天涯孤独 – tengai kodoku

To continue from my last post… the last figure in my previous package was Kudryavka Noumi, by Miyagawa Takeshi.  Given that this is not a commercial product, the packaging is not as flashy as my normal figures.  However, I did take care to detail the unboxing!  On to the images after the jump. First, removing the slab of foam from the plain cardboard box.  Three slices, all taped together.

Taking apart the top layer, I find… the base.  Okay, nothing exciting here.

Flipping the rest over and removing the other layer, I am greeted with Kudo-kou!

But wait… something seems wrong with her ribbon!

For reference, it is not supposed to come off like that.  The other half is in her cloak, next to her hand.

A quick shot of the rest of her quickly put together.

The pieces that broke off.  The two pink ribbons obviously belong to the ribbon on her chest, and the purple ribbon belongs to her hat.  Tried focusing on two close, but different areas… trying to distract myself from this great tragedy. ;_;

But, nevertheless, the show must go on.  And on it went!

One thing about this figure… it is HEAVY.  The huge metal poles you saw on both of her feet in the earlier image?  That should give you a good idea of how heavy this figure is.

I used basically the same camera settings I used for the Kaleido Ruby figure here.  The images came out pretty decently, I think.  However, I wanted to see if I could get away without flash when taking pictures of the figure after I glued the broken parts back on.  On with those…

Compared to the image directly above… I think it came out a little better.  Changed some settings around (biggest change was probably changing the shutter speed from 1/30 to 1/10 – 1/15, to allow in more light due to the absence of flash; played around with ISO, but ended up leaving it at 800 for these shots, and eventually slightly increased aperture from 5.6 to 7.1.  Different images have different settings applied since I’m still mostly testing things out, so expect different quality from each photo).  I then loaded the raws in Photoshop and changed the lighting to balance out for fluorescent lighting.  Changing for tungsten provided an image that seemed a little closer to the real colors, but felt a bit too gray… fluorescent seemed to provide a little more “life”, so I stuck with that.

You should be able to notice the purple ribbon is now attached to her hat, as well as the pink ribbon on her chest.  Not the best job at gluing things back together, but it’s hardly noticeable more than a few feet away.

Overall, it turned out okay.  I just wish it hadn’t arrived broken in the first place, but that can’t be helped. >_<

One last look at the ribbon in particular before moving on to…

Kudryavka Noumi!  W-wait, what!?

This is the Alter version of Kudryavka Noumi, recently released.  I obtained it in between my last post and this.  She’s considerably smaller and lighter than her double…  The tiny little foothold she rests on concerns me in comparison, but I have a couple of figures resting on one foot like that, and nothing bad has happened… yet.

Kudo-kou’s exuberance is captured quite clearly in this figure.

More focus testing!

Pan…

chira…

There’s quite a lot of similarities between these two figures.  Well, aside from the obvious fact that they’re the same character.  Same signature clothing, same flowing cloak, flowing hair, etc.  Even the same pantsu!

Her base is… well, in my opinion, a bit gaudy.  I don’t really pay too much attention to the bases unless it’s something special, like Black★Rock Shooter‘s.

And a final shoot focusing on this Kudo-kou’s unmarred ribbon… ;_;

I suspect the next post from me should be about my C77 goods, most of which should be arriving within the next week or so.  Look forward to it (or avoid it like the plague, either way)!