Category Archive

Sometimes, it’s good to just geek out. Do something rather silly in anticipation of getting something few others will have. Like when a certain big name producer of a big name game for a well known console comes into town to do a signing.

The Game? Metal Gear Solid 4

The guy? Hideo Kojima!

So, guess where I was this afternoon!! And check out what I got…

This is actually my second item signed by Kojima-san. The first was when he came down for the release of MGS3. I happened to be around at the time and snuck in a cheeky sign. That was fun because it was a lot more informal. Security was present but not as tight and the atmosphere was much more relaxed. Heck, I even managed to exchange a few words with the guy back then!

Compare to today, where it was done with almost military precision. The time was much more strict and only these covers could be signed, of which there were only 300 available (just don’t ask how I got mine). We were pretty much marched across and shoved through so the experience wasn’t so great. There was also the equivalent of the Beijing Olympics blue tracksuit torch guards around the guests on top of the HMV guards!!

Anyway, this was part of the MGS4 world tour. Hideo Kojima as well as 2 others came in and did their signing. Unfortunately, I was stopped before I could ask him the question which everyone (i.e. me) wanted to know: Was he making a Zone of the Enders 3??!! Damn tracksuit wannabes…

Aside from Kojima-san, there were 2 others present. One was the chief artist, Yoji Shinkawa:

And the other was a real cutie by the name of Yumi Kikuchi. Unfortunately, Yumi-chan was the last guest to sign and, thanks to the machine which kept everyone moving, I was unable to take any good shots. So you’re going to have to make do with some of the promo pics for when she was announced as the main basis for one of the “beauty and the beast” boss characters…

Damn security guards. Made me miss some good shots…

See?

The weirdest thing? I wasn’t initially going to get MGS4!!! The series lost my interest after #1. MGS2 was just bad and I don’t really enjoy 3 that much but the promise of some answers in the plot for the previous games as well as metal gear online was enough to sway me (I took part in the online beta test. Was pretty fun, even if it did take an age and a half to get login details!). Heck, stranger things have happened. The sole reason I bought MGS3 was because I got it signed by Hideo Kojima!

Not sure if I’ll get the game on release, but I will get it pretty soon.

My model building came to an abrupt halt yesterday when my airbrush broke. You heard right. It broke…

The nozzle which forces the air/paint mix snapped off as I was trying to unscrew it for cleaning, rendering it unusable.

I’ve already bought another one but it’ll take a few days to arrive so looks like I’m back to twiddling my thumbs and playing metal gear online till it gets here.

At least I can take the opportunity to upgrade my airbrush. My, now dead, old faithful was a sparmax DH-125. A gravity fed double action airbrush which I bought in a set with a sparmax compressor when I was last in Hong Kong. Pic below. RIP…

Not being well versed in the names of manufacturers of such tools, I had no idea who sparmax were. But a quick google search shows that they are a Taiwan based company which specializes in budget tools. You can check out their website and have a look. For those interested, my compressor is the TC-501

THe DH-125 is a really cheap airbrush (if you can find it) but it served me well for 2 years. The airbrush/compressor combo set me back just over £100 and you can probably find this airbrush online for around £20 or so. You can do quite a lot with it but we’ll see how it compares to my new one when it arrives.

Here’s a pic of the complete set

For those who have never used one, I guess I should explain some of the terms I used above.

Starting with the airbrush, A gravity fed airbrush is one where the paint is stored above the main body, hence the name as gravity is used to force the paint into the main chamber as opposed to suction feed airbrushes which store the paint in bottles underneath and allow the pressure difference when air is sprayed out to suck the paint into the chamber. My DH-125 had parts which allowed for both but I stuck with gravity fed as it’s easier to clean.

Double action refers to the lever (or trigger depending on the airbrush type) which controls the air flow. For my airbrush, you pushed the lever down to start the airflow and then pulled it back to mix in the paint. Hence, double action. The double action airbrushes allow for greater control over the amount of paint which goes through.

And, of course, there’s the compressor. After speaking to a couple of would be modelers who were considering buying an airbrush, I was amazed to find that they were looking at the actual airbrushed but completely forgetting about the source of the main component of what makes them work, i.e. the AIR!!!

Compressors are somewhat large, heavy and noisy devices which provides the airflow to carry the paint. I wouldn’t recommend ppl to get one unless they plan to paint a fair few kits in their time due to their costs as well as the points mentioned above. My compressor has helped me get through 10 kits so far with a lot more waiting in the wings so, for me, it was a wise investment, but it won’t suit everybody. An alternative is to buy compressed air cans from model shops but they tend to run out very fast so are only good for one model, possibly less.

My current sparmax still works luckily, so I can use it for my new airbrush when it arrives.

And what is my new airbrush? An Iwata Eclipse CS. It was recommended by Cody Kwok on his site and given that he is a fantastic painter, I reckon he knows what he’s talking about. I bought it off ebay for £63, which is quite a bit considering what I spent on my set initially, but contrast that to the retail price from some websites (£115) I think I got a pretty good deal out of it, even if it is second hand. There are some real pant-staining priced airbrushes out there as well. One really has to wonder if there is a need for a £230 airbrush (remember that you will need a separate compressor on top of that).

In any case, my new Iwata airbrush should arrive by the end of the week and I can pick up where I left off after a little test run. If any of you have any questions about the topic of airbrushes, feel free to ask and I will try to answer with my limited knowledge and experience.

I believe that a fair few visitors to this blog actually came from Figure.fm so you probably already know the news.

Danny Choo has decided to pull the plug on the figure.fm page and move the community over to his main page.

While I must admit that I disagree with the decision, I do understand the reasoning behind it.

I joined figure.fm a little over a year ago and it was always nifty seeing everyone elses purchases and it provided me with a good place to post my completed works and get opinions from people who had similar tastes to myself. In that respect, nothing will change with the move, but I will definitely miss the layout and general interface. It was slow to post but having large(ish) pics in the main page before going for the full sized ones. The new thumbnails are a bit too small to get a good idea of the figure.

Guess all this stuff is something to get used to. Is is true that the blogs and figures will get more exposure on the main page so I hope that the new visitors find something they like on my blog but I will always look back on my figure.fm days with fondness.

Farewell Figure.fm. You departed far too soon…

I managed to get a hold of a PC with a working internet connection temporarily so I can post something!!!

A fair few things happened while I was gone, Play.com live came and went at wembley and I was sorely disappointed in the whole thing. The only cool stuff at hand was soul calibur 4 (which only had 2 playable characters and was far from finished) and rock band (dammit, where’s the UK release?) the rest was totally forgettable. plus rock band taught us a lesson in what NOT to buy. don’t get the 360 version guys!! the controllers kept disconnecting so it was impossible to play the game properly for most ppl!

Heck, even the main stage was affected when they did a Rock band competition. One minute, the band was playing learn to fly by the foo fighters, the next minute, the game paused itself to wait for someone to reconnect their controller… Not a good sign for the 360. I also saw several frozen displays for 360 titles too. No red rings of death tho…

stuff started to happen in gundam 00 which has made me interested in the show again. Lockon, lockon!

and Sekirei was announced as having an anime series in production!! YAY!!!! Animated Tsukiumi!!! There will be hell to pay if they make this series suck *tries to forget the bad manga adaptations of similar shows, such as ikkitousen, tenjo tenge, air gear (for the fanservice)*

and while I was missing on all this, it was nice having a break from blogging and wondering what I would put up for the weeks post. Not that it means that I was putting my feet up and playing tonnes of video games… OK I was, but I have been doing some modelling too.

Wanna see?

(P.S. Regular blogging should recommence very soon (maybe). it took ages for my phone line to be connected but it should be plain sailing from here! I haven’t given up on this blog yet!!!)

Sorry to all those who enjoy my blog but I’m going on a (forced) short hiatus starting at the end of the week.

I’m in the process of moving to a new flat so I will be without an internet connection until everything is sorted out. Naturally, without internet I can’t really continue to post on my blog for a while. It won’t stop my model building though!

Hopefully, it won’t take long to sort things out and we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming! As compensation, I’m posting 2 figures up this time!!!

What? you want more? Tough. And be glad that you got these 2!! It took a great deal of strength to pry myself away from triggerheart Exelica! The game itself is just as great as I remember. Shame that the 360 pad is terrible for it. I need to learn to adjust. It’s embarrassing losing a life on the first stage when I can last up to the 4th before losing my first one on the Dreamcast version. I fully blame the pad!!

In any case, on with the figures!!

Discovered this while surfing Kotaku earlier. It’s part of a series of ads starring Tommy Lee Jones playing “alien Jones” as he discovers life in Japan. It’s part of a series of ads which were used to promote Suntory Boss canned coffee.

In this ad, he lands slap bang in the middle of Akiba and takes part in a cosplay photoshoot and is taught about moe by playing rock paper scissors with a girl in a maid cafe and being fed by said girl!

This was #12 in the series and you can find others around youtube but this one was the best, although #11, the onsen ad, was pretty good too!

Just a quick note to wish all the readers a happy new 2008. And thanks to all of you who helped make this blog what it is in this short space of time!

Regular blogging will commence soon, I think…

God I need to go here…

Details can be found at Gunota while more pics can be found

here

here

and here

I feel I could spend a day just watching the modelers build their kits while I *ahem* study their techniques!  Shame it doesn’t look like the shop caters for resin figure builders, but you can’t be too greedy!

So, the transformers comics signing was today and I nearly missed it!!! I’m usually too damn tired on the weekends to do stuff before 1pm but this time, I made that extra effort and it was worth it!!!

The signing lasted almost an hour longer than was planned but nobody seemed to mind. The guests were a real friendly bunch and were a laugh to talk to. I got my copies of the IDW stormbringer release signed and a little something extra…

Nick Roche was kind enough to do sketches for people who came to the signing! Unfortunately, lots of people asked for optimus prime (my first choice) and since I’m not one to follow a trend, I opted for a different sketch…

Yup, I got STARSCREAM!!!

Not sure what good posting this in a completely new and unestablished blog is going to do but here goes…

Orbital Manga will be holding a signing next Saturday, the 9th of June with members of IDW (you know, the guys publishing the current load of transformers comics).

Guests will be Chris Ryall (the editor in chief) Nick Roche and Simon Furman so if you want to get your transformers stuff signed and whatnot, head over to Orbital Manga next week!!

The signing will take place between 12 and 1pm and in case you don’t know where the shop is, here’s the address,

4C Orion House, Upper St Martin’s Lane. WC2H 9NY. Google maps can help out with the rest!!

Guess I should write some words of welcome *ahem*

Welcome to my blog. This blog will be predominately about anime figures which I have purchased. No moaning and whining about how rubbish my life is here. It’s too mundane anyway.

My tastes in figures vary but for the most part, you can expect a selection of resin kits, painted by myself, and others for your viewing pleasure.

Generally speaking, you will find resin kits of various anime characters which I have collected over time (and adhere to my rules of collecting) as well as a number of gunpla and assorted other mecha kits/figures which have caught my interest over time.

For those who are in the know, I don’t think much of PVC kits so I do not collect them. On occasion, one may stand out of the crowd and I will purchase one, but I am very much a fan of resin kits.

As a result, don’t expect much in terms of updates for my blog. Resin kits take a notoriously long time to complete and I don’t work on them 24/7 so apologies in advance if you end up liking what you see and regularly end up checking for updates. I may break things up with some random opinions on anime shows I’m currently watching or possibly even post my progress on the kit I am currently working on but we’ll see how things go.

*phew* that was a fairly long first post but without further ado…