April Blog 2026: Brabant & Passion Week

Brabant

By Suus (3D Artist)

Hello everyone! My name is Suus, one of the 3D horse artists here at Star Stable and I was lucky enough to be able to work on the upcoming Brabant horse! 

When I was a little kid, I used to go to pony camp in the summer. One time, I was taking my pony back to the pasture for the day and that’s where I saw a Brabant for the very first time. It was this absolutely GIANT draft horse standing by the pasture gate. It felt like it could crush me with its hooves that powerful. But he was super calm and gentle, and just hanging out waiting for cuddles.  

That mix of strength and kindness became a big part of the direction for our in-game Brabant!

The breed

The Brabant is a draft horse from Belgium with a long history as a working horse. In the 1800s and early 1900s, it was widely used in agriculture, transport, and industry, known for its strength and reliability. Each year, more than 35,000 horses (!!) were exported to all parts of the world. They served as living engines in agriculture, transport, ports, and mining. True everyday heroes!

When machines eventually replaced a lot of their work, the breed became less common. But today, people are rediscovering just how special these horses are and are loving them especially for driving and recreation.

Since the Brabant is related to the Ardennes (which is already in SSO), we needed to make sure the two breeds didn’t feel too similar. So we took a good look at confirmations and decided where we need the Brabant to differ. 

Our goal was to capture the Brabant while also keeping these keywords in mind:

- Super strong

- Kind and gentle
- Hardworking (not lazy or sleepy!)

- A real “gentle giant”

That became our design mission!

Building the 3D Model

Next, it was time to bring the Brabant to life in 3D.

We focused a lot on the body shape. The Brabant is often considered one of the strongest horse breeds in the world, so we made sure the model had a powerful, muscular build and a sense of weight without feeling “fat”.

We compared it with other draft breeds like the Shire to make sure the Brabant felt unique. Shorter in terms of height than a Shire, but definitely more muscular.

Manes, Tails, and… “Flucious” Hair

Since Brabants were often used for farm work, shorter tails made sense and we wanted to include a manestyle like that. But the breed can also have really fluffy, full manes and tails. A new word was born during one of our brainstorm meetings when the words “fluffy” and “lucious” got mixed: flucious!

… Also part of the process: bugfixing!

When painting the greyscale, we had to balance keeping the definition of the strong muscles while having a slightly fluffy look. 

In terms of coats, the Brabant is known for its roan colors, so these must be included! It was really fun to paint these coats, mixing the tons of different hair strands to create a good balance in hair colors to achieve the roan look. 

Time for some feathering magic!

Brabants can have very thick and heavy feathering on their legs. Instead of using a piece of feathering that is fully attached to the leg as it usually is, we wanted to try something new to make the feathering move more naturally.

So I created a bigger, fluffier feathering mesh and handed it to our awesome rigging and animation team.

They were able to animate it and gave it movement that reacts with the horse’s steps, and the results are pretty awesome if you ask me!! 

Special trick 

What is also pretty fun to mention is the special trick for this horse! Again, we wanted to show off how gentle and kind this horse is. So the animators created this super fun yoga pose that you as a player can do on the Brabant!

We hope you enjoy discovering all its little details, and getting to know this strong, gentle, flucious friend! <3

Passion Week at Star Stable

By Stacy (Game Director)

Hello, again! Stacy here, Game Director for Star Stable Online. Now that our adventures into the mysteries of Marchenghast are almost wrapped up for now, it’s time for me to tell you more about another topic - Passion Week!

This is me last year, along with our Technical Director, Ismael, and Art Director, Bjorn, eagerly awaiting Passion Week presentations to begin.

Each year at Star Stable, we run two Passion Weeks - one in the first half of the year and one in the second. The aim of these weeks is for the team to have the opportunity to work on their own ideas outside of their usual projects. We strongly believe this encourages collaboration and creativity and gives the team a break from the regular workflow.

During these weeks, we also have a ton of fun things going on at the office. We invite guest speakers (usually from other game studios) to share their areas of expertise so we can learn and build connections. There’s breakfast in the kitchen every morning, and a special after-work event is planned at the end of the week (time spent after hours, either at the office or at another location where the team can hang out and socialize to wrap up the week). The Passion Week Team (a group of volunteers who plan these weeks in addition to their usual work) even schedules fun activities throughout the week. My favorite activity was when they hid tiny horses throughout the office, and if you found one, you got a lunch gift card!

A very Swedish breakfast offering.

But of course, the headline of the week is the passion projects! We have seen all manner of projects worked on during these times, and while the goal is not necessarily to create something that will end up in Star Stable Online, we have gotten some of our coolest additions to the game through Passion Week (and I might give you a sneak peek into things to come)!

At the end of the week, projects are presented to the entire team so we can see what everyone created during their passion time. One week is often not enough time to fully complete a project, so even if something awesome is created, there is usually additional work needed to make it release-ready.

Walid presenting something that likely included at least one picture of Moo Deng.

One of the largest examples of this is photo mode. This started as a passion project, and I think it had one of the biggest impacts on the game experience.

Some of our artists like to work on new items and pets. You might recognize these fluffy kitties and the Baroness clothing collection!

Other projects might be presented without a clear use case. This is what happened with the bouncy horse and the character you now know as McHorse. These were created during a previous Passion Week, and it wasn’t until our Equestrian Festival project team saw an opportunity that they made their way to Jorvik.

McHorse hung around for a while, waiting for the right time to shine!

While sometimes work is not player-facing (improvements to performance, maintenance to different areas of the game, internal tools for our team, etc.), I can give you a sneak peek at some of the recent passion projects that might end up coming your way!

During our last Passion Week, one of our gameplay programmers started work on adding two new features to the Global Store: favorites and search! Both of these features are currently in development to be finalized for an undetermined upcoming release.

Here is an early mock-up of what favorites and search might look like.

In addition, two of our environment artists conducted tests on a very exciting project: personal pastures! We have long known that players would love a personal and customizable space in their home stable to play with and pasture their horses. Their tests showed that this might be much more achievable than we expected, so we’ve kicked off the start of this adventure to hopefully bring it to you…well, we have a timeframe we’re aiming for, but it feels too early to share. I don’t want to jinx it! (Please keep in mind that we are still early in this investigation and anything could change.)

Here is an example of one of the tests they did during Passion Week. This is not necessarily a representation of what the end result will look like, but it’s super inspiring, right?! Our entire team thought so!

While I’ve only showcased a few projects here, there are dozens produced every year. Some may never make it to the game (they might not be the right fit, or they might not even be implementable beyond the concept phase), but giving the team time to flex their creative muscles always brings new invigoration to our regular work.

Thank you for taking the time to read, and I hope you’re just as excited as I am for our upcoming Passion Week in May!