With the exception of a brief moment of weakness during the recent Star Trek Online beta test, I’ve been MMO free since kicking the Warcraft habit a year and a half ago. I don’t miss the games at all, but I still like looking at the character designs that populate the various games in the genre. Apparently E2046 does as well, as they’ve turned time and again to MMOs for inspiration, and so here we have Zabrina, their latest figure.
Zabrina comes from the free-to-play MMO Cabal Online. When one looks at Zabrina, it may come as no surprise to learn that Cabal Online comes from Korea, as one of the most common (and best) aspects of Korean MMOs is scantily-clad warrior girls. I really wish that American developers would take note of that design philosophy.
She’s part of E2046’s ORI lineup, which is their series of home-produced figures. Sculpted in 1/5 scale, she stands an imposing 26 centimeters tall to the top of her head and just over 34 centimeters to the highest point of her shield. Her spread-legged stance gives her an impressive sense of presence, and she demands a good bit of shelf space due to her sword and pose.
She arrives in disassembled form, but everything fits together easily and intuitively without any noticeable gaps or seams, no glue required. Her base is a straightforward black rectangular slab with one hole for a foot peg to hold her upright.
Like many female characters in MMOs – particularly Korean ones, as mentioned – her armor seems to be mainly cosmetic rather than functional, with lots of exposed skin and suggestiveness. It’s a great design choice and her costume is perhaps my favorite part of this figure, particularly the thong back. It gladdens me that E2046 and the Queen’s Blade franchise both know how to dress girls up for combat.
Zabrina has something of a steely but placid expression on her face, and I think I’d prefer a more emotive look. Then again, she’s a tank type; back in Warcraft, the DPS would always be asking for damage meters and the healers would track overheal but there wasn’t much for tanks to get excited about, since either the healers healed you and you lived or the healers didn’t heal you and you died. I played a feral druid alt and tanking was maybe the least exciting party role to me; most of it was backing my bear’s ass up against a wall and spamming mangle and swipe and praying that the group’s healer didn’t suck.
If her armor is my favorite part of this figure, the pose is a close second. She seems to be foregoing the use of her shield here, but she still looks like a badass. She is not overly musclebound but still features a powerful build, which is a nice change from all the skinny-bodied, large-headed anime figures that I’ve got on my desk here.
The paintwork is outstanding. Her armor has a lustrous, metallic finish, and the charcoal gray and green color scheme is visually striking.
Zabrina’s a great figure, and as long as E2046 makes figures that looks as good as this one, I’ll keep buying them. Looking at E2046’s ORI page, they’ve got several other figures that look interesting. Their rendition of Saber looks promising, and I’ve always liked seeing reinterpretations of characters. I’ve got the feeling that Saber purists and Magna Carta 2 fans won’t be pleased, though. I’ve got their upcoming Misato figure preordered and she’s looking fantastic. I’m sure Misato purists won’t be pleased by her either, though. I’m not as enthused about their upcoming Miss Nobody figure; she looks more like Hakufu to me. Maybe if she weren’t wearing pants. Speaking of no pants, Ming Yue looks very promising; her pose complements Jian Xue perfectly. I’m not really digging Julia or Gianna much.
This figure from cabal is nice! I’ve never seen this figure before prior, not at the usual online store I patronize. Great stuff!
I’ve always like the character design of korean games. They are quite strong in this area or rather the Asian like these sort of designs. US would prefer designs like GOW (Gears of War’s type) I guess. And Jap goes for Anime sorta graphics. I think it’s a trend and marketing thingy.
Great photos!
Geh Cabal…horrid F2P game…Well its nice it atleast managed to inspire something nice like this it seems. :p
I love the lighting you used in the first shots here Tier…Even if I’m not a big fan of her face I still love how you made her look!
Ah but yea I’ve been away from WoW for about 6 months myself and I can’t say as I miss it…Waiting on TERA and B&S though (Yes more Korean games with our beloved skimpy female clothing! :p)
Great job with the photos and lighting! Makes the figure look even more dynamic. It’s hard to gauge the size of the figure from pictures without reference, I wouldn’t have imagined it be that big!
I agree that the face could’ve used a bit more emotion though!
We need more figures dressed like this. LOL
>> softz
I tried out Lineage II solely on the strength of the character designs. I’ve always thought that a game that combined World of Warcraft’s gameplay with the L2 character models would be my favorite MMO of all time. It is too bad that Blizzard seems to have moved towards putting everyone in drab gray and navy blue uniforms in Wrath of the Lich King (or so it seems from what I’ve seen of it).
>> Danny Choo
Thanks!
>> Ashlotte
I’m guessing most of the F2P games aren’t very good … I tried out 2Moons for an hour or so and it seemed fun for the time, but I’m not really sure I’d want to play longer than that. I saw a short preview of TERA on Gamespot and it looks like something I’d be interested in, though XD
I’m thinking I’m going to roll with funky lighting more often … I took the shots with plain lighting and when I checked the product page on the E2046 site, I realized that my photos looked almost the same as theirs. I don’t think there’s a lot of point to posting photos that look exactly like the ones that’ve already been published and it’s not nearly as fun to shoot.
>> VF
Thanks! Indeed she is big … I need to clear some space for her, I’ve got the same problem with Collet, too. And I definitely agaree that we need more figures dressed like this … outside of the Queen’s Blade stuff, there seems to be a shortage of half-naked armored warrior girls (someone should make a half-naked armored Saber, that would have the potential to be one of the most awesome figures in history).
Hot Damn!
Havent seen such a sexy Gathering figure in quite a while!
They actually nailed down the “realistic” look quite well.Kudos to them since its alot harder to sculpt a “realistic” face than a random anime one.
Was there ever female armour that wasnt worn to amake your enemy pay attention to your boobs?
Oh, this is a must have definitely. The expression maybe doesn’t tell much (something very common, at least for me) but the armor and body looks great.
Very nice!
I like thie figure. And her eyes… uff xDD
And nice pictures as well.
Great photos! ORI MMO based figures all look really nice. Some of the Lineage 2 Elves are stunning.
I’m looking forward to seeing Misato photos too.
I have avoided all MMORPGs ever since the days of Ultima Online. My first experience with them wasn’t exactly pleasant!
But I may give FFXIII a shot simply because the levelling system sounds interesting and I have a chance to get onto the beta.
I was never too fussed on the ORI line myself. Their Kanu was quite interesting, and it was one of their first kits but I noticed that it was kitbash. In fact, the Ms Nobody you mentioned probably looked like Hakufu because they used a Hakufu model as a base.
It can be quite interesting trying to work out what they used for their ORI figures tho. I have a few ideas on your Zabrina as well!
Their saber is easy enough
>> Blowfish
That’s one of the things I like best about the ORI Darkness and Elegance figures, is that they go for a more realistic look. And yeah, I think there was … Saber wears it -_- I’d like to see an ecchi figure of Saber in armor … Daiki Kougyou had a chance but they blew it. I wonder if Type-Moon put out a moratorium of hentai figures of Fate/stay night characters? It’d be sorta wacko if they did, given FSN’s origin as a porno game.
>> Alex
It is! She looks kinda like I did when the pallies in the raid refused to give the DPS salv … or when the one guy in the raid that you know can’t control his ghost gets shadowed by Gorefiend and you know you’re going to wipe …
>> GREW
Thanks! I’ve been looking forward to this figure for a while (the original release date was supposed to be back in late December, I think) and I’m glad that she turned out really nice.
>> BioToxic
Yeah, they do a great job with them. I’m looking forward to Orchid Seed’s upcoming dark elf figure, too. I’ve got this thing for female dark elves, ever since playing EverQuest.
>> gundamjehutykai
Haha, yeah … I remember getting PKed in that game … getting my house cleaned out. Can’t say I miss UO much at all.
Yeah, Saber’s pretty obvious … Devil Girl comes from Triptych, I think … Asagi is straight from a CG (wish they’d done a different design for her face) … not sure where the Chinese girls come from, they look a lot like Dynasty Warriors characters to me but there do not appear to be many female characters in those video games.
You know what else is interesting? Reading the E2046 forums and blog comments and trying to identify posters by the negativity and whining in their comments. You know how some marine biologists can identify specific whales just by listening to whale songs and such? I’m getting to the point where I can skim a post and think to myself, “I know who this person is” without looking at the poster’s name.
Hell yeah !!! She rocks !!! Good buy you got there.
Indeed Korean characters design for MMO and RPG are so much greater than American.
We need exposed warrior girl with a cosmetic plate armor and a huuuge sword 😀
But well, like i said in a post on my own this saturday, i’m off with MMO’s.
Anyway too bad i stopped my buying for now or i would love to have her exposed to my living room.
She stand impressively, love it.
Cosmetic plate is a good way to put it, it’s much classier than bikini plate and avoids the negative connotation XD I’m hoping that Blizzard puts the cosmetic plate armor back into World of Warcraft in the next expansion; if they do, I might even think about possibly giving it a try. Maybe.
dang, 1/5! would love to see her in person. for some reason all figures look to me like 1/8 unless i have a visual reference ^^;
and she’s supposed to be a tank? to hell with plate mail i guess 😛 i always wanted to main tank a raid boss, but alas… by the time i had a max level warrior it was on a different server and i wasn’t raiding anymore anyway.
really like what you’ve been doing with your photos… i’m hoping i can churn out something a little different for nanoha… prolly not thou ^^;;;
Very nice shadow and highlight balance on these.
>> meronpan
She is gloriously large XD That’s another thing I like about E2046’s ORI stuff, they generally make everything in 1/6 scale or bigger.
I never did raid as a tank, not even Karazhan … I think my druid could’ve done it but I wasn’t much interested in doing pickup groups. In fact, by that time, I wasn’t much interested in running Karazhan at all. I mainly raided on my shaman, and since enhancement shaman were sort of a rarity on the Alliance side and since windfury totem brought the melee players to climax, I could get into raids without being in a raid guild. I had to switch over to healing when we started going through Black Temple though and that really got me burned out.
I’m trying to experiment with some different things since I’m thinking I’m overusing the same old black and white stuff. However, I spent a couple days this week shooting photos and out of a hundred pictures, I liked maybe five of them and there’s maybe five or six more that I can run through Photoshop to make them usable. The rest are junk so I’m going to have to think up something different and shoot again.
>> super rats
Thanks! I think I like the warmer pictures a lot more than the other ones … I might take that approach more often.
Magnificent shadows that gives a warmly atmosphere and perfectly highlight the body. You become an expert in this area 😉
About the figure, i think she’s successful in any point of view. Armor painting is incredible.
Flawless work of E2046 don’t even surprise me. They do marvels especially for their ORI ranges and it’s very difficult to resist the buying temptation.
Thanks! It is indeed difficult to resist … I’ve got Misato preordered, I’ll probably get their rendition of Saber unless it comes out really weird, I’ll certainly get Ming Yue, and the panda girl is looking pretty cute, too.
I’m a big fan of E2046’s ORI figures, but I passed on this one (not really sure why). I actually really like Miss Nobody, but that’s probably because I have a thing for gunslinger chicks. Plus, anyone that has the audacity to wield a revolver in one hand is automatic win in my book lol.
Girls with guns are <3 I'm looking forward to a lot of their stuff, though it kinda seems like their Saber/Claire mashup is on hold, and I don't think their new dark magician figure is as good as their old one.
I contemplated getting that Dark Magician, but I probably won’t. I look at a lot of their stuff and really want it, but then I look at my bank balance and realize it probably wont happen. Yet anyway.
Yeah, I’m probably going to pass too, I don’t really have a lot of room for two-figure dioramas. I’m definitely looking forward to Ming Yue, wacky Saber, and maybe their Black Rock Shooter (though admittedly, I’m more interested to see if it causes any drama in the figure collecting community; I live to witness drama).
Which Saber?
I will never understand the excitement over BRS……….
I see they have a bunch of upcoming Sabers, but I’m not sure which one would warrant the use of “wacky” lol. I have the one with that dark red dress/coat thingy pre-ordered, but the others don’t appeal to me. I’m very picky about my Sabers lol. Though I do like that 1/4 scale one…………
It’s this one here. Strange-looking, no?
Yeah, I’m sorta mystified by it myself. I kinda like the idea of an anorexic girl in booty shorts, a bikini top, and with scars, but I’m really surprised that it caught on the way it has. I don’t really understand the excitement over Dead Master though, since I don’t really see anything about her character design that appeals to me, but I think I’m in the minority of figure collectors there.
Hmmm, nope; I don’t like that Saber.
Yeah, it’s definitely strange. I like it cuz it’s really offbeat and I like Hyung Tae Kim’s art, but I don’t think it’s going to be a very popular figure.