Gosh to think I nearly missed the one anime event that I wouldn't pass for the world - until this morning I actually thought it was next week x.X So, it's finally Singapore's turn for Anime Festival Asia, and this year it's happening at the happening mall of Suntec City Convention Centre (just where I like it, since it's more convenient for me xD). So armed with $35 and my iPhone, I rode down town to join in the fun (N if things went out of hand I still have my VISA ;] ).

Mami unwrapping her towel like, "Welcome home, Mistress."

...And here's she dressed up for the festival! (Trying to gnore the price tag*)

Love Live gals in their training attire. Honestly I can't believe they actually started this line, because I don't find the outfit any special... Well, Love Live fans R just so lucky to enjoy such variations!

My favourite Miku so far, the mebae version! I have always assumed "mebae" is a form of tribal dance (based on the figure's pose), until a quick Google to reveal it's the name of the illustrator! Mike here's actually a ballerina... Goodness I can't tell!

The legendary Saber, wedding version, at a whooping price of $218. I watched Fate:Zero and although I enjoyed the show, I could not figure out the hype behind Saber. How come nobody is fantasising over Lancer and his love story? I once asked my close friend Hao and he told me it's because he died too early, but seriously? I still cannot accept that flimsy explanation! Oh Lancer...

A Pokemon Booth! The booth tender was very kind and allowed me to take some photos.

The Charizard is spot-on!

Enter: Danny Choo's Dollife section~

Boi ver. oO

Standard Mirai school attire~

Old school hype, what with the anniversary of Sailor Moon, revival of Digimon, and the never ending Dragon Ball mech

I only took this for one reason, can U guess it?

This is a really cool variation of the DB line - featuring the artist's rendering and supposedly a limited edition flown in from Japan for us!

Love such dynamism - makes for awesome figure photography!

Who says centre-parting is old fashion?

Not trying to ruin this masterpiece but from this position it looks like he's trying to scratch his butt

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After circling a while I realised I forgot to take an ambience shot. The place was packed, but not as crowded as I expected, so all as good!

Everyone's able to put their hearts at ease with the vigilant patrol unit summoned for this event

We even have Umi and Kotori giving live report, and here I am trying to distract them with my sneaky shots けけけ

When I saw this booth I immediately thought of the fireworks festival in Japan with those overpriced plastic masks, and had to snap it

Yui poster! Ah she's the cutest!

Another never ending anime - Detective Conan

 Finally something acceptable and pleasing to the eye (managed to snap this giant Naruto poster before the walkway was promptly flooded with passers-by)

...Good things just keep flashing by before my eyes. LOOK WHO'S BESIDE ME! And I didn't even have to look too hard! I made it a mission to hunt down all Naruto cosplayers just to snag a photo with them, because there just isn't enough love for them in Singapore!

And I totally ignored the other casts and just asked for a photo with him xD Sakura looked pretty pissed off (or was it just me) but I have no shame, it is do or die. Omg this is definitely the climax of my day at the festival... Then I had to go ahead and ruin the photo with my halfway smile. I NEVER smile that like. I was legit nervous and panicking internally. 

Bonus: He is male, not some girls cross-dressing and ruining my fantasy

Itachi <333

Look who I found as I was exiting the hall! I would be stroked to find a figure of my cosplay

...And another treasure found in this sea of swarming humans! This Sarada is so spot-on and cute I couldn't resist cuddling her close to me! She even noticed and commented about her parents on my phone case xD

Image source: http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Sarada_Uchiha 

See the resemblance? 幸せ~!

The cosplay palette wouldn't be complete without some Lelouch goodness

And C.C.! I totally recognised her from past conventions (as marked by her characteristic eye bags) and remembered her name on SGclub forum is Rinya. Not wanting to sound like a stalker, but when I first saw her in Cosfest, she was doing Sheryl Nome with a Ranka Lee, and I was awe-strucked. Looks like there's no rush to sell off your costume just after 1 cosplay!

Hooray, Maki spotted!

A for effort for the skateboard, Killua 

Just when I was wondering where aren't there any Sebastians... Sebby <3

This year there's a lot of Kotoris, and everyone that I have seen are really pretty and on point, like this lovely Kotori here. She was really polite and her pose a satisfying one *thumbs up*

BlackWarGreymon here proved a great sport and gave the crowd a good laugh with his humorous monologue and "Terra force" (RE: garbage bag by his feet)

Heck, he even told off Angewomon when he noticed she was blocking the Female washroom and ordered her to "move away la!"

This is so pleasing to my eye, especially considering I've just ordered her figure~

And yep, she totally couldn't see through the face armour

I made it a point to only take photographs of characters I recognise and like, but her costume was simply too exquisite to miss!

Miku #333 Natsu Tsubaki ver. She was really gave me face and posed specially for me! This is probably my best shot today with that sick background and 1-1 eye (lens) contact

...And this was what happened 9/10 times I tried to beg for a photograph. After they had walked off twice on me and refusal to pose for me (too busy for my measly iPhone, I guess), I had to launch a sneak attack and ended with this half-hearted shot.

It was mostly for memory's sake.

Another amazing cosplay with amazing figures (re: flat tummy), couldn't miss this either.

Awakward Miku, not that it was her fault since this was capture during her mid-bow (re: see those lights on her costume!)

Something you don't always see, young Sasuke in Spiderman and Badman's company

My my, what do we have here? "The Last" squad woohoo

I didn't realise there's a Sky Garden next door and found this Love Live group getting ordered around by a male photographer. Love their costumes <3

Then there was this dude with his eye-catchy flag, also getting ordered around by his photographer. 

Here's the full picture. It was quite hilarious but then he started to complain about being tired and my heart immediately reached out to him.

...Back indoors, guess who I bumped into. My goodness, it's the whole squad from Diabolik Lovers! After my initial repulsion towards this anime, I saw it was available for viewing on my MioTV and decided to give it another chance... Let's just say I'm going to watch Season 2 after I'm done with Hakuoki.

Elsewhere, an epic showdown between apprentice Ichigo and Darth Varder was unfolding under the air-con

Looks like this battle has a winner - little Captain America once again saved the day!

Lucky me! Though this is making me think twice about pre-ordering Lucky Chloe from Kotobukiya, hmmm...

Yui! She's so cute~

Erza Scarlet, looking fierce in her armour

Wow, just...Wow! Miku in Harvest Moon version just blew my mind away. Besides the high I got from knowing it's inspired from the Nendoroid. this beautiful lady with her gorgeous fan and dress just, I had to stop her and captured this moment forever.

Personally, I'm not really a fan of Fate Stay Night but figured I should give this Archer a chance. Damn that intrusive arm!

Another kawaii Kotori. Love how their wigs are so true to the character

What's Ichigo doing getting into fights everywhere he goes? He's even raising his zanpakutou against his good pal Rukia?

In another dimension, all is well and the Captains and Ichigo are taking group pic

Notice Byakuya is dozing off from posing too long lol

This duo is sick! And that Spiderman has got a smokin' figure, just sayin'

This is too impressive to miss. Love Spider Gwen!

Had to shoot this for his reminiscence to Kotobukiya's recently released Kaneki. Can't stop thinking about figurines even among cosplayers TT

Found something interesting as I was trying some tops in the Adidas flagship store. I thought something was wrong with me when I saw the word "naruto."  Like did I love Naruto so much that I was hallucinating it in Adida's changing room?

Turns out, this dude's for real. I guess everyone needs to get a Konoha headband at some point, even athletes xD

Overall, I'm really pleased with this year's anime convention. There were tons of characters among the cosplayers that I recognised and love, and there were some decent Naruto merchandise this year (like the 3D Itachi keychain that I bought). However, it has been some time since I went about taking photographs of cosplayers this eagerly, and I have to say this - I've come to appreciate cosplayers who display a sense of courtesy and humility, who performs their best regardless of the lens in front. Just because I'm not carrying any fancy gear or DSLR does not make me less important than the other おじさんs, though some do gave me that vibe.

Through this experience, I've also come to love figure photography more, because unlike a live character, I can fiddle, adjust, and take as many close-up shots to my heart's content. In another words, I can "order" my figure to do whatever I want, without having to worry about it getting tired or walking off before I even hit the "shoot" button. Better to have people staring at you than ten cameras flashing off around you and hands cutting into my frame!

xoxo

Lately, I've been carried away by life, with new routines, University assignments, and keeping up with nasty thing like obligations. In the midst of chasing after my dream and pursuing my interests, I got lost and forgot the reason why I was doing certain things, like this blog.

Besides sharing and casting a different perspective to figure collecting, the main purpose of this blog is one of an online diary, where I recount my thoughts and process of figure photography as I flitter through life searching for my purpose (hence figuremylife, yea?). Collecting figures has given my life a part-time sort of purpose, and a way for me to escape from the brutal reality of making up a PR Evaluation Plan or brewing up a P.A.C.T. Analysis, both of which just fell short of even being remotely interesting. Scale figures are ultimately pieces of art, sculptures in essence, or what I would refer to as alternative sculptures, seeing they embody an element missing in normal human sculpture - infinite possibility (無限の可能性). When I look at figure, I see a world of prospects, barely explored, and waiting for me. Positive emotions would well up within me and the day instantly appears brighter. 

Figure - My life.

Today's post is one of those that would be my first and last, seeing it shouldn't exist in the first place. You see, I'm not one of those people who strictly adheres to her self-rule (自分ルール re: Rock Lee), meaning if the need arise, I would create exceptions (oh how I love and hate this word) to such unbreakable rules. Here's my self-imposed rule for collecting figures:

I will not, under any circumstances, collect any figure besides scale figures.

A seemingly harmless and accomplishable rule eh?

...So what's she doing with a frigging nendoroid? And dude it's not even a bishounen_

My excuse (it seemed really valid then) was it featured my favourite flower - Lily of the Valley, and my jibun ruuru just faded off into the Indonesia's haze and never to be heard of again. It was conveniently forgotten. (I'll talk about bishounen figures [美少年フィギュア], or the lack of it, in another post. Or else I would never get to the main topic of this post at this rate.)

Now, a month later as I'm writing this post, I cannot say I have no regrets of purchasing her, but the photographs that happened because of her, I would never trade anything for them.

Strictly speaking, this is suppose to be a Built From Scratch series, but I got lazy and did not diligently documuent every stage of building the set-up. So forget #BFS, I'll just show my concepts behind the themes and background, and post the finished product of key props.

To digress, I recently learnt about Search Engine Optimisation and feeling curious what BFS means to the web crawlers, I went to Google it... And got bombarded with a complicated search formulae called Breadth First Search and some other financial company with a similar acronym... Well, but I don't really fancy the label "behind-the-scenes," it's too generic and not uniquely FML, and those who know me, knows I'm not one who conforms to conventions. So BFS it shall be~ Now back to topic...

Oh, this will also be my first venture into post-photo editing beyond the rudimentary adjustments of brightness and saturation. Really, traveling quite a mile for this "exceptional" figure, despite all my grumblings. Heh, passion fuels actions eh?

As usual, here's my concept design - mainly doodles of elements here and there. I'll be doing 2 scenes, and the first one would be called Daytime Winterland and the second one Summer Festival... Okay I made up these names on the spot, like now as I'm typing, just to make it sound more fancy lol.

This took me a week, and it's not even that hard... After doing the Pennisetum rubrum (Purple fountain grass) and the cumulus clouds, I let this mess sit on my desk for days as I was unwilling to sacrifice the cotton buds I use everyday to apply my toner. Lol Idk Y I got so stringy over something like this, but seriously, look at how much were used (sacrificed) just to make it look snowy enough!

Oh and it slipped my mind to introduce this figure, silly me. This nendoroid (Nendoroid is one of the product lines of Good Smile Company, one of Japan's famous toys manufacturing company) is modelled after Hatsune Miku, a 3D character from a voice synthesiser software by Crypton Future Media, Inc.. Her fame is one on par with Uzumaki Naruto... Why Naruto? Well, because people around me who doesn't watch anime knows who's Naruto, and the same logic can be applied to Miku. She's so famous and popular among figure collectors that GSC released 15 (nendoroid and scale figures) just this year, ready either for pre-order or already out in the market! Oh, and the number did not include those that were OOS, like say, this Snow Miku ver.! \*O*/

This is a screenshot taken at GSC's Product Search page of the range of Hatsune Miku related products released/to-be released in 2015/16. Image rights belongs to Good Smile Company, Inc.

Further classified under the Miku nendoroids is a series known as "Snow Miku," launched in line with the annual Wonder Festival (Winter) held in Tokyo. What's so special about this series is that they would open up a competition for people to submit their Miku design for the year, and the NicoNico Live Broadcast community would vote for their favourite design. 2015's theme is 'Plant life in winter,' and out of the infinite plant species to be crowned winner... You see why I had to get this. Coincidences like this don't come everyday. Alright alright, anything else I said from this point is just gonna sound like an excuse, so I shall just...

This was released back in February, but it was only in September that I realised its existence via a Youtube anime haul video. These videos really put the number of figures I own in perspective, and a good way to find out what people are getting around you along with what you're missing out on.

This is an elevation of the "fireworks" that took me quite some time to finish. Firstly, I didn't realise one packet of these gold wires isn't sufficient, and had to go back to get more zzz. Secondly, I was gripped by another bout of redundant reluctance of punching holes in my black styrofoam board, and kept putting off this step. Siao liao.

After overcoming all procrastinations and lame excuses, I finally got down to photographing our adorable Miku-chan. However, for a theme with the word "winter" in it, something's missing eh?

Okay, comparing these two again, there really isn't a significant change, except if you count those white dots on the sky. This was my first edit on Photoshop, so I was reserved with the snow. The idea of the blue tint is suppose to make the flowers glow like a lamp, but guess it didn't work out the way I intended...  为什么酱！

Here's the 'Leaf' version, with an edit I'm really proud of. *Pinches Miku's cheeks for her million dollar smile*

Next we have the night set-up, oh wait, I called it the Summer Festival yea? That's the idea, a scene captured as the festival approaches its pinnacle and the long await fireworks make its, ahem, flashy appearance.

Above is the photograph shot before edit. I do not own any professional camera kit or a sophisticated lighting gear (or even a table lamp for that matter). However, for the high contrast effect, I have to take it in the dark. Thankfully for my Mother's reliable Samsung S3's torchlight, this night shot was made possible.

I felt really silly after I figured that I could have just created a 2D fireworks in Photoshop, like I did here. It was really simple and heaps more authentic than the pathetic "spiders," as one of my best friends described, I created. Oh well.

One of the reasons for my long absence was due to me getting sidetracked on my venture to Instagram, an attempt to broaden this blog's reach and popularise FML's name. That was a badly calculated move. It took me one month to realise a hobby/fan Instagram account requires daily postings and constant fresh contents, neither which I could afford on a long-term basis. As an inactive user of social media, maintaining the account has soon taken quite an emotional toll (there's even a term for it, aptly named internet fatigue) and it not was until this morning that I realised this cannot go on. This would also explain why the above photograph is square, and serves as a good reminder why I'm better off being a content collector/ social media joiner.

Out with the nasty stuffs... Here's Miku enjoying the fireworks with her pet rabbit Yukine (雪音)~

... And an attempt to capture a chasing after friends scene, leaving Yukine behind to fend for itself/ 你就好自为之吧，兔子！

Thanks for staying with me till the end (yes it's the end) and I'm simply contented to be able to share something I love with you. Until the next time, which if everything goes as planned, is D-Figure. Can you guess whose he/she is? きゃあああ～！

xoxo