EXPLOSIOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-->Terry Cruz and Old Spice LOLZ!<--

An unexpected surprise!!!

What I thought would just be another normal trip down to Little Tokyo turned out to be a lot more this time around. First off, for you to understand me better, I make a trip down there usually the 2nd to last and last weekends of the month to pick up copies of magazines, and any other additional things that catch my eye. Mainly 4 specific 'zines I pick up, 2 on one weekend and the remaining 2 on the next.

So for this week was the following. Nothing too out of the ordinary:That out of the way, what made this weekend extraordinary was what I found at AJ. What was included with some new shipped figures were some WonderFest specials!! The one that reeeeealy caught my eye was as follows:
Mio and Ritsu Nendoroids Live Stage Set! I can't believe that they actually had this there! And the last one as well!! (Although thinking about it, they were probably only able to catch 2 or 3 of them) It may have been a bit pricey, a big hit on my budget. Calculating it out though think of a price for 2 nendoroids, 2 di:stage basic sets, a specialized theme set, it being a limited item, and the effort getting it here, it may have been worth the price. Happy and sad at the same time b/c I was able to get it, but most likely I will not open it up.

If you were wondering, the other WonFes figures I noticed were the Saber Lily Distant Avalon (the one w/o the armor), and several Touhou 1/6 scale figures. Sorry no pics, AJ's rules and I respect that. I would've liked to pick up one of them also, Flandre Scarlet, but the K-on! Nendoroids and even one of these would've been sooooooooooooooo big of a hit on my account (each of the touhou figs were no less than $160).

And one other item I noticed was the Touhou Reimu figma, which was another surprise, but I wasn't ready to spend roughly 6 normal figmas worth for one of her.

Photo Challenges, Weeks 7,8, and 16

So here's my creative juices going on the photo challenge....challenge. I see this as a good time to make an additional blog to post these up in, but I'm struggling on a good blog name. So in the meantime, I'll post them here and move them once I have the other blog set up.

I'll cover some past week themes first:

Week 7: Lightness

Figure: Evangelion XX Chromosome Arael
"No Description"

Comment: In looking for a figure to use for the lightness theme, this one came to mind and I immediately made the shot. If I wasn't too rushed for time, I would've spent more time in taking a better shot. I still love this one though.

Week 8: Nature
Figure: Nendoroid Petit Churuya-san
"Churuya-san is awestruck by the tall tree and feels so insignificant standing next to it. Nyorooon~~"
Comment: Wanted to do a shot of this tree next to my house with the vines all wrapped around it. Churuya was handy at the time for the shoot.

I'll get around to doing the other past themes as well. I already have some good ideas I can do.

Here's the one for this past week:

Week 16: Wheels
Figures: Lucky Star Figmas + Ex Figma accessories
"The girls decide to head to school via a faster method"
Comment: The thought here was they are all traveling by means of wheeled accessories. I liked the idea but I think I overloaded it with all of them in a cramped area. But I spent quite a bit of time setting them up and saw it a waste not to use this. Well, a lesson learned.

This upcoming weeks theme is "Sunshine". I'll post my pic next weekend.

Weekly Photo Challenge Part 2

Read the previous entry first to know what's being mentioned in this one. This one's somewhat of a continuation...

I'll try this for the year, but since it's already April, I already missed a few weeks. I'll see if I can make some using those themes. Here're the previous themes since the beginning of this year:

04-09-2010 - 'Overcast'
04-02-2010 - 'Blurred'
03-26-2010 - 'Pleasure'
03-19-2010 - 'Children'
03-12-2010 - 'Nightlife'
03-05-2010 - 'Cleanliness'
02-26-2010 - 'Self-Portrait 2010'
02-19-2010 - 'Nature'
02-12-2010 - 'Lightness'
02-05-2010 - 'Surfaces'
01-29-2010 - 'Distant'
01-22-2010 - 'Damaged'
01-15-2010 - 'Slowly'
01-08-2010 - 'Bed Time'
01-01-2010 - 'Square'

I will try and see if I could do these in between the weekly ones.

Edit: I'll mark each one red as I complete the theme. Latest update: 4/24/10 I am now updating the past covered themes on the 2nd blog "Life at 6 Inches Tall"

Weekly Photo Challenges

Lately, I've been having thoughts on how to expand my creativity in taking photos. I have come across some sites that do things like weekly challenges on a random theme. I found these pretty interesting and thought to try and find a site or community making use of figures (and toys, for a more general topic). More specific, make use of figures/toys in weekly photo themes.

However, I didn't really find any...

Now I could start one up myself, but honestly, I wouldn't know if I would be able to manage it well. I guess I'd call myself more a participant rather than the initiator. So I will try something a bit different.

The one site that I have been eye'ing is one called "Photo Friday - The Weekly Photo Challenge". I won't participate directly on the site for now (maybe later on) but I will take their weekly themes and come up with some ideas using my anime figures to accomplish the theme. The whole reason I'm not submitting my pictures is because I should know the rules for submitting better before I do so. I'm going to try and use my other figures also, not just the Figma/Nendoroid/Revoltech crowd.

So then, as an example .... this week's theme is "Wheels". A themed shot showing my figmas rolling down the path on bikes, scooters, cycles (courtesy of the ex:figma accessories) would be nice. Or, my nendoroids entangled within the spokes of an actual bicycle. Well, that's the idea.

Since these are weekly, I'll plan out the week's theme then post it on the weekend along with the next week's theme. Hopefully this will stir up my creativity and produce interesting shots. I look forward to it!!!

Velvet from Odinsphere photoshoot

K, so I haven't done a lot of photoshoots with my figures lately so here's one with a figure I have been anxiously been waiting for and it just got shipped within this past week! Velvet from the PS2 game Odinsphere! This is a nice figure that will go well with my other Odinsphere figure, Gwendolyn!

W/O further ado, here are my pictures:

I combined photos as to not crowd up the post with so many picture images.

The next few are with Velvet w/o her "skirt" on. A bit on the ecchi side, but the protective plastic sheet was wrapped between her waist/butt area and her skirt, and I had to remove it by removing the skirt off first. I took these pics before I had placed her skirt back on to make the ones above and the detailed ones further down below.
More or less, this is my makeshift studio. Quick and dirty, but did a somewhat decent job with the pics.

Gotta love the effort in detail that was done on this figure. I fell in love with it when I saw it online and again when I saw it for real!

I couldn't resist w/ these two pictures (Hey I am a guy here!). Putting that aside, you still gotta love the details!

Ok, got the overall and the ecchi pics down, now to specific brief details:The face shows off a nice cool stare no matter what angle it's seen from and the accent of her hair adds to the charm of this very cute face! If you want more of my commenting of nice detail, notice her eyebrows not just a simple line. multiple lines!

Like I said, any angle...

The chain is actual links and wraps around her hands (more on the chain 2 pics down). They also include 2 transparent braces to put around her wrist. You can see it there. This holds the chain around Velvet's wrist as to not slip down. Her limbs are very slender and nice and if you can notice, they even get into the wrinkles in her finger knuckles.

The base is as such. The pegs don't super tightly fit into her holes; if I were to pick her up with her base still on it would probably loosen off one leg or drop. Otherwise, it still holds her up very sturdily.

Her chain was a bit of surprise when I had a look at it. It is a chain composed of individual links, not just some long preformed single plastic piece. In addition, It wasn't metal, but also pvc.

Finally, the few last pictures were taken as ideas for computer wallpapers. I currently have the third one as my wp.

And actually, I do have one confession to make: Although I do like this character, probably my favorite one from the game, I have never finished the actual game, let alone, get to the portion where I could play her storyline. I have a tendency of always playing an RPG game yet always stop midway and never get back around to finishing it up....I'm pretty bad at that....

Back from busy work

Ok, work has been very busy lately that I haven't been able to properly add posts here. Many long hours both during the week and the weekends. Fortunately, now there's some downtime that I can finally add posts again....but not right now. 'tis 12 in the morning and I found some short time to let you know that I am still here. A lot to post but little time so I will save it for tomorrow.

But to add at least one thing in this post, I was able to make a photo shoot of one of my latest figures:This is a quick pic that I did and love of the figure. I've been waiting for this one to come out and it's finally here! I'll post more pictures in a future post as well as catch up with what's been going on in this past month hiatus.