Cosimo!

My Cosimos have arrived this week and no exaggeration this is my new favorite mold. I am absolutely blown away by this sculpture and how well he translated to plastic. The detail and realism has to be the best I have ever seen - he looks so alive that he might start walking off my desk at any minute.

The proportions looked a little weird in some early photos so I was a bit worried, but he's actually perfect in person! So here's a little photography aside while we're on the topic.

It's really easy to get distorted proportions in photos, especially with phone cameras because they have such wide lenses. You'll see this when you take photos of real horses too, that they sometimes like kind of wonky and inelegant. Not at all how you saw them in real life. I learned this in horse photography classes and the trick to getting a balanced photo is to use a longer lens and/or zoom in. With my phone I will often stand farther back and use the 2x zoom instead of getting closer. You also want to make sure you're not tilting the camera forward, which can also cause weird proportions. Primarily my blog photos are all taken with my DSLR and a long lens, including these, which I think show off his balance well.

For example, here's a photo I took with my same setup with my phone on 1x zoom from slightly above and slightly tilted downward. It makes his head look absolutely massive. So you can see how easily things can get out of whack with a photo.

But now back to gushing about this sculpture. Just look at that face!! I do wish the seam were a little less prominent but that's so minor in the scheme of things. You can barely even see it on the glossy. Speaking of which.

I am so glad this was the year with the two different ponies as well (plus the micro run mule) so it was an easy choice for me to get two subscriptions. I wasn't sure if I would love the glossy or matte more from the promo photos and I'm so happy to have one of each! Speaking of photography, glossy black is so hard to get a nice photo of, especially on a bright day like today. This photo does my glossy absolutely NO justice at all. He is gorgeous in person.

I also really love the paint work. My two examples both have very subtle dapples and not very much red/brown shading. Just the right amount to bring the black color to life. I have been in the Premier Club nearly every year since it's inception and I hate to say it but more often than not I was disappointed with the final product compared to the promo photos. Either the sculpture didn't translate as well in to plastic, the paint work didn't live up to the artist rendering, or I just had bad luck and got one with flaws. I was so nervous this year would be the same but so far Cosimo has absolutely exceeded my expectations and then some.

Its amazing how far we have come. I remember in 2008 at the Velvet Rope Event during one of the sessions they previewed for us the brand new Idocus mold. They passed him around the group and I remember holding him and being similarly blown away. I thought he was just the most detailed, accurate and best thing I had ever seen. Today he looks almost cartoonish in comparison (although he is still totally one of my favorites and a conga mold!)

Him of course being a step up from my other old favorite the Trakehner. Of course a lot of the differences are stylistic and based on the sculpting artists, but also technology has come such a long way to where we are today. I'm excited for the continued future of model horses!