Snow trip!

While it’s blistering hot in Japan (presumably), we’re enjoying winter down in Australia, or at least, some parts of it that aren’t in constant “summer”.

We’ve taken this opportunity where some friends and I were free on a weekend to take a trip to Mt.Buller, a popular ski location for locals and foreigners alike. It’s a 4 hour drive from central Melbourne to the mountain, so we did a one day trip, with dollfies in tow. Three to be exact, I’ll be introducing a new friend, Rina. Over the course of many months I’ve managed to convince a friend of mine to also be a proud owner of a dollfie.

The trip was quite tiring and it didn’t help that the weather was being especially unruly. It was raining, overcast, and misty. The rain was the problem, but we’ve found that the Volks’ violin dollfie carry case are especially hardy in keeping the dollfie dry, but the case itself was one soggy piece of equipment. Thankfully it dries out fairly easy.

Anyway, less blabbing, more photos.

Here’s a stereogram for good measure, left image is slightly blurry tho =/

Sorry about the relative lack of photos, the weather wasn’t happy, and we were tired and hungry :(
Hope you enjoyed the photos!

Sakura and Arturia

In this photoshoot, I decided to re-visit the location used for Alter’s Saber Alter and the solo Arturia. Instead of going at it alone, Arturia is accompanied by a friend’s Dark Sakura!

For those who don’t recognise the location, it is St.Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne. On my previous photoshoot with the two, you can see that the weather was quite uncooperative that day. We decided to come back another time. This time, the weather was too good… The harsh sunny conditions provided bright reflected light from nearby buildings, which created a weird mix of shad with highlights =/

Anyway, onto the photos!

I’d like to point out that about this time is where those inquisitive Chinese tourists arrived, mirorring what happened the other times I was last there. A group of children ran up and started to stare in amazement, one yelling to her mother “Barbie! Barbie! Barbie!” a few times ^^;

To be honest, I’m not really 100% happy with the last shot as it doesn’t have the same impact as the first. The weird lighting on their faces was due to a building nearby which was cream in colour and reflected most of the light from over the hedge to their heads @_@;

Anyway, that’s that! Hope you enjoyed the photos~

Shoujo S

Based on the illustration by Hanaharu Naruko, this little figure is delicately sculpted by Max Factory under Native Web.

I decided to take photos of it indoors, as taking it outdoors might be a little complicated…
Only issue is my indoor photography skills are lacking, considering I don’t have the right indoor equipment.

Also, thanks to Tokyo Hunter for helping me acquire this figure.

What? Where’s the rest?? Well, you can view the rest on my figure.fm post.
Why am I doing this? Well, I don’t really have a proper NSFW system implemented here so that’s why I’m using figure.fm for now~

Enjoy!

Stereoscopic images

3D vision, the new consumer sensation. You see it everywhere, from the big screen cinemas, to smallest hand held console, it seems to be everywhere all of a sudden.

Some of you may have encountered some images in the past that have two images side by side. These are more likely than not, stereograms. For this specific type of image, one needs to cross their eyes so that both images merge into a single image in the centre.

During my outdoor photoshoot of Arturia and Sakura (which will be posted soon!) I took a few photos of them together, with a slight shift in angle. Once I was at home processing the photos, I noticed that they had a similar quality to stereoscopic images I’ve seen, so I tested them out. To my surprise, they worked! I’ve created my first accidental stereogram!

If you’re new to all this, before you click on the image and try it for yourself, I’ll let you in on my little technique which seems to work for me. Here’s a few steps:

• Focus on centre of the image, it’s best to keep the image small so make it easier on your eyes if it’s your first time.
• Put a finger in front of your eyes, between you and the image.
• While still focused on the image, you’ll notice that your finger is out of focus and that there’s two of them.
• Align the out-of-focus fingers so that each finger is in the middle of both sides of the image.
• Now here comes the tricky part, focus on the finger.
• You’ll now notice that the now out-of-focus image has combined.
• You can now move the finger away, but try to keep your eyes slightly crossed so that the image is still combined.
• Focus on the image without un-crossing your eyes and enjoy 3D!

Hopefully that helps ^^;

Now onto the accidental image:

Now, I tried to reproduce this with a figure on my shelf. It was quite a challenge without any specialised gear, or a tripod…

Hope you’ll enjoy those images :3

Sakura & Arturia’s playtime

Here we are at home, with a visitor of my friend and his Sakura to play with Arturia. Since they both have aprons of sorts, why not exploit it?

Not much explaining to do with this photoshoot, other than the backdrop could of been a little more classy… sorry about that ^^;

Again, with most of the photoshoots, I could really use a tripod.
Unfortunately for me, most of my spare funds go into figure collecting and bills.

Earlier in the day we were supposed to go outdoors with another friend (who is a regular on my outdoor photoshoot trips) to take some photos….but Melbourne being Melbourne, it was raining slightly throughout the day. So we had to cancel the photoshoot and do some other errands before going home…in the last 20 metres to the door it was raining cats and dogs @_@

Next up is the rescheduled photoshoot of the two lil girls in better weather conditions~
Look forward to it!

Evelyn’s new look

Well, these photos have been taken some time ago so I’m not so sure if you could consider this “new”.
Nonetheless, here’s Evelyn in her gorgeous scarlet dress.
The photos below have been washed out…not sure why I did it, but I did it. If you’re interested in the original photos, you can find them on the figure.fm post.

The clothes, wig and glasses were bought in Japan at the Volks showroom in Akihabara during the mad rush of Dollpa 22 Afterevent. Got there at approx 6am….and there was already a line there >.<
The MP5 was purchased on the second day of the Volks Kyoto showroom grand opening, which was our second day in Japan as well…or was it third? ^^;
The Glock 17 was bought locally from a hobby store :3
Her corset and boots are kindly borrowed from her roommate Arturia.
The stockings were kindly sent from HLJ with the help of Danny Choo :3

ToHeart2 Dollfie Cosplay

A while ago Danny Choo hosted the Miss Dollfie Summer 2009 event, and he has managed to secure some items as prizes too. One of which was the ToHeart2 clothes set by Azone courtesy of Hobby Link Japan.
Today we’ll be seeing Evelyn and Arturia as they try on some clothes they’ve never been in with the help of each other :3

I must say, it was quite embarrassing taking these photos, even when no one was watching me like the usual outdoor shots ^^;

Dollfie Photoshoot

Today we’ll be seeing Arturia Pendragon, a Volks DollfieDream2. These photos were taken waaay back when Danny Choo held the Miss Dollfie Summer 2009 on figure.fm. So, here’s the entries for Arturia who managed to claim 1st place. Grats to those who also competed!

This photoshoot was taken on the 5th August 2009 at St.Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne. For those who remember (possible none of you) I’ve also used this location for some other photoshoots in the past. One of which was the Saber Alter figure by Alter.

My photoshoots will prolly have a much more relaxed write-up thesedays, so I’ll only rant on things that I think should be addressed.
The photo above was actually being taken while a bunch of school kids were looking at me from behind. This is why I bring a friend, so he can get embarassed/deal with onlookers while I’ll just focus on the subject at hand :3 (I don’t wanna be lonely ;_;)

The above photo is most like the winning shot. It seems that everyone loves that particular photo, and it most likely comes down to the elegance it captures with the use of some photographic handiwork, especially depth of field and the rule of thirds. It’s still one of my favourite photos I’ve taken ever.

Now, I can’t remember the rules for entry, but we had to take some specific photos to be elegible for the competition. So below are some indoor shots along with the “bikini/underwear” requirement…

So there’s the photoshoot, and if you want to see the original post on figure.fm, just follow this link. Lastly, I’ll leave you with Arturia cuddling …herself?

Figure modding

It’s been a long time coming. Today I’ll be briefly going through the process of modding a Konami Mecha Musume trading figure. In an earlier post I went into details on another Mecha Musume, the T-34, so for a more in depth tutorial, go there since this post is mainly just an overview.

So, let’s get started!

The goal of this modding? To turn this German Sturmgeschütz III Ausf.G Mecha Musume:

The original figure

To a Finnish “Sturmi”. The differences between the two are quite large so I had to see what could be done to the trading figure to give it the same look.

The Tools

Before we actually begin, we’ll take a look at the tools and materials which I used.

• Putty – Mulliput Standard
• Acrylic Paints – Tamiya Color
• Wooden Stick – approx 2-3mm thick
• Strip of brass/metal – approx 5-6mm wide
• Wire – approx 1mm thick
• Hand Drill
• Hobby Cement – Tamiya Cement
• Cutter – small
• Sandpaper – high grit
• Cotton buds
• Acrylic Paint Thinner – Tamiya

Milliput Standard

An assortment of Tamiya Color

An arm to show the scale

The wire and hand drill

Preparation

First thing to do was to take apart the figure. It was a little hard since some parts were glued together, but nothing a little tug would fix…

Looking like a garage kit

Next up, the individual parts would need clean up before we can start anything. Using a high grit sandpaper, I gently sanded off the paint off flat surfaces while using the cotton buds soaked with paint thinner to strip off the paint off more curved surfaces like the arms.

Legs

One of the main changes is the side skirt armour that the German StuGs have, the ones in Finnish service didn’t have any so they had to go.

Legs without the side skirt (left) and without the mounting pegs (right)

Basically, I used some cutters to snip off the skirt armour and the mounting pegs, then sand down the paint. Next is to prepare the logs and the holders before we paint and glue it.

Before painting

Cannon

The cannon is also another area where significant modding was needed. To make clean up and painting easier, the cannon was split into three parts.

Ready for modding

This is where the wire and drill come in handy. Use the drill to well, drill a hole into both sides of the connecting faces of the cannon. This will allow the wire to slip in and keep both pieces steady when glue is applied.

Ready for glue when needed

Putty

Now that we have got the parts ready, it’s time for putty! The Milliput putty comes in two sticks which are mixed together in equal parts before the colours completely blend. The result is:

Ball-o-putty!

Two areas of the figure which will get the treatment are the cannon and the legs. The cannon will try and mimic the turret cement re-enforcement and the legs will have zimmerited sides to closely replicate the Finnish Sturmi.

Puttied up areas

Paint

The final step before putting the parts together is painting! I tried to mix the paints to get as close as the green used for the Finnish Sturmi, but I have no idea on the exact formula.

Before painting

Painted legs with logs glued on

Before getting the logs attached and any weathering

Final painted and weathered Finnish Sturmi

So there you have it, a conversion of a Mecha Musume trading figure.
Sorry for the sloppy write up, but I hope you enjoyed looking at how it was done.
There are still areas which I left out such as decals, but I haven’t found any Finnish armour decals anywhere, perhaps I’ll need to print my own…

Any questions feel free to ask and I’ll do my best to fill in the details.

Welcome to…

My desk!

Before I continue, Danny Choo has been generous enough to hold a competition. The goal is to upload your desk area, the criteria to win is… who knows?

For any of you who are curious enough to wonder what my work area looks like, wonder no further!

Behold! The Madness of Moé!

UPDATE: Thanks to Danny Choo! Seems like I came runner up!