Dollfie Dream Airy!
Only a couple days ago I received my first limited Dollfie Dream, Neris. Today I got my second limited Dollfie Dream, Shining Hearts Airy! They are from the same game and were both sculpted by the same artist, so they go together.
I'm so glad I was fortunate enough to get both Neris and Airy. I won Airy through Kerbey Lane Doll Shop, which is why she took a little longer to arrive, but they shipped her out really fast - faster than I expected.
Here are some photos from the box opening.
This time it was a simple brown box, but a little bigger than the last one.
She has a cute "cat-like" smile. :3
She's finally out of the box and bag. Her eyes have a bit of a "pearl" effect to them.
She comes with a lot of items. A basket (like Neris), a book with real (blank) pages, boots, a white dress with a lovely coat and hat, and a nice blonde wig. Volks really puts a lot of attention to detail. The book is fully stitched with a working buckle/strap. The basket is real, not plastic.
Here are a couple quick shots!
Dollfie Dream Neris!
After much luck and waiting, my first complete limited Dollfie Dream has arrived, a Shining Hearts Neris! She was delivered safe and sound with a box full of goodies.
When the Dolpa 25 lottery started I didn't think I was going to be able to get anything. I figured I had no chance when I heard how popular Neris was. I entered for her twice. When I got the Volks email saying I won, I didn't know if it was real.
However, here she is! Here are some quick box opening pictures.
You can see some of her face looking out from inside the box.
She came with a lot of items. Even a little basket. The hair is nearly impossible to get on her head as is her default top.
Here are a couple quick shots of her.
More Loot!
I got my boxes from Amazon today. They contained some anime, manga and camera items. A couple things I needed and some just for fun.
After reading the first issue of Cat Paradise, I wanted to read more. The style is really clean and expressive and the story is cute and interesting. I tend to collect a lot of the work of artists I like so I can study their style more. So I picked up the rest of the Cat Paradise series. If you love cats and students fighting monsters, this might be up your alley.
Next are a couple of Blu-Ray anime. Anime on Blu-Ray is becoming more common now, so I'm glad to see that. This time I picked up the second movie to the redone Evagelion series, Evangelion: 2.22. I was/am a big fan of the original series so this was on my wish list for a while. I'm eager to see this one since my favorite Eva character, Asuka, makes her appearance.
Ga-Rei Zero is a newer series for me. I watched it recently on Netflix and was hooked. I love this series! It's very well done, in my opinion. It's a friendship story surrounded by monsters and action with a little comedy. I certainly recommend it. Even though I have already seen it, I still wanted to have it for my collection. I'm sure I'll watch it again.
Lastly for the anime is High School of the Dead. I wasn't too keen on the manga, which I picked up a while ago, but I heard good things about the anime. I only watched a couple episodes and I must agree. It's much better. I really like it in fact. Can't wait to finish it.
Finally, I also picked up some camera gear. Thanks to a suggestion from a new friend, I bought a flash remote trigger set and a flash stand/umbrella set by Cowboy Studio. This will (hopefully) allow me to use my flash off to the side, instead of dead center, and have it diffused with the large umbrella. I'm still learning how to take good pictures. I hope this will help out.
That's it for now, but I have more coming up in the next couple days. Be sure to check back.
Desk Diary 7-21-2011
There are a couple recent items to mention. First, if you have a keen eye you may notice a different monitor on my desk above. A couple weeks ago my 24" Samsung LCD monitor died on me.
The monitor just went black with no fanfare. At first I thought it may be my video card, but after testing with a spare monitor, I found that wasn't the case. So for a while I was stuck with a small, old, LCD from years ago. It was also only 4:3, and after using a 16:10 (widescreen) monitor for so long, it was hard to go back to. After some online research, I picked up a new 24" Samsung LED LCD monitor. Two days later it was returned. The LED backlight gave a blue tint to the screen and no amount of adjustments could get it to a point I was happy with. Maybe it was a lemon or just a low quality item, but I didn't like it.
Working with pictures everyday, I need a monitor that I am comfortable with. So again, I went online to research a new monitor. This time it was for a regular LCD monitor and not LED. Reviews for an HP 25" 16:9 LCD monitor came up and seemed like a decent choice. It also happened to be on sale at Best Buy. Even more luck would have it that the Best Buy near me was the only one to have it in stock in the area.
In fact, it was the last one in stock! Was it fate? After getting it home and setting it up, I was much more pleased with the screen's colors compared to the LED monitor before it. So this will be a keeper. It's the first HP and gloss screen monitor I have owned.
Last month it was announced that the Dollfie Dreams would arrive from Japan before the original time-frame of August. Volks USA later announced that they received them on July 1st. They still had to go through all the orders before they could be shipped, which took a couple weeks. Yesterday I finally received a shipping notice for my DD Neris! She will be here on Tuesday the 26th. The other one I won, Airy, will arrive about a week later, since she was won through a Volks retailer.
I also picked up some other items. A couple books and a few items from Volks for my incoming Dollfie Dreams. I also have another package coming from Amazon and yet another from Hong Kong. Expect posts for all that soon.
Mirai Suenaga Figma
Danny Choo is just your average guy that started a blog and created his own mascot. He's a fan of anime, manga and Japanese culture. He also collects Dollfie Dreams and anime/manga figures. He shares photos that he takes of Japan and provides a lot of information about the country to those that follow him. He has become so popular that his mascot/character, Mirai Suenaga, was recently released as a figma by the Good Smile Company. Mirai is just a "forever young" 17 year old girl and Danny is currently working with several people and companies to spread her all over the place, from clothes to games and more.
Danny is a hard-working guy. He's gone from a simple blogger to someone that many people follow around the world. It's not his popularity that I find interesting, or even so much that his mascot has become popular enough that she has had a toy made after her. If you read his posts or see some of his seminars he tells you about how he came from nothing, had a not-so-great childhood, deals with a condition and yet he never stops pursuing his dreams. He pushes himself, stays focused, learns, and does what he needs to do. He's determined and ambitious. He tries to tell others that anyone can do the same. He tries to share what he's learned and inspire others. I think that's pretty rare today. He seems to be such an average, fun-loving, down to Earth guy that loves life, no matter what it throws at him. Danny is one of the few people I look towards to inspire me to keep moving forward. Looking at his posts, seeing his journey and progress, is really inspiring and it sometimes gives me that kick I need to keep going.
To help remind me I ordered his Mirai figma. I think it just shows how anyone can succeed if they keep at their goals. The Mirai figma is cute and fun to play around with, but having her on my desk is a great reminder of what is possible if you work hard enough.
Wacom Cintiq
A great big package arrived today. It's something I hinted at and should have gotten a long time ago. After drawing with pencil and paper for more than 25 years, I finally make the move to digital and am now the proud owner of a Wacom Cintiq 12WX.
Until now, for most of my work, I've been drawing on paper, inking with transparent vellum and then scanning that into the computer for coloring. It's been a usable method, but it has some drawbacks. For one I'm not very good at inking and using the transparent vellum costs a lot of money. I would also go through Micron inking pens pretty regularly. Even then I would still have to do a lot of post work in PhotoShop to clean up my work before coloring.
Many artists today work purely digitally on their computer with a Wacom tablet. Many (many) years ago I bought a very small entry level Wacom called a Graphire. It had a drawing area of about 4x3 inches. The problem for me was, as with most Wacoms, you have to look at the computer screen while you draw on the pad. That method was really hard for me to work with. Another problem was that I rotate my paper when drawing to get a better angle for curved lines, which you can't really do with a Wacom. This was a big hindrance with the Wacom tablet. So I never used it and continued drawing on paper.
With my recent desire to draw again, I decided it was time to look into going digital... again. Fortunately, Wacom now sells a line of tablets that have a screen in them. This way you can draw right on the tablet and see what you're drawing. It's the closest thing to drawing on paper digitally. They have a 21 inch model, but it costs a small fortune and that size would also be pretty hard to deal with. I don't have a large desk. So the 12 inch model seemed perfect for me.
After watching a ton of YouTube videos about it, I also bumped into speed drawing videos with a paint program I only heard of, Paint Tools SAI. It's a Japaneses made paint program that a lot of manga artists use. It also has a great feature to let you rotate the canvas as you draw. I feel this will be a great and natural tool for me. With both these new tools I think I can comfortable move to completely digital artwork. I'll make posts here showing my progress. Maybe I'll throw in a couple cute girl pictures too!
Black Gold Saw Figma
I received my third Black★Rock Shooter figma today. The mysterious Black Gold Saw! I must say, this is the coolest one so far. When watching the Black★Rock Shooter anime you see BRS fight a silent but deadly character. She's Black Gold Saw and her design is really one of my favorites.
She has a HUGE sword with a skull on the end of the hilt. It really does look like a gold "saw" with the serrated teeth. The character herself has long hair split into two movable parts. The rest of the hair is rubber and catches dust like no tomorrow! She has large "skeleton-like" hands that come in many optional poses. My favorite part is her legs. They have these really cool armor parts to them, yet they still look almost futuristic. The horns on her head are semi-transparent.
Overall she's really well painted. Mine came with some chips in her right stocking, but overall it's the same figma quality you'd expect. My pictures don't really do it justice.
Black★Rock Shooter Figma
The Black★Rock Shooter characters have really great designs and when I first saw these figma figures I knew I had to get them. I got both Black★Rock Shooter and Dead Master. Oddly enough, Dead Master was harder to find than BRS. These are my first figma figures so I wasn't totally sure if I'd like them.
They are very poseable and well made. They are packed with optional faces, hands, a stand and other goodies. The BRS figma even came with a DVD of the OVA anime. It's even subtitled in English. They kinda remind me of the action figures I used to get as a kid, but these are collector quality. They are highly detailed and painted really well. They are even packaged really well. I'm sure I'll be getting more figma figures in the future.
iPad Get!
This device should not need any introduction. While I don't use a Mac, this iPad will be a great assistant in my workflow. With it I'll keep track of my projects and goals, write down story ideas, sketch out designs and of course have easy access to the internet.
I always had some kind of portable device to keep me organized and to do minor computer actives while not at my main computer. It started with the Sharp Wizard (if anyone even knows what that is) then a Palm PDA and eventually a couple Windows CE devices. In more recent years I've had laptops for this. They are also great to be able to check the internet from anywhere in the house over Wi-Fi. Since I pretty much live on the internet now (who doesn't) it's almost a necessity to always be connected.
A MacBook Pro was the first real laptop that I had, which was later replaced by an iBook, but a couple years ago the screen died. Recently the iBook was replaced with a Dell Netbook. It did the job and the smaller size was really convenient. However, when I found out about the iPad I knew it would be a perfect replacement. I don't need a full computer to just surf the internet. With the iPad the biggest thing for me was the "instant on" factor. Laptops need to be booted. Sure, sleep mode is a little faster, but not instant. It's one of those things you don't realize how useful it is until you have it or lose it.
If I need to check something real quick, I don't have to boot my main computer, just turn on the iPad. Bam! There it is. The simple interface and slew of apps really offer something for any activity I need.
I also bought a stylus. While I won't use it to draw final images, to use it as a sort of digital sketchbook will certainly lower the stacks of paper and sketchbooks I have all over. Who knows what else I may use it for when I dig through some of the apps out there.
Radeon 5870 Graphics Card
Received my new Asus Radeon Matrix 5870 Platnum (that's a mouthful) today! Total geek moment. Now maybe I can actually run Final Fantast XIV!
When building my current computer I bought two Nvidia 8800 GTS cards and set them up to run in SLI mode. This setup had some advantages, but also gave me a lot of trouble. A lot of game don't work with SLI, so I often had to turn it off. After a while I just gave up switching between the two settings and left it off. However, with Final Fantasy XIV around the corner I knew it was time to upgrade, but also I wanted to go back to a single card.
After some research the Radeon 5870 seemed a good fit, but which one? There are a ton of different versions of the same card! Some companies I never even heard of. Asus, however, is a brand I've dealt with a lot over the years. A lot of my past custom-built computers have Asus motherboards.
This Asus version of the 5870 is already over-clocked and tweaked beyond the standard card design. I don't tend to over-clock my computers, but I wanted to get something that was as powerful without spending a lot of money on it. So I got the Asus ROG Matrix 5870 Platinum. A long fancy title, but it has a lot of good modifications to the standard 5870.
Here are some shots of my two old cards.
This card has a nice light for the name on the side of the card. It changes color depending on the load, but since my case is closed I never see it.
Right out of the box the benchmark numbers were a lot higher than before. With some of the games I tested I was able to put the settings much higher. I think it was a good upgrade. For now...