Tag Archives: Random Thoughts

Random Thoughts IV – BlazBlue Impressions, Figure Photo Reshoots

written on July 5, 2009 by Tier

2009 is a good year for fighting games, with Street Fighter IV released for consoles earlier in the year, The King of Fighters XII scheduled for later this summer, and now we have a spiritual successor to Arc System Works’s Guilty Gear X in BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger. Players of Guilty Gear will feel right at home with BlazBlue, as many of the basic game mechanics have transitioned to the newer game. I’m not very good at BlazBlue (or any fighting games, really), so I can’t speak to the more advanced fighting concepts. Thus far I’ve played primarily as Noel, the ever-polite, painfully shy grammaton cleric, but from what I’ve seen each character possesses his or her own unique moveset and quirks. This is a good thing since unlike other contemporary fighting games, BlazBlue’s playable roster is comparatively short at twelve characters.

The game uses character sprites rather than 3D models like Street Fighter IV, and they look superb. Even better is the game’s audio. The game features surprisingly good English voice acting; I usually prefer Japanese voices for Japanese games, but this time I’ve kept the language set to English. The music is awesome and is of the same theme as Guilty Gear – that is, the soundtrack principally comprises thrashing, churning operatic heavy metal. Oriental Flower – Litchi’s theme – is my favorite song, but the soundtrack is outstanding in general. Aksys Games has generously included a copy of the soundtrack with the first production run of the game.

I spent some time this holiday weekend reshooting some more old figures to replace some of my poor-quality pictures. Old and new pictures of Gwendolyn:

Gah. Jesus that looks awful. Newer picture uses the black background that is in almost all of my recent figure reviews:

Old and new for Sasara:

I wonder what I’m going to do with all that fabric. On a happier note, I think I’ve figured out how to get a decent white background without massively blowing out the highlights on my figures:

I’ve got a bunch of stuff due in on Monday. I hope the post office guy is driving a pretty big truck.

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Preorder Outlook II

written on July 1, 2009 by Tier

Didn’t I just do one of these?
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Random Thoughts III

written on June 22, 2009 by Tier

This figure of a disheveled maid in a state of profound distress (and undress) has gone up for preorder recently, and I’m contemplating putting an order in for her. The problem is that she’s currently only available from Native’s website, and that means I’d have to go through a deputy service. In my experience, the markup for doing so is usually around 50%, so at 8000 yen, I’m looking at a final price of around $120. That’s a lot of scratch to drop on a 1/7 scale figure. On the other hand, money comes and goes and comes again but opportunities to get a figure like this are ephemeral indeed.

That said, if I do order her, I’m going to feel rather foolish if she gets a domestic release like Kotone Osaka (NSFW link).

Everyone’s seen pictures of Shoujo M already but in case anybody missed her, more pictures are up on AkihaHobby and Moeyo. Needless to say, both links are NSFW.

A bunch of reviews of Good Smile Company’s 1/4 scale Nanoha went up recently and I really like that figure, and since I like Fate better (with respect to character design, as I haven’t seen the anime), I was looking forward to seeing Nanoha’s counterpart. This image was the first picture I saw of GSC’s 1/4 scale Fate, and something didn’t look quite right with her. I once saw pictures of a strange form of cosplay, where people not only dressed up as anime characters but put on masks so that their faces looked like anime faces. There’s a Japanese term for this practice but I don’t recall what it is. Anyway, that’s what this Fate figure sort of reminded me of; she looks like a female bodybuilder wearing an anime cosplay mask. Maybe I’m seeing things that aren’t really there but my enthusiasm for this figure has dampened.

For someone who spends so much money on anime-related merchandise, I don’t actually watch a great deal of anime. The last series that I viewed in full was Beck, which curiously could lay claim to having both the best half-season and the worst half-season of any anime series I’ve watched, and the only show I’ve followed this year is Sora Kake Girl. I started watching Ga-rei Zero the other day and it’s a fun show so far. The first two episodes were rife with dramatic combat and the wanton spilling of blood and the third and fourth episodes spin the show’s direction into a much more lighthearted study of how the two main characters grew up together. I’m guessing that the show wasn’t super popular, judging by the lack of merchandising. More the shame, that.

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Playing With a Lightbox Part 2 (now with more Photoshop!)

written on May 23, 2009 by Tier

I started this blog in February to motivate myself to learn more about photography. I had picked up a new camera shortly before that to replace my seven year old, two-megapixel Canon A40, which sadly wasn’t up to the task of taking pictures at the size and quality I desire. As I quickly found out, my photographic knowledge and abilities weren’t up to the task either, and after looking back at my earliest sets of pictures, I think I’m going to re-shoot them. I’ve already taken some pictures of the Dark Magician. Here’s an old picture of her:


Dark Magician Comparison

Yucky. The cloth background just doesn’t work. New picture:

Dark Magician Comparison

I’ve been playing with the lightbox a bit more, having added another lamp, and while the results aren’t entirely what I’m looking for, I think they’re an improvement from what I had. I also came across a useful article on lightening the background using adjustment layers in Photoshop. I’m not sure if this is the best way to do it – my guess is that it’s not – but since it’s an improvement over what I had before, I suppose I’ll keep using it.

New Kokoro Picture

I was going to shoot Kokoro’s set and then I realized that one of the string ties on her bikini had fallen out. That’s the problem with cast-off figures, I wind up losing the parts that come off and I can never find them when I need them.

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Preorder Outlook

written on May 3, 2009 by Tier

A look ahead at the future of poverty.
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Random Thoughts

written on April 19, 2009 by Tier


In the past, I have sometimes been asked, “What were you thinking?!” In this post, I reveal just that, without organization or coherence.
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