This poster is my CG cosplay work dedicated to the role of Oguri Cap from UmaMusume: Cinderella Gray. To match the vintage 1990 horse racing newspaper aesthetic mentioned in the post description, the entire shoot was conceptualized from early on with a poster style and tilted framing. First, regarding costume preparation: the uniform jacket features a white base with gold trim and red lining, tailored from structured suit fabric so that during the high-tension crouching pose, the garment lines resist wrinkling and form clean lighting planes. The lower body features black Stockings paired with thick-soled white shoes; the black Stockings serve to ground the center of gravity and elongate the leg lines in this composition, which, combined with a slightly low-angle perspective, nicely accentuates the character's body proportions. The silver-white long wig was layered, paired with hair wefts and a gold diamond headpiece to enhance sharpness under lightning-simulated lighting.
The shooting process was much more demanding than anticipated. The pose supporting the ground with one hand while punching upward with the other heavily tested core strength and body balance. To achieve the CG cosplay effect, the photographer used hard light sources and blue/white background lighting to create sharp rim lights along the contours of the body. For this crouch alone, dozens of adjustments were made—not only maintaining a fierce expression and an upward-angled gaze, but also preventing the headpiece or wig from slipping due to intense body movements. Crew members also waved props on set to simulate dynamic motion. For Oguri Cap, what captivates me most is her restrained yet explosive power—hailed as the 'Monster of the Century's End'—yet without looking overly exaggerated on camera, so facial muscles were kept tight, conveying a calm gaze with an underlying fierce edge.
The setting in UmaMusume: Cinderella Gray is exquisitely detailed, focusing on the character's growth and the people she encounters. On the day of the shoot, I deliberately reread several chapters of Oguri Cap's races to capture her unyielding spirit born for challenges. Setting up the ruined background on set took considerable effort, using an old concrete wall as a base, which was later transformed completely in post-production to create a sense of rebirth. This was a project I almost gave up on several times but ultimately saw through to completion, as on-location composite setups are far more challenging than studio shoots. Post-processing required tremendous effort: to blend the live-action model into the newspaper poster backdrop, background clutter had to be cleaned away, followed by adding cracked walls, lightning particle effects, and carefully rendered ground shadows so that it truly felt like standing in a storm-impacted racecourse. The typography was meticulously designed based on vintage newspaper fonts, where the black, red, and yellow color palette gave the visual massive punch. The final texture of the leg Stockings relied on targeted darkening and sharpening in post-production—a technique demanding great patience—yet the resulting grand atmosphere fits the end-of-century era remarkably well. Seamlessly bridging real-world shooting and post-production CG effects is precisely what attracts me most to in-depth cosplay.