#81 - moo in the mirror

April '21 Update: Now available for all patrons to enjoy!

Please check attachments for all of the variations, scraps, and other images.

The first and newest completed project of the year!

I had a lot of fun with this one. The commissioner gave me lots of creative freedom, with his only requirement being that his moo milked himself in front of a mirror. As usual with my commissions, I tend to go way above and beyond what was required of me by the terms of our agreement, and I added several extra shots leading up to the milking. And I think they're all very lovely.

I definitely wanted the reflection to be the star of the show here, and what you're seeing is a true reflection. In computer graphics, as you may know, reflections are sometimes faked. But that is not the case here; the reflection is physically accurate. Of course keeping everything "realistic" and accurate led to some challenges with posing and framing, but I pulled it off, and I'm very happy with that. 

Speaking of challenges, depth of field, which is an effect I've come to use as a crutch, is incompatible with reflections in the application I was using. So I had to either ignore depth of field entirely (as I ended up doing), or find some other sneaky way to add it back in. Since I couldn't rely on having DoF, I had to be extra careful with the objects that would appear in the background. I didn't want anything there that could potentially draw your eyes away from the moo and his reflection. Not being able to use a tool that I've grown accustomed to over the years definitely put me into an interesting predicament, and I'm glad that I was able to create without that crutch.

What's the story here? I mean it's pretty straightforward, I think you can figure it out yourself. Maybe you could mimic him too. 😉