mini photo report

For those who don’t know, Supanova is a pop culture expo held across Terra Australis. Last weekend was Melbourne’s turn to hold the event.

I managed to take a few photos here and there, I was mainly busy with events and helping out OzAnimart.

Of notable mention, Yuko Miyamura (Asuka of Evangelion) and Tiffany Grant (Asuka of Evangelion… in English) were in attendance. One of the highlights was getting signatures from them on various merchandise. They both held a Q&A session too, and Miyamura-san even performed a line from Asuka as she fought the mass production Eva circling over Unit 2. No photos of them tho, apparently not allowed to take photos with them ;_;

Anyway, below are some random photos, I’ll be uploading a photoshoot right after, which is not exactly the sort of photoshoots I normally do…

The guy in the light blue shirt is a fellow mate by the name of Pudding, you can visit his blog Crescent Elusion.

Congrats on getting second in the Cosplay Competition!

i<3u

Managed to get my girls some gifts in my busy schedule ^^;

Hope they like to share the bear too lol.

I thought about getting them cake, but I think I’ve been feeding them too much of it (in other words, I think I’ve been having too much cake…)

They look like they enjoy the bear :D
Though, will they share it nicely or not…?
Will I need to buy another bear? =/

Arturia seems to like the hearts, and Evelyn is quite content with it…even if she pretends not to.

Anyway, for those singles out there (technically me…), happy singles awareness day!

Dollfie Dream mini-gather

Today was quite eventful :D
A few friends decided to bring their dollfies along to mingle with each other, naturally I decided to let one of mine come along too. The location? OzAnimart, a lil anime store in Melbourne Australia.
Evelyn has visited OzAnimart before, so I guess it’s Arturia’s turn to socialise.

As I wasn’t expecting any photos, I didn’t bring my regular gear, instead I had to make do with my lil old faithful, the Nikon Coolpix P2 snapshot camera.

I borrowed Will’s dollfie’s black wig and tried it on Arturia, the result was pure sex (well… I thought so).

The next few photos include the other girls. DDDy Yoko belongs to a friend, and Aisha (DDDy Kanu) belongs to Will.

So ya, overall a fairly fun day, always feels nice having friends who are getting into dollfies :3

The girls were also quite a hit with the customers who came into the store, one of which thought they were on sale XD

Reload! Reload!

22nd January was the date for @Can (Atcon), a small convention in Melbourne, Australia.
That was also the date my friends, Rinka and Maroon Beret, accompanied me in our S2 Café butler outfits. Our goal: to have a dollfie photoshoot!

Rinka carried Saori, I carried Arturia and Maroon Beret was in charge of the photographic equipment load. The plan was to rendezvous at my place before moving out to the CBD. It was a hot day so we were in for quite a trip of painful walking and fanning ourselves with moé Japanese fans…

We arrived at the point and scouted the immediate vicinity for potential photo opportunities. LZ were found and we set up the tripod and equipment, ready for war!

Well anyway, it turned out alright :3
Unless of course, someone decides to have a poke at what’s going on.

Alcohol powered moé

Second petite post, and a little longer too~
Got some new arrivals which I wanted to show along with some of my new obsessions!

First thing up, I got some of my new figures including Ciel from Kuroshitsuji [Square-Enix], Saber Super Movable Nendoroid [Good Smile Company] and Dead Master figma [Max Factory] to name a few.

As a rule, and also to limit my spending… I only get nendoroids that possess the =_= face if I like it. This Saber just so happens to have one!

Ciel was actually an impulse buy, I haven’t seen Kuroshitsuji but I know very well of Ciel’s appearance as a trap. I guess I couldn’t resist ^^; Oh that dress… :3~

Now on with some new obsessions of mine. Kamen Rider, aka Masked Rider has become something I’ve been investing quite a bit of time and money into. I just like to make it clear that I’ve been watching the Japanese shows, not the US incarnations. What do I have to show for such interest? These…

Now I can henshin too~! Wearing one of these turns you into a little kid again.

My favourite so far is Kamen Rider Decade, possibly because of the camera/photography motifs and the fact that you get to see all the previous kamen riders battling it out. Think Super Robot Wars but with Kamen Rider instead.

Another thing I’ve recently enjoyed a lot is, well, hazelnut liquor called Frangelico. A friend introduced me to it and I’m hooked. It tastes so yummy~~
Put it in with milk and you got yourself the best milk ever! I hate milk by itself but this just makes it into the milk of the gods!

Last thing I wanted to announce, PRE-ORDERS FOR THE iDOLM@STER 2 ARE OPEN!

I’ve already pre-ordered my copy from AmiAmi, so I’ll be looking forward to it next year. Well…most of it anyway.

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~

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!

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 ^^;