
The rebuild
After getting to know frameworks like Vue, I wanted to rebuild the generator from scratch before investing even more time into the old version. The new version still loads all its data from the database via Ajax, but it's noticeably more visual and simpler in structure: a linear path through accordions, where you can, for example, pick the breed directly from an image, with preview thumbnails for each breed, color, and pattern.
Not all the content from the earlier version has been carried over yet. The flow isn't fully optimal here either, but it's noticeably more structured and guided than before. Also new is support for accessories and backgrounds, which especially helped with testing, since I could see the finished image exactly as it was meant to look later on.
I drew all the artwork myself over the past ten years, both the backgrounds and the horses and their markings.
Current status
Further development is currently paused because my studies got in the way. But I can definitely picture continuing in the future and building a fourth version of the generator.
Copying and using the artwork without permission is not allowed and will be prosecuted. Since this request wasn't respected despite repeated notices, I found myself forced to add a watermark to the generator's artwork.
Here you can go to the latest version
Past releases
Horse Generator – Version Update 3.0
Since the Horse Generator has gradually gained more visibility over the past months, it was high time for a new update. First, the less pleasant change: from now on, my watermark will be shown in the generator. I made this change because more and more screenshots have been circulating on Instagram that could no longer be traced back to my generator. They also no longer had any connection to EquinePassion at all. With the watermark, I want to both protect my artistic work and promote my client, who makes using the embedded artwork possible in the first place. So, thank you EquinePassion! On the brighter side, though, are the two new graphic sets that have been added. From now on, the thoroughbred foal and the warmblood foal are available as standalone artwork.
Full list of features:
- Added foal artwork for the thoroughbred and warmblood foal
- Added a watermark noting sponsorship, to protect usage rights
- Black and jet-black are a bit darker and more intense at the lowest color level
- The question & help flag was changed into an info icon and moved to the corner (to balance out the dominant watermark)
- The menu was removed for a better user experience
Until then, I hope you enjoy the good part!
Love, Jackie
Horse Generator Update: New Sooty Versions
Good evening, everyone!
Today I used the time to tidy up my social media pages a bit. In the process, I noticed that most of the photo albums on Facebook hadn't been touched in 5 years. What a mess! I've cleaned up Facebook a bit, though it's not quite as tidy as I'd like yet.
Today, after a long while, there's a small graphics update: new Sooty versions. The old ones already existed two or three times over, or were completely different from each other. Now we finally have a bit more clarity AND three distinctly different Sooty versions:
The new artwork has been built directly into the generator. So you can already admire the new artwork outside of EquinePassion.
With that, have lots of fun!
Your Jackie ♥
Horse Generator Update: Details & Rabicano
Good evening!
While tidying up my monitor, I stumbled across a PSD file I'd almost completely forgotten about. Images for the coat color preview, since the plain colored circles in the Horse Generator were only ever meant to be a stopgap. So I spent this afternoon freshening up the generator a bit. Just a few small things, but they still add up to quite a bit.
All changes at a glance
- Horse Generator update: Rabicano and preview artwork
- Coat colors are now shown as mini icons
- Horse Generator update: Rabicano and preview artwork
- Stylish selection controls and sliders
- Horse Generator update: Rabicano and preview artwork
- Coat patterns as preview thumbnails
First, the preview of the new coat color icons. I might still add color changes depending on lightening level at some point. For that, though, I'd need to factor out some code first, just so I can still keep track of things laughs. I also changed the border here, so it fits a bit better with the overall layout.
Right below that is the new slider. If you're also into minimalist styles and either don't feel like writing much or need some inspiration, I can warmly recommend W3Schools. It's an absolute dream for browsing in between other things. I'd be curious who else 'grew up' with that site :)!
The next small change is a visual tweak to the selection menus. This gradient came about more or less by accident, but I liked it so much that I left it as is for now. It sets it apart a bit from the "dropdown menu" above. Unfortunately I couldn't adjust the options inside the selection menu quite the way I wanted (more spacing between the text entries). I'd probably need to work with something else for that, which would mean cleaning up some code first. (By now it looks completely messy again!)
The last small change was the still-missing 'roan pattern' Rabicano. I've now added it. I wasn't quite sure where to file it. I first thought about modifiers, but ultimately went with the Roan gene, since Rabicano is more or less a roaning pattern too. Also, there simply weren't enough reference images to choose from here.
I hope this update brought you a little joy,
I think it definitely looks noticeably nicer already 🙂
With that, have fun trying it out, and have a lovely evening!
Your Jackie
Horse Generator Update: Wind colors and preview artwork
Good evening, everyone!
I hope you're enjoying today's day off just as much as I am! There's a surprisingly big update for the Horse Generator today – at least in terms of effort. I actually only meant to add the header, just to make my site look more consistent. Actually 😉
All changes at a glance:
- Skin selection now has proper preview images for each breed skin.
- Both hair length AND hair position can now be adjusted.
- Silver has been added: Silver only affects black-based colors.
- Head and leg markings, as well as pinto patterns and accessories, now have preview artwork.
- There's now a menu and a footer.
- The database connection has been optimized.
- Bugfix: bridle is only partially removed.
- Bugfix: forelock disappears after selecting fly ears.
Horse Generator Update: Mushroom
Good morning, everyone!
Hope you got off to a good start this morning? If not, maybe this little Horse Generator update will help: from now on there's another lightening color (dilution) in the Horse Generator... it's called Mushroom and appears mostly in Shetland ponies. Which is why it looks absolutely adorable on the little Shetties! As soon as the color gets approved by the EquinePassion community, it'll also be built in by Natalie and can be imported via Shetland ponies going forward.
What is Mushroom and how does it behave?
Mushroom only lightens red hair and behaves recessively. As with Pearl, there are two ways to see Mushroom on a horse: once as a heterozygous color (no visible effect) and once homozygous.
You can try Mushroom on bays and chestnuts. On blacks and seal browns, Mushroom currently has no visible effect. If Mushroom is inherited heterozygously, you won't see any effect at all. If it occurs homozygously, the entire coat turns greyer and more yellowish. The mane and tail lighten and show a slight shift toward grey/silver (like Silver). The flanks and the area above the mouth/nostrils are lightened as well. Depending on the season, this can appear stronger or weaker.
Additionally, you can try Mushroom on duns. Currently there's only one Mushroom-Dun version available, since the color is still very much unexplored overall, or rather, I'm lacking verifiable reference material. The Dun variant is currently only shown on Mushroom Bay and Sorrel with Dun.
Redsorrel & Bloodbay
Alongside Mushroom, I've finally gotten around to adding Redsorrel/chestnut and Bloodbay/liver-chestnut. Since I haven't created preview icons for these yet, things will look a bit chaotic for now. You'll find Redsorrel all the way on the left after clicking on the 4th color, i.e. chestnut. The colors are a bit lighter than the other two red tones.
For bay, it looks a bit fuller. I'm still considering adding a fifth base color for bay, namely all the wild-type bay variants. With a third color variant now, it would get quite confusing.
You'll need to click through a bit here. The second color under the bay tone would be the usual Bloodbay. Two shades further over would be Darkbloodbay/dark liver-chestnut, and two more over from there, the wild-type bay variants.
We'll see if I manage to add Silver Dapples/wind colors in the next few days, and then we'd finally have all the colors complete 😀
I need your help
Since so many colors now interact with each other, I'm losing a bit of track of which color should mask which and which shouldn't. It's possible I've forgotten to add or build in Mushroom somewhere, or that some other color combinations aren't showing correctly yet. If you spot an error, e.g. "Mushroom should look like this and that on Red Dun and like this and that on Bay Dun" – don't hesitate to leave a comment under my blog post or on the generator itself!
And with that, have fun testing and combining!
Horse Generator Update: Version 2.5
Thanks to a week of school break and public holidays, I managed to release the next, and possibly even the most elaborate, update yet: preview of the new change to the Horse Generator. Now you can select accessories too!
Accessories and color collections
You can now equip your dream horse with accessories. Right now there are unfortunately only a few options available. Accessories are an elaborate thing to make, since they need to be adapted for every graphic, i.e. every horse. In addition to accessories, you can now select a color collection. New colors can of course be added over time. This will be announced, for example, in one of my update posts.
I'd call the last two updates a small milestone! These are exactly the features I always wished for, or wanted to build, in my very first generator. And now it's finally happened. We're one step further!
What's coming up next
- More coat colors
- Updated preview images
- Color names will be displayed
- Color selection via gene code
- Gender selection, blink animation and a "dirty" view
With that, I wish you a lovely evening and a restful start into tomorrow's holiday,
your Jackie!
Horse Generator Update: Backgrounds
Good evening!
I'm happy to announce that there's a new little feature in the Horse Generator. From now on, you can change your dream horse's background. There are 32 whole new backgrounds to choose from, including the newest and upcoming backgrounds from the free browser game EquinePassion, as well as some old images I painted many years ago.
Please bear with the fact that older backgrounds may be noticeably lower quality. Unfortunately that won't be fixed anymore, but for nostalgia's sake, I've kept them on the site anyway. 🙂
Your creations:
Send me a WhatsApp, an email, or #hashtag your creation on Instagram too. I'm always incredibly curious to see what you make out of my work, and I love sharing your creations on my blog!
Warm regards and a lovely evening,
your Jackie.
