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.