Jumping Pose Guide, How-To, & Tips
Jumping Guide
Jumping, like Halter, is all about the pose, except in this type of show you have three: the take off, the jump and the landing. You need to look for different things for each pose, both when you're judging and when you're posing your own horses for entries.
The Takeoff
On this, you want to make sure it's the right kind of take off. You want them to be in the first "beat" of it; here's what I mean.
Lovecraft made a great image for this. This is the same horse jumping in sequence - the first picture is what you want them to post. The horse is at a good angle, the legs are up nice and square to the chest, and the ears are quite aligned.
Once you know it's the right take off sequence, you need to look at the head. Are the ears aligned? If the ears are aligned, then you know the head and body are straight, even if you can't see space between the back legs. Horses such as PSLs and Pasos have thicker legs so you won't see space, while horses such as Mak's ISH or Celestia's Appy their legs are hexed so they aren't as freeform and might be all over the place, like this pony:
Another thing: some horses have BIG ear balls so it may look like the ears aren't aligned, when in actuality they are. Take the ISH up above; his ears are as perfect as they can be, even though the outline is a bit chunky. That's just how the file is. Almost all of the ISHs are like that; you'll just need to look closely and scrutinize a bit more with some of the wonky files. The horse above also sports those large earballs; his ears are aligned as they can be on this take off and should not be faulted.
Sometimes you'll also see the hoop IN FRONT of the horse; no big deal! Judge it just like you would any other take off; some mods refuse to go in front of the jump, no matter how hard you try. Some files just refuse to cooperate properly when it comes to jumping, and should not be faulted.
The Jump
For this pose, you also want to make sure it's the right kind: You want the horse square over the jump, hind legs nice and tight, forelegs splayed a bit, head and ears straight and eye looking back at the jump, like this fellow:
^ Correct jumping sequence!
^ This horse is just a beat too soon - see how he's not quite as level as the horse above? He's gathering himself to get over the jump.
^ This guy is a beat too late - he's already adjusting for his landing and doesn't have that nice tucked in look of the correct jumping sequence.
Sometimes you'll run into a horse that has the hoop in front of him; just like the take off, this is fine.
The things to look for are: the ears, nice and straight like the horse above, though some files will look like this:
They have a slight line behind the aligned ears, because the pony files are so small, they don't align as perfectly as the bigger files. It shouldn't be faulted, it's just a quirk of modding. Can't make everything perfect all the time!
If the head and ears are in line, then the rest of the body is too. I mainly just look at the head when jumping and make sure it's in the right sequence.
Just like on the take off, sometimes you'll see horses that have the weird back legs, which look like this:
Again, as long as the horse is in the correct sequence, the hexed hind legs will follow in their correct path.
The Landing
For the landing, you want the horse with its left foreleg on the ground, right one raised, hind feet nice and tight, head straight with its eye looking back at the jump.
This is the correct sequence: everything is dead on for this guy. The ears are nice and aligned, his legs are in the correct sequence and he seems relatively ok with having jumped through the hoop.
This is the wrong landing sequence:
While his left leg IS down, his right leg is coming down to help catch his weight and his hind feet are too high and loose.
And again, our leggy mods that aren't going to quite follow the rules:
NOTICE: On the ISH's head, you'll see a big ball in front of the ear - that's normal! It's just part of the file's neck; the ears are aligned and so is everything else with this pose. The appy has a similar configuration with its mane balls. As long as the forelegs are in the correct position, the rest of the body will follow.
How-To
This is one of the best ways to get jumping poses:
Make sure your game is set to auto-save photos [options > general options] and slow your game speed down to about 80 [petza > set game speed]. Then as soon as your horse jumps and lands in front of your hoop/jump to begin the jump, start pressing the spacebar. Let up on the spacebar once your horse has completed the jump, and go into your PetzPix folder and check out your poses to make sure they are straight. Rise and repeat until you get poses you are happy with!
Tips
The Show Jumping Guide by Lovedraft & Neco (shown above) covers just about everything you need to know. One thing I would add is that once the horse starts jumping, DO NOT move or drop the hoop. It's important that the hoop stays in place for proper poses.
I'd also like to note that the takeoff pose seems to be best aligned when the horse is turned a bit so its head is further from the camera (and its hind closer) so its ears will line up nicely. You can't really control how the horse will be aligned when it jumps but just know that one jump over the hoop will not give you all three poses neatly aligned. You'll need at least two jumps over the hoop, but probably a lot more if you want quality poses, because the horse just aligns itself. Just make sure you hold that spacebar down as soon as it starts jumping!
Also, I don't know if it helps, but I pet the horse after each jump to reward it and hopefully make it like jumping more.