Updated pony

I first got my MD pony boots and mittens back in 2010. They've had a handful of outings since then, some brief, some for longer periods. They've served me well but were starting to look rather dated due to the use of invisiprims. Not only was the whole issue of the invisis clashing with parts of the background, and parts of my avi, a problem, there was also the issue that Mistress runs with advanced lighting on almost all the time (and I do on occasion when I'm on my laptop, which handles it much better than my desktop) and so she just couldn't see them and my feet were a complete mess.

So, today, we made an effort to head over to MD and upgrade in the hope that that problem had been solved.

We were really delighted to find out that it had been. The upgrade process was painless (once we actually found the upgrade area, it took a bit of wandering about to find it). All I had to do was wear the items I wanted upgraded and touch the related upgrade board. In each case my items were too old to be upgraded in place so I was delivered a fresh copy. While this did mean I'd have to go through the hassle of resizing again it didn't mean that I'd lose my training level on the boots thanks to a handy training level restorer tool that was made available.

In the end I got an update for my boots and mittens. I didn't need to upgrade the tail as it was the current version (purchased just a year ago). I also grabbed an update for one of Miss Vila's favourite bits of bondage gear: the gas mask (curiously I don't think Mistress added that to the punishment picker). Sizing that will have to wait until I'm no longer her pony.

While sizing and fitting the boots and other parts I made some effort to tweak my shape to help things fit (well, a copy of my shape -- I've always had a pony-play-specific version anyway that had my hands and feet sized as small as possible, part of the effort to make things work back in the pre-alpha-layer days) and, with the addition of a different foot alpha layer (the one from MD didn't really work out so well for me) I've got the boots fitting about as well as I can hope.

There's just one small bit of leg poking out at the very top of my right foot. Not ideal, but so much better than it used to be and no clash with the alpha texture grass in the background!

New mittens were sized up too. Mistress also spent some time recolouring the laces on the boots and mittens so they match really well.

While the tail didn't need any sizing, it not having been upgraded, Mistress did some recolouring on it too to better match the laces on the mittens and boots.

Having updated everything we got to wondering about the MD head harness. Ever since 2010 we've been using a different one and we struggled to remember why we'd used that over the MD one. Given that everything else had been updated and was all nice and new we decided to grab the MD harness anyway and given it a go. If I could make it fit okay and the menus made sense we'd stick with it. If not it'd sit in my inventory and we'd stick with the original. As it was, it worked out really well. I had to spend some time editing specific parts to make it fit my face, and it could really do with some more tweaks when I have some time, but we think it really looks the part.

Mistress is really happy with the array of gags that are included, and she was especially happy to see her initials appear on the harness not long after she locked it on me. She also decided that the little leather ears were a nice touch. And, of course, she loved the plume that could be added.

Overall we're both really happy with the result of the update. Not only does everything actually look better (we're not sure if there's been some texture improvements or something, or if it's just that the lack of invisis has made a huge difference), there's also other benefits like the script count being considerably lower.

I don't know if Mistress has any plans for adding to the outfit, I'm sure I'll find that out tomorrow when we do the pre-dance shop, but I know I'm mostly kitted out. And, if I'm honest, I'm really loving it. Pony play was Mistress' thing. It was a thing I knew nothing about until she "forced" me into it the first time back in 2010 and I was hooked and I always feel proud to be her pony.

Which is a good thing because I'm locked like this until at least the 10th. I say "at least" because, while that's when the 18 days will be done, it's a weekend and sometimes we don't get to see each other at weekends. On top of that there's always the chance that I'll get "be a pony" as payment for my allowance again.

Which would be terrible. ;)

There is one knock-on effect though. Locked like this I can't do my usual product photography for new Z&A products (Mistress is adamant about the rules of the allowance system -- I'm like, and banned from the house, until this payment is done), which in turn means I've being working on items that don't need me to appear in the product shot. It's been interesting working on a few different things.