BIG Plushies

Lookit the size of that thing! Yep, for some reason I got myself a big grunty even though I have a small one already. I bought it years ago on impulse. I just couldn't resist getting him because he looked really cute for its size ^^; Now I don't have any room, lol.

Anyway, this is just a premise for a continuation for The Melancholy of Saber Lily :P

The Melancholy of Saber Lily Part 57

I was trying out a new angle for the third panel, making it look like Saber Lily is against the lens of the camera, but I really had no idea how to do it, so I just use this XD

This picture was an alternate 3rd panel. I think the one I used is much better. And lastly...

The Melancholy of Saber Lily Part 58

The chase has become so big that it doesn't fit the area where I take photos anymore ^^;;; I think some of you already know I have the big Saber's Lion. Finally able to use it. I kinda like keeping the last panel silent. The surprise reaction on Mikuru is just priceless!

That's it for now. I'll have another couple of 4koma before I leave for AX :)

Saber Birthday Party

Friday the 13th, 2011... It's Saber's birthday, but I can't even post it properly since Blogger is down. Such misfortune... Anyway, Blogger is back up and now I can finally post about Saber's birthday party! I planned on just only making one 4koma but ended up with a couple more ideas XD Doesn't it make you curious what's going on above? :3

Before that, let me introduce to you... The Saber Lion plushie! When I first seen her, I knew I had to have her. Thankfully this store in Richmond that just opened was selling her. I quickly grabbed her, lol.

And now... On with the party! The 4komas below are posted on the Melancholy of Saber Lily site amongst others ^^

It's very inconvenient whenever Saber Lily goes 1/1 scale on me... You can just never have fun...

Did I tell you that I like that Adult Mikuru figma? It's very useful ^^ It was kinda fun mixing and matching Saber and Saber Alter... But I just realized that Saber Alter's face can't fit into Saber's face...

And now back to the main story... Something I've held off for a long time... You can read this post before reading the 4koma below to refresh your memory. It has been a long time since I continued this story, but I've always had this particular idea in mind for a long time XD

Saber Lion is such a glutton... Did Lily even feed her? No, scratch that... What did she eat to get so big?? So many questions! Err... Anyway, wasn't sure if anyone would like the idea of a whole ferret being eaten (I love that the vest on the ferret is removable), so I made an alternate, slightly less bad ending ^^;

I hate to brag, but I really like how I drew that swirly eye on the ferret ^^; Which End do you prefer? You can see the original picture below.

I've taken photos for the next parts already, just need to edit them, so hopefully not much delay for this storyline for next time ^^;

My Plushies

Ever since I was a little kid, I've always loved plushies. Teddy bears, puppets, stuffed animals, you name it! I would give them names, talk to them and... Uh... Make them talk to me... I'm a very imaginative kid, to put it lightly.

Plushies are also one of the most essential things in the otaku world. Many would kill to have these cute, soft, huggable versions of their favourite characters. Myself included... Okay, I probably wouldn't kill, but you know what I mean. Here, I'll show you some of my favourite (and ones that I was able to carry to this one spot from my bed) plushies.

Luka and MEIKO! It's nice to see MEIKO get plushified before Luka... But I definitely need a MEIKO figma and Nendoroid to complete the collection! Come on Max Factory and GSC... I'm waiting for my MEIKOs!

Apparently it's Yui's birthday on November 27th ^^; Oops! But I did take this picture on the 27th... Here she is as a part of the Bonkler group including Ayumu "Osaka" Kasuga and Fuko "Hitode Desu" Ibuki.

Here are some of the smaller ones (from left to right): Grunty (Puchiguso), Puchiko, Pyocola Analogue III, Polar Bear Rei, Kireihana, the dog from Harvest Moon, Winry Rockbell, Rafra and Yumi.

Puchiko is my favourite! She's definitely the cutest! Hokke-Mirin, the cat in her arm is a separate purchase. She is somewhat my conscience. She's almost like her anime rendition where she's got a somewhat mean streak, but she's like my voice of reason, like telling me to sleep when it's already 4:30 am... She is one of my favourites, so she's somewhat worn out, specifically her left eye... I wish there's a way to fix that =/

Kireihana is one of my favourite Pokemon and probably one of the first anime-related plushie I ever bought. I couldn't resist how cute she looks! The Harvest Moon dog is one of my newer plushies. I got that one when I bought Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life for the Game Boy Advance.

This is Rafra, a ferret from Infinite Ryvius. I watched that show by accident when I was trying to watch Jungle wa Itsumo Hare nochi Guu but copied the wrong file instead... However, I did enjoy the first 2 episodes enough that I bought the DVD box from Bandai which had this Rafra plushie included.

I still haven't opened this Rei yet... Her head's a bit too big to put anywhere probably ^^;

So why am I posting my plushies? Well that's because I'm incorporating my plushies into The Melancholy of Saber Lily 4koma :P This was planned for a while in my head as a continuation of Saber Lily and Mikuru arc. I apologize for some of the quality of the photos... I had bad lighting for some of the photos...

Hmm... What is Saber Lily saying that Mikuru is covering up by her yelling? And no, I'm not going to explain why Mikuru has a giant co... ferret for a ride.

Umm... Yeah, just to explain, that's supposed to be me who's suggesting the dolphin ride ^^; I suppose if you don't know what the dolphin is about... It's an inside joke at dannychoo.com where we replace a certain appendage with the word "dolphin", lol.

These dolphin plushies are bought from Daiso at $2 each. I was only going to get one, but I liked both colours too much ^_^ They don't sell them anymore at the local Daiso, so I'm glad i got them.

This was the fastest title I ever came up with! I immediately laughed at "Grunty Style" considering what's happening in the comic! This has been happening in my mind over and over. Finally glad to finally put it down on file. Yumi's position of her hands just look perfect for this ^^; "Buhi" is the noise that a Grunty makes. I used to play .hack where they make this sound after every sentence they say. And yes, Grunties speak...

Here's another unopened plushie... But what kind of plushie is it?? :3 Whatever it is... It will be in the future 4koma ;)

That's it... Now close the door! I'm gonna be waxing the dolphin...

The War on Several Fronts

Yes, I'm still doing my 4koma series... I'm just so very busy lately. Or is it lazy? It seems like both. My work shift has finally been settled for nights. That makes it difficult for me to do anything during the day since I feel like I won't have enough time for my freedom before work. It's also been quite hot, which makes me very lazy in doing anything since I'd sweat too much.


Unfortunately I have no choice to not be lazy now. I've made too many self-commitments that make it hard to break away. First, my cosplay is finally done! I was able to get everything in my last week before Anime Expo. I'll talk more about that in a later post, but I'm just glad that monkey is off my back. Secondly, the work shift, albeit really crappy hours, finally settled down and got an actual time slot. Which means I can schedule some kind of figure shoots and such at the least. Thirdly, Anime Expo! This is gonna be crazy! I'm gonna meet many people whom I've never met before! I'm getting anxious and nervous. I think I haven't posted much in the month of June because I kept waiting for AX ^^; Fourthly, I have a few things I still gotta do before going to AX. The combination of having night shift and then have to be on the plane 5.5 hours after my shift is over is kinda crazy. As of writing this, I still haven't even packed yet.

Anyway, that's what I meant by "War on Several Fronts" in the title. Lots and lots to do! Especially with the 4koma. I just remembered that even though I could continue with Saber Lily, there's still the Haruhi vs Iron Miku I have to settle first. Busy busy. So here goes!

The Melancholy of Saber Lily Part 37

Just in case you don't know, Noble Phantasms are the special attacks from Fate/stay night. Saber's Noble Phantasms are Caliburn, Excalibur and Avalon. Saber Lily has all that plus the Fourth Wall Break.

I have to be honest... This was one of the easiest MOSL I've done XD I pretty much copied the first panel from January 15th and I had separate layers already ready from that date for the second panel. I only did 2 new photos ^^; Like I said, it's been very busy, but I made a promise to do this one at least. This is a prologue for a long arc I've been planning. After this will be the conclusion to Haruhi vs Iron Miku. I've got something special for that one, so hopefully I won't take too long of a pause to do it...

And of course as per usual, you can read the rest without looking them up here at The Melancholy of Saber Lily site. Oh if you notice, my Durarara parody's been taken down because Sony Music Japan only care about their properties and not the fans' creativity... So I'll try to upload that again at another time.

This is a bigger version of the last panel if you want to see. The 4koma Lily is holding is just the JPG file of that particular 4koma and I just pasted on here. I thought it had been a while ago so it's nice to refresh some memories visually.

Coloured Bunny Girl Mikuru

Art by Yakuri-Moe

Coloured by Lightning Sabre

My first Photoshop line art colouring project is finally done and even approved! This Bunnygirl Mikuru was beautifully drawn by Yaku and posted on Halloween of last year at DannyChoo.com. I spent about 6-7 hours colouring from December 23rd to 24th. Surprisingly it didn't take me as long as I thought it might've been, so I've delayed the project until I had enough time to do it over the 2 weeks off I had from my office.

The first obstacle I had was that I only had the low resolution art from DannyChoo.com... Darkening the lines was priority, but then the gray pixels started showing up, ah such a pain. It's not too bad though since the line art was pretty clean in the first place ^_^

Then I was stuck... where do I start colouring. Easiest part was the bunny ears. So red and I also added dark red for shading (which is the only place I shaded lol). Oh and I also read somewhere in Newtype that one of the popular artists in Japan created a layer of colour in Photoshop so that he can use that colour over and over again. I don't remember who it was though, okama or Range Murata, not sure. You can see my palette below.

Looks very ghostly, eh?

Ok after the ears I have to move to the bigger parts... then I realize I should've closed some of the gaps which made colouring so much easier. The eyes are very cute, but a bit difficult to colour because I could never draw anime eyes before in the first place, let alone colouring it, so I went and surf the net for eye colour references for Mikuru. I also realized something as I was looking through the pictures. She needs a star-shaped mole on her chest! It was good I looked around first. Oh and here's a secret... I know how to make a star in Macs using Zapf Dingbats, but for the life of me I couldn't make one in PC, so that's actually an asterisk lol.

After much of the colouring was done I decided on the stocking which was surprisingly easy to do, so I challenged myself. I was in over my head though... Fishnet stocking, which is what I wanted to do when I first seen this art. I had no idea how to do it. I was a total nub at colouring and drawing. I can probably do it outside the computer, but how the hell do I do it in Photoshop?? This is the result which involved a lot of duplications and memory eating on my computer. It was sluggish as hell XD What do you think of the result?

The last few details is a bit of a shine on her hair which I've seen a lot in anime arts. If I had a tablet I can probably do it better. Using mouse is hell for this btw. Oh and some art also has these reddish shine on their knees and joints. I duplicated that effect here. I showed this to my friend, who doesn't looks at a lot of anime art, and he asked me why her knees are bruised... I explained that it's one of the anime styles. Then I sorta realize what he may have implied with the knees, carpet burn perhaps? XD

I also made a couple of variations because I can play around with the Photoshop layers :P I need to learn shading for sure... I just don't understand how lighting and shading works, thus why there's no shading here, except for a few parts.

Bare legs!

White Bunny Suit variation

So a first (somewhat) successful colouring project done. Hopefully this won't be the last because it was quite fun. I'll be working on Mikuru here and there though since I'm an editing fiend!Special thanks to Yaku for supplying the great art and the approval ^^

Duelling Pantsu Figures

Alter 1/8 Franco Il Nero

The first time I saw this was unpainted prototype from one of Danny Choo's WonderFest pictures. At first I thought it was from the Sakura Taisen series, but Daniel aka RadiantDreamer from Anime Figurines Network on Facebook told me otherwise. Especially with the excessive pantsu showing lol. So I tracked it down as it becomes finished and found out that it's Franco Il Nero, and proceeded to pre-order her ASAP!

When I opened the box, there were two twist ties wire that held the box together, which is kinda rare for PVC figures. One of them was actually the stand, don't wanna lose that. Her hair is really soft for a PVC, I was extra careful in handling it. And since this isn't one of those normal PVCs that stands or just sit, it's got no flat surface to put her down properly. I mused over how to place it down and it became an akward position for her ^^; A truly dynamic pose!

Now the thing that concerned me about this figure is that there's only a little plastic tab attaches to the wall to support this Franco! I'm VERY concerned. It looks wobbly and wonders what would happens if it falls. I hope Alter thought about the long run when this figure is displayed for long periods of time. I wasn't sure either if I've put in the support properly or not. The smoke and bullet holes on the wall are quite a nice touch.

I really love the sole on her boots. I mean I do like the obvious thing that's shown on this figure *cough*pantsu*cough* but this figure looks very good overall! And it's only when I opened the figure I saw how cute her futomomo (thigh) looks. One of my favourites of the bunch, plus I do have a thing for Cowgirls too ^^

Hmm, maybe I should've put them facing each other so it really looked like they're duelling ^^;

- = ≡ = -

Her futuristic counterpart is
Toys Works 1/8 Mikuru Nazume from Zero In

I have no idea why I bought this... Probably because it had a similar pose to Franco Il Nero. So I had an idea of putting them together in one photo for some reason. It looks cute and has a similar look to one of Yoshizaki Mine's Keroro Gunsou characters, but I really have no idea where she's from... It's a good pairing I guess. She doesn't really need that base either, so I can probably display it right underneath Franco ^^