Full-res shots from this page.

Prepping for these sequences, I basically went down the complete list of powers for all six characters, threw out the ones that I couldn’t think of a use for, and arranged the rest into little scenes with a rough storyboard for continuity – which I didn’t bother to share when I sent the final images, so all Newbiespud knows about what I had in mind are the contents of the image and the filename which has the chronological order of the scene, the name of the power and whether it hit or missed. While I’m hoping that one particular running gag I came up with makes it into the final cut, I don’t want to unduly influence the outcome, so I won’t say anything until it happens, or doesn’t as the case may be 🙂

And right from the top, the comic is differing a little bit from the sequence of events I envisioned 🙂 I had Fluttershy winning initiative, hence why there isn’t a fountain of flame in the background of her first shot. Trying to think of what the various powers would look like coming from these characters was a challenge, especially the utility ones. Putting a small bird in Pinkie Pie’s hair was the most Fluttershyish ‘Eagle’s Splendor’ I could come up with; and having her animal companion have a better grasp of what her powers are than she does seemed appropriate. (Also I’d meant to cover the walls with ivy and then forgot about it until after I’d already done the first thirty shots, so when the time came to actually do her various entangling powers I had to introduce vines to the scene some other way).

Twilight’s power choices are not remotely subtle, so I made sure that everything she does is totally over-the-top. Leading off with ‘Fountain of Flame’ was intended as a measure to stop Blueblood/Elusive from retreating that way, rather than preventing anyone else from sneaking up behind them (I don’t usually do wandering monsters or second wave enemies in my encounters, so it never occurred to me as a possibility), but the fact that it has a full encounter duration made for a nice dramatic backdrop to some of the later shots.