My Best Friend

My mom came up with the title for this artwork which is appropriate since I do believe it was her talking to me about her memories of the horses she used to have that inspired me. At least I think the idea for this artwork came to me after such a talk and I sketched my idea out a short time thereafter. This idea has been in my notebook for a while so I’m not completely certain. Anyway, this artwork features my D9S Rosita character feeding an apple as a treat to a beautiful Appaloosa (it’s the Hivewire Horse base model) on a modern ranch. The mane of the horse was a pain in the ass to pose but I’ve been told that posing the mane can be quite the learning curve as opposed to the rest of the model which is super easy to use. I’ll master it eventually!

This scene was rendered with depth of field in Superfly. I used a blue realistic skydome and a “sun” light as my lighting setup plus a very soft are light in the front of the scene to illuminate the figures’ faces and add a shine to their eyes. In postwork: I used, I think, two or three Photoshop actions to alter the colors and contrast to give it a more vintage, creamy country style look. I used a mask to mask out the actions’ color alterations on the sky so that it would remain bright blue rather than be too faded out. I also adjusted the color balance of the overall scene further with an adjustment layer to fine tune things to get the exact look I wanted.

Most of these items are available from the Renderosity Marketplace (unless otherwise noted):

• D9S Rosita by Dream9Studios
• CWRW Appaloosas for the Hivewire Horse
• Mia Hair by Prae