As with any project, the creation of this 3D scholarly edition of My Little Pony came with a set of hard decisions and challenges. For starters, My Little Pony is a franchise comprised of multiple characters, each with their own backstory and personality. We had access to five characters. One was quite small and had very little features, as well as hair made of translucent plastic, which would have posed a challenge to photograph. After some test shots, we found that the glitter in another’s hair would be a large obstacle as Agisoft Metashape struggled with it. In the end, we proceeded with the creation of two models: Pipp and Meadowbrook. After examining the features visible on the ponies, we decided to focus on Pipp, while using Meadowbrook as a supporting model throughout the edition. Both posed similar challenges with the hair textures, the smoothness of the skin, and the hard-to-photograph elements such as behind their legs, under their heads, etc. We then decided to add Sketchfab models to further support our narratives.
The next difficult choice came in the processing phase, as only one of our laptops had the computational power to run Agisoft Metashape, and even then it took very long. Creating a 3D model is a trial-and-error process, but we found that the time needed to invest in each trial was very risky. Ultimately, with every trial run of a step in Metashape we were running the risk of losing half a day processing something that would not be used in the end. Luckily, the more errors we made, the easier it was to avoid errors in the future, as the logic followed by the software became clearer to us. Understanding Metashape proved difficult at times with the both of us, but we found that giving each other time and support allowed for a pleasant groupwork environment. Lastly, we encountered some difficulties with the theoretical part of the project, as the study of toys is something we had not previously encountered. Knowing where to begin to find academic texts on the subject and how to adequately contextualize non-academic sources was a crucial step that required joint effort. In the end, we had to trust that we had done a thorough job in connecting our sources to present a worthwhile scholarly edition regarding My Little Pony and its ties to friendship, gender, and hair play.