Anime Photoshoot #2

Posted on February 14, 2010 by AlbinoGrimby

I’m by no means any expert at photography, but it’s fun to play with. Shooting small things and toys are cool.

I showed you my lego photo box before. This time I borrowed a macro-lens from a friend. It’s a Minolta lens which fits into the Sony A-mount. It does 28-85mm, but I only cared about the macro mode. There wasn’t any autofocus with the macro, so I just had to focus it myself, but I think the photos came out pretty well. Here’s a look at my setup — it’s the same as last time — a lego frame and then white paper for the sides and backdrop. Something that’s not pictured here is an aluminium foil reflector I created out of a piece of comic book bristol board and crumpled foil. Since I’m incredibly lazy the lamp just shines a top down light onto the toy. Alright it’s not really due to laziness. I played around with the light’s orientation and I didn’t like any of the cast shadows. I wanted the shadows to be right under the toy and if I did that I needed to bounce light back up to illuminate the toy further or there would be some hard shadows. There’s still a lot of post-processing done on my computer to adjust the exposure and the black levels of each photo. I just moved the sliders until I felt happy with it and wham, bam, done.

I wanted it to look overexposed and very white and bright. I like that look a lot.

I’m exercising my Otakuness these days. I’ve got a bunch of new figures I want to purchase and adorn my house with — all of them are K-ON! figures. Alter released these figures of Mio, Yui, and Azusa, and I’ve ordered them. No idea when they’ll come in though since the dates are all further out, but I figure it’ll be like a nice surprise later on.

The setup in picture form:

First up Haruhi. The first image is ‘shopped from three images I took. I’m no expert in photo-manipulation, which puts me on par with everyone else who sucks at photoshopping images.

I recently got the Galaxy Express 999 figures. So here they are again. I tried some different shooting techniques with these figures. The upshot of Maetel and Tetsuro I achieved by laying them down on the “infinite white paper. I then held Tetsuro about level with her and as straight as I could and shot them together. I played with DOF with some of these photos as well and since GE999 is generally pretty (melo)dramatic, I thought it would add a nice touch to the toys.

Symbols for Ladies Chinenesis, Gigantea, and Foetida (just a warning, this image is fakkin’ huge):

No set is complete without Albino Grimby sitting on top of Kasumi.

That concludes my anime toy shoot for the time being.

Lego Photo White Box

Posted on January 24, 2010 by AlbinoGrimby

I could buy a photo whitebox. I think the cheapest is 50 bucks. I saw the DIY on how to make a white box from a cardboard box, but I don’t have a spare one laying around that I’m not using for some kind of storage. So, while I was watching Moribito: Guardian of the Sacred Spirit, I decided to see if I could put one together with my oldest and favorite childhood toys: my Legos. It turned out that I did have enough Legos to build a framework to hang sheets of white sketching paper.

Here’s the breakdown: the floor of the whitebox is made out of two Lego town road plates put side by side. The framework is made out of blocks and they’re each about 37 Lego blocks high and they’re 2×4 peg towers. There’s three cross beams for the sides and the back. From these I fashioned white walls out of my 14×17 in. Biggie Sketchbook paper. The backdrop is an 18×24 in. sheet of sketch paper. I only have one light source here, which is an overhead lamp. The whole thing sits on my drawing table — which I’ve leveled — for the time being I haven’t been using my drawing table for any kind of actual drawing, so it’s a good work area for this setup.

That’s it.

I fashioned this so I could take some better pictures of my newly purchased anime PVC figures. I’ve been watching a boatload of anime — it’s a phase I’m going through right now. I started with Japanese Dramas such as Producing Nobuta, Densha Otoko, and Beautiful Life, and once went on back to anime sometime back in October.

One of the shows I finished off last year was Galaxy Express 999. I’ve posted about my obsession with this show in the past. I learned about it back in 2008 or 2007 after watching Kino’s Journey and fell in love with the show then. It was being fansubbed — imagine that, after 20+ years it’s finally being fansubbed, and then all of sudden it was dropped because Toei was going to do the translation. It took a while but eventually the entire series showed up on Crunchyroll.com and I was able to watch it all — for free. You can see it there too. I can’t recommend every episode. Some stories are plain out silly and the show’s animation definitely hasn’t aged well, but that’s all apart of its (creepy) charm. It’s also very melancholic and tragic, but I eat that stuff up. I got myself PVC figures for Maetel, Emeraldas, Tetsuro, and Tochiro. They’re cheap since no one gives a rats ass about them anymore. Some photos from my flickr account reposted here:

I have a few other PVC figures so I’ll eventually get around to shooting them too. It might be cool to get a macro lens and go in really close. It might also be really cool to get a better light setup.

A Journey Through the Stars

Posted on May 3, 2009 by AlbinoGrimby

I’m a huge fan of Galaxy Express 999. You can read all about that in this previous post I did.

I started watching the episodes fansubbed by Live-Evil about a year ago and I was pretty damn hooked to the show and I still love it for all the same reasons I did then.

So then, some excellent Galaxy Express 999 news…

Live-Evil said they were dropping GE999 because Toei Animation was going to officially subtitle the show for English digital distribution sometime last year, and sure enough episodes started to show up on Crunchyroll.com. You could watch up to episode 61 — and for some reason it was missing episode 59. No idea why, but now if you go back to crunchyroll you can infact watch the entire TV series of GE999. All 113 episodes of it. I’m stoked, especially since I thought I might never get to see the entire series.

And for some reason, right now anyway, you can watch all of that for free streaming over your web browser. Quality’s not too important with the show since it was made in 1980 and it the animation looks shoddy half of the time, but you watch it for the storytelling and characters.

You can purchase the episodes off crunchyroll, and also you can purchase the episodes of Amazon.com for digital download. I bought a handful of them there.

It’s a good time to ride the sea of stars…

The Fandom

Posted on May 21, 2008 by AlbinoGrimby

I’ve watched all 29 episodes Live-Evil fansubbed of the 113 episode series of Galaxy Express 999. I am eager for more. Like, NAO. I love the music from the TV show too. Isao Saski sings the opening and ending theme of the TV show and let me tell you it’s great to hear a voice that’s not another girlie girl j-popstar.

I’ve watched all three movies: Galaxy Express 999, which retells the story of the manga and anime in a super-abridged format, Adieu Galaxy Express, and Galaxy Express: Eternal Fantasy.

I watched all of Space Symphony Maetel and Maetel Legend.

I’ve gone to Youtube and scoured it looking for any bits and pieces of Galaxy Express I could find like the weird video of Maetel pimping some bizarre Japanese sodapop or the video a guy took while sitting through the 3D Galaxy Express amusement park ride. There’s more disturbing and bizarre shit, and let’s just say my fandom has not gotten that far. I’ve watched the Godeigo performances of the Galaxy Express 999 movie theme — not just the original 1980s version but the reunion version too. I don’t know why, but that song "Salad Girl" just amuses the hell out of me.

I’ve read the Wikipedia entry…a couple of times. I’ve actually noted when new images were added to it.

I’d love to go to Japan and see the Maetel robot, she supposedly dispenses travel information. Maetel, Tetsuro, and the Conductor also host a boat tour of Leiji Matsumoto’s hometown, in a tour boat he designed.

This is my collection of Galaxy Express 999 comics. I went and found the five graphic novels Viz translated back in 2001-02 and bought all of them used. I believe I bought the hard to find volume 2 for about 30 bucks. Those two GE999 books in front are from my friend Genevieve who bought them for me when she went to Japan (I’m indebted to her). She also got me the Maetel/Tetsuro statue I was eyeing online for the longest time. What an incredibly pleasant surprise it was to receive that! Now, see those 17 books stacked on top of one another and the 18th one that’s standing by the lamp? Those are all of the original Galaxy Express 999 manga. In Japanese. Which I can’t read, but that doesn’t matter, because I own them. I’m one step closer to being completely immersed in that universe and having physical property that is Galaxy Express.

I got the comics from the Japanese Yahoo auction site using a 3rd party bidding company called Celga, my co-worker’s wife works for them, so I figured should be really, really dependable and it is. Actually, I got two sets of the original Galaxy Express manga through Celga, which totaled to 30 books in all. It cost me 113 bucks to buy them all and $109 to ship them to the States. Crazy you say? It’s one of the few things in my life I’ve actually gone out of my way to drop money on like that. I rarely buy into the fandom of things.

Why, though? Why am I a fan? It’s sci-fi. It’s something that’s entirely new and different to me. It carries a different sensibility than today’s animes. Thirty years really shows a difference, and I like it. But, I think the biggest reason is that I found Galaxy Express on my own. It’s my own little discovery. I feel like I have partial ownership of it. I love the quirky stories, the tragic characters, and Tetsuro’s heart of gold. I love the whole space train thing, of course, one of my other favorite animes, despite falling asleep through it, was Night on the Galactic Railroad, which partially inspired GE999. I like the Romanticism; it’s the whole idea of the journey into the unknown and the journey being more important than the destination. Maetel’s much more elegant and beautiful than any of these modern anime chicks, and she sure as hell could whip them into submission too (she’s actually got a light saber whip like the one Zero-Suit Samus uses in Smash Brothers). Her parting scene with Tetsuro in the movie is fantastic. She says to him, "From now on, I will be a woman who lives on only in your memories. I will be nothing more than the illusion of a young boy’s heart, a phantom of your youth (from the fansub)." She’s every boys’ first crush, a woman that makes a boy want to become a better man, and ultimately, she’s the one you can’t have. It’s bittersweet. I eat that shit up. It’s awesome.

On that table (in the picture), you don’t see the other 12 books comprising the second set of Galaxy Express 999 because I’ve boxed them. I originally thought that the books were actually from the two different series of Galaxy Express. The new GE999 is from 1996 and those are the ones Viz translated. I was hoping that the 12 volume set was actually the continuation and finale of those 1996 comics, but it wasn’t.

I don’t feel bummed about accidentally purchasing two sets either. One of them will make a great graduation present for my brother. Plus he can translate them since he’s got an undergraduate degree in Japanese, and now that he’s got a lot of spare time, maybe he should get crackin’ on that for me.

Courne Supremacy

Just fire one out!

Tag Archives: Galaxy Express 999

Anime Photoshoot #2

Lego Photo White Box

A Journey Through the Stars

The Fandom