Overall

Vision Vision

Originality Originality

Technique Technique

Impact Impact

The technique is quite obviously different from your usual, although the facial features are still recognizable as your style. But the vibrant colors is what immediately grabbed my attention, and I absolutely love them! I'm often torn between the subdued realistic tones and the bright saturated feast for the eyes like here, but since we're talking about colored horses, I am 100% in favor of more bright colors like these! e.deviantart.net/emoticons/b/b… " width="15" height="15" alt="" data-embed-type="emoticon" data-embed-id="366" title="(Big Grin)"/>The awesome raw energy is still present as always. The pose and the facial expression also look very powerful. The picture immediately jumps at the viewer from your gallery page. It could be a comic book cover, a poster for a movie, a huge billboard in front of BronyCon! (Though for the latter some cleanup work is order).The tears, clothes and hair are shaded expertly!The significance of dust and AJ's tears is lost on me, but it still makes for a very powerful image.Now for the nitpicking.Firstly, I wouldn't call the picture flat, but the new technique has a lot less of your signature 3D effect, in the shading of AJ's face and hair. Also, the background, the character and the dust in the foreground could use some more separation of the planes.Secondly, the dust looks weird. Looking at the thumbnail, I wasn't sure if it was supposed to look like holes in the photograph, random noise or something else. I don't know, maybe real-life dust can look like this, or maybe your style dictates this kind of shape, but I would suggest making a more obvious cloudy/dusty texture.Thirdly, and this could be just me, but the composition naturally calls for some sort of vignette. I mean, the dust in the bottom does its own bit of framing the picture, but I would go for a more pronounced effect, especially given how you yourself usually do a much stronger vignette. Or wait, was that the whole point? To move away from the usual approach and standard cheap framing effects? In that case never mind e.deviantart.net/emoticons/b/b… " width="15" height="15" alt="" data-embed-type="emoticon" data-embed-id="366" title="(Big Grin)"/>TLDR: plz draw more colorful things like this, monkey :3