“a look back” means that I do another photo shooting of a figure I’ve already reviewed, where I try to improve the overall presentation. Sometimes you’ll learn to appreciate a figure just a few years after it’s initial release, for me it happened with this certain Tamaki Kousaka, she was released in 2010, but I’ve bought her a bit later in 2012.

Tamaki Kousaka was made by Max Factory and released in May 2010. She is scaled 1/6 and measures around 18 cm.

ELLIOTT and Katayama Hiroki created a cute and sensual sculpt. Tamaki has been captured in an expressive way where she greets the viewer with her sweetest gentle smile. Her kneeling pose together with the nicely arched back create an alluring yet romantic appearance. It’s also quite nice how her school uniform shirt hanging down her shoulders .

There are around 265 Tamaki Kousaka figures, but from the many of her adaptations, this one is my favorite. Her smooth, rounded face with the very sweet and gentle smile gives her quite different look from the others.

In the To Heart 2 VN/anime Tamaki Kousaka is a childhood friend of the protagonist, Takaaki Kouno. she is the older sister type with a strong personality and determined behaviour. While this adaption of Tamaki doesn’t make her look dominant at all with her sweet rounded face and voluptuous curves. The big eyes are following the To Heart 2 design, as well as the hairstyle, the figures hair has a pretty shade of red with twintails at the back and an ahoge on top.

In 2012 my figure photography still was quite experimental and sometimes even clumsy, personally I think I improved over the years. So I wanted to make nicer pictures of this sweet Tamaki Kousaka. For the setup I decided to create a room with curtains and couch. Well, you could also call it a fancy porn set, although that wasn’t my real intention.

This Tamaki figure has a really nice body with marvelous curves around everywhere where it’s attractive with a cute slight stomach and shapely thighs. The figure has nice voluptuous curves or to put it more flattering, soft appearance.

This figure is highlighting the characteristics of an attractive woman, yet she has a certain innocent charm. Her outfit follows a sweet direction with the schoolgirl shirt, white stockings and pink panties she looks youthfully sexy.

Tamaki has beautiful breasts, nowadays I very much appreciate what might have slightly bothered me a few years ago. I really like how her hands folded above her breasts, the indentations on her breasts give the illusion of softness.

Overall the figures attractive sculpt is very detailed, especially the area around her shoulders with the pretty collarbones is great. She also has very detailed hands, it’s really nice to look at her petite fingers and painted nails.

Tamaki Kousaka from Max Factory is one of my all time favorites.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my new pictures of Tamaki Kousaka from Max Factory, below I’ve listed all of my
“A look back” posts in case you are curious about more figure photography of my favorite figures like that.

The decision why I took another shooting with my nearly 5 year old Stocking took shape after I’ve randomly looked through my old pictures and noticed that her old pictures were not good enough for one of my favorite figures.

As relatively active figure reviewer I want to get my posts out on time, so the first idea for a figure shooting that comes to mind will most probably be only one to be made. Sometimes the results can be mediocre from quality or aesthetic aspects. There are also other reason that trigger the decision for another photoshoot with a beloved figure.

Anarchy Stocking was sculpted by Yagyuu Toshiyuki who was in charge for many nice figures as well.

Stocking always was my favorite, the fallen angel with the goth lolita look, although her appearance is not lolita like at all, compared to her sister, Stocking appears more pure or at least less sinful.

The most appealing thing about this figure is probably her really fancy outfit, playful and beautiful in design with cute hearts and ribbons here and there. It has a quite nice color sheme of white, pastel blue and light brass. The underskirt adds a lot of detail and volume to her dress. At her arms she wears these open sleeves and pretty arm rings at her wrists, I also like the detailed and nicely made striped stockings that slightly go over her ankles and end at her metallic high heel sandals. The fashionable figure really comes to live with her dynamically sculpted, grafecul and proud pose.

What ALTER did the best though is Stockings face with her pretty green eyes and the wide mouth, I really like her gentle smile. The voluminous hair is quite impressive, the bold blue color really pops out and the inner pink is a cool thing, too.

The figure was made in 2012, ALTER always been considered as state of the art figure manufacturer, also back then. Unfortunately they went a little sloppy on Stocking, most prominently at her hair, the surface is uneven at some areas, also the hair color transition is not applied as one would desire. around the middle her dress also shows a few smaller imperfections like spots for example that you will notice mainly on careful inspection. Overall it’s not as bothersome as it sounds, the figure has a great presence and elaborate appearance and really one of my most favorite figures.

Her is my modest setup, at first I’ve put sequined cloth on the floor and added pink stones to cover the white base.
In the backround, I’ve filled marshmellows in glasses and used Ikea Dioda as decorative lights. For the figure focused lighting I’ve used a flash at the back and a softbox from the right, the reflective board caught a bit of light from the lighsources and subtly reflected it into the desired direction, more or less.

I hope you’ve liked the new pictures of Stocking. if you had a figure shooting in the past with a figure you really like, but something didn’t turn out as desired, why not trying it again? Look at the figure and imagine what could have been done better, scenery, angles or the general focus. Believe me It’s fun to challenge your improved skills once again.

related Post ->>

A look back at Momohime – a re shooting

A look back at Sonico Bath Time version

A look back at Sansei Muramasa

“A look back …” basically means to do a reshoot a figure with a more refined idea in mind. After A look back at Momohime and A look back at Sonico Bath Time I did a reshoot of Sansei Muramasa, a great maid themed figure from Max Factory released in March 2012.

My experience with this figure was overshadowed by bad luck, not the figure was to blame, it was rather my fault, first I named her Sandaime Muramasa in the review. Around a year later I noticed this blogging disaster and I wanted to sink into the ground out of embarrassment. This really shouldn’t happen in a review, never *facepalm*

A more dramatic thing was, that I somehow set the camera to a low resolution for the shooting, a few pictures turned out quite nice, but I had really small files, maybe I was drunk. Anyway this really bothered me, so  lets try to make Sansei Muramasa, sparkle once again.

This year the Nitro+ VN, Soukou Akki Muramasa received a lot of attention in terms of figures releases and announcements, mainly from manufacturer Wing. Aside from Muramasa, they also gave attention to Ashikaga Chachamaru.

In the 2 (nearly) 3 years I constantly had Sansei Muramasaon display, the figure showed no effects of leaning or desaturation of colors, accidentally one of her antennas fell off, but was easy to fix.

About the model

In the year 2012 Sansei Muramasa was released, she was sculpted by Shining Wizard @ Sawachika, a really talented artist, who created some really good looking figures. The character of Sansei is based on the dark visual novel Soukou Akki Muramasa made by Nitro+. At 1/7 scale the figure has a nice size and has an appealing look on my shelf, she has a red carpet base and a single table with loose dishes. Check out her “older” review for reference.

Sansei Muramasa is an especially nice maid related figure balance between looking like a fully fledged maid and making the figure look attractive, the elaborate sculpting makes her uniform appear light and detailed. The hair is long and has a pretty shape, a creamy color and a cool looking fringe. Her beautiful facial expression is unique and interesting, changing between annoyed and being flustered, her golden eyes make her expression very strong.

Overall, the figure has a beautiful appearance and covers a number of my appeal points, elf ears, maid uniform, thigh highs and an attractive looking body. The uniform has a very appealing design, colored in black and cream white, the white parts are decorated flouncy.

A sexy feature is the detachable skirt, that reveals more of Sansei’s sensual body, her dark, fancy underwear is a real eye catcher. I don’t want to sound like an European conqueror, so I won’t call her dark skin exotic, it’s very pretty, though and suits the figure very nicely. The dark skin is also interesting. More dark skinned figures have appeared since 2012, still we rarely see this on figures. Naturally, anime/game characters live in Japan and rarely have dark skin.

The idea

Having a real idea for the shooting would be an exaggeration, I had a classic cafe in mind, where Sansei serves coffee and tea. So I’ve build a fancy window frame out of cheap wood parts and ornaments of the right size, I’ve bought on ebay. Afterwards I attached curtains on left, right and a fancier lace stripe on top of the frame.

To gain more height for the backdrop I also made a background wall made of MDF and painted it in light brown. To have more detail I glued bricks at certain areas, I’ve painted the scale bricks in different, but still related colors.The floor isn’t that important, since it doesn’t appear that often when I’m using a 50 mm lens, nevertheless I also gave it some thought as well, in this shooting I used leather with interesting texture to imitate an expensive looking floor.

Obviously Sansei Muramasa is a beautiful figure, not entirely flawless, on very close inspection of the pictures at the PC screen, the figure has some seam lines, visible at the ribbon at the back, the backside of her thighs and very faint ones at the waist. Her hair also has a few unclean spots, but as I’ve already said, this can only be noticed from a very close distance.

Summary and Impressions

I had a lot of fun with Sansei Muramasa, also this second time I took pictures of her, she is very photogenic, I think the new pictures turned out a little better in terms of lighting and sharpness. Partially, a good model makes good pictures ^^ I like the figures appearance of a very pretty grown up girl with a still youthful expression. She’s a very good looking Elf lady.

With a little self critism at the end, I could have planned her background to be a little higher, in the lower angle shots it’s a little obvious where the background ends. I also learned again that dust can be quite persistent.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the pictures of Max Factories Sansei Muramasa, the next post is scheduled for December 24th.
I guess the next “A look back …” related Post might be about Sayaka Miki, one of my alltime favorite figures. I already have the idea for the setup, but will have to invest some more time in building the props.

Do you have any suggestions which of my figures I should choose to do another photoshoot?

I’m a passionate figure collector who not only puts his figures on the shelf, I also like taking creative pictures of  them and write a review about my impressions afterwards.  In advance I always think about a fitting setting for the figure and take care about getting all needed parts together on time. As active figure reviewer you want to get your posts out on time, so the first idea that comes to mind will most probably be only one to be executed in the shooting.

Sometimes this behavior leads to not so good results, aside from quality or aesthetic aspects, there are other reason that make me decide to take some time for another photoshoot.
It can happen that I suddenly think about something that would be cool for one of my figures.

This time we will take A look back at Sonico Bath Time version from Native. I seperated the girl from her bath tub and “throw” her in the water. I aimed to get more atmosphere into the pictures inside hot spring setup. Shy as Sonico naturally is she took her towel along the well temperatured water.

About the model

Sonico Bath Time version was sculpted by Zenko, released in 2012 she was one of the more iconic Sonico figures and nearly on par with Orchid Seed’s black bondage Sonico, a real gem.

The Sonico from Native has a few things that keep her from being perfect, like where is the blush from the illustration, the sliced bath tub or as Chag once said, the shape of her boobs is not to everyone’s liking. Still it’s a great figure with a shapely body and a big expressive face, nice hair and detailed headphones.  I like her a lot with the nice sculpting of her upper body, arms and collarboes, I also love how she covers herself with a towel and her bathing pets are funny.

Check out her review for reference.

The idea

For some time I had the urge to try a new idea to do a re – shooting of this Sonico Bath Time version from Native, not that I think that the pictures I did for her review were bad, but I badly wanted to do a re – shoot. I really racked my brain about this one, the first difficulty was to figure out what to do with her anyway, the solution hit my me like lightning … Onsen!!!

The second difficulty was related to the materials, starting from the right sized bowl and ending with the floor, this floor was the biggest obstacle actually, Well, you can’t imagine how long it took me too find one, luckily the DIY store had something usable. A 1/6 scaled figure  in particular requires big props to match the figures size, another thing to take into consideration was, that this Sonico has a pose that is in need for support this and her legs limited the possibilities for a fitting setting . You can’t just put her somewhere and push the trigger.

Used Materials and Preparations

– background board Mark IV 60×40 cm
– riffled cardboard 60×40 cm
-wooden board 60×40 cm
– pottery bowl
– basalt rocks
– plastic bamboo twine
– DVD’s
– modded box
– support stones

The modded box was once a storage for DVD’s, but I often use it as background support, this time as well, to support  background board Mark IV,  I used a still  work in progress board, which is supposed to be for Tharja. For a little color I hung the plastic bamboo twine above the board.

The bowl had a hole at the bottom that had to be closed properly, to match the heights of floor and bowl I used two heaps of DVD’s, a few basalt rocks along the rim and ready is the hot spring for Sonico. Inside the bowl I’ve put a few support stones to prevent the figure from drowning.

The floor was made of riffled cardboard, after  I cut a huge hole in it, it lost all of it’s stability instantly, so I had to reinforce it with thick cardboard stripes and connected the edges. The floor should have a slight gloss and be water resistant so I painted it with a layer clear spar varnish.

Technical Equipmet

For the light, there was my trustworthy 60 x 40 Wallimex softbox from the left, from the right there was a Metz flash set to 1/35 output equipped with wireless trigger, softbox and gel filter. Behind and above there was one china flash set to 1/64 output, equipped with softbox and gel filter, even though I don’t think it pointed in the right direction because of the high background.

An onsen without steam is just a pond, so I also used my mini fog machine, a very cool gadget for scale figures with fog over the water it creates the illusion of steam perfectly.

My Sony a 550 was recently exchanged with the powerful Sony a 77, it’s good to wield a semi pro camera once again. it button placement reminds me of my old 20D.

The summary

Even  though it took months to set my idea into action and some obstacles were quite a pain in the ass, in the end it was fun shoot Sonico within this setup. It’s fun to throw all the review aspects away for some time and just take pictures for fun, passion or admiration for the figure.

What not worked in this setup were  a few minor things that I forgot to test before and, for example the bowl wasn’t high enough so I couldn’t let Sonico sink deep enough to cover her bare boobs with water. I also could have placed a brush or a few of these wooden buckets, the girls throw when men want enter the hot spring, at the sidelines. Good that things always come to mind AFTER the shooting ended. Anyway I’m quite satisfied how this reshoot turned out.

The next “A look back at” might be happen soon, I guess it will be Sansei Muramasa
from Max Factory where  I already gathered most materials and then Sayaka Miki from GSC.

Im a passionate figure collector who not only puts the figures on the shelf, I also like taking pictures of  them. I always think about a fitting setting for the pictures to put them in the figure reviews afterwards. Sometimes I also get so so results, that are barely acceptable for me. Especially when looking back at older pictures I sometimes feel a bit dissapointed with some works, be it bad lighting, crappy white balance or a setting looks not as appealing as expected.

Well, everybody started at a certain point and due to improvement trough practical training, it can’t be helped to be slightly dissapointed when looking at earlier pictures. Even nowadays I won’t always created the results I wanted to get. Sometimes I feel the urge to think about better ideas of a setting for a certain figure, finding ideas can be pretty easy or give you a headache.

Between preparing reviews with pictures and text, finding time to take pictures of past figues often comes a bit short, but with the right idea in mind, it can be a rewarding time investment.

At best looking back at a figure and taking her for a new shooting can bring you the joy of trying something new and getting better results compared to the ealier ones. It is a lot of fun.

About the model

Momohime was sculpted by Fukumoto Noritaka, the figure is nicely detailed and has many interesting aspects. I would say Momohime is one of my prettiest figures, her head has a nice shape with a sweet face  and very expressive eyes. This figure convinces in her traditional japanese appearance, her colorful Yokata looks beautfiul. These armor on her give her this light martial touch, I really like the contrast between the petite, pretty girl and rough armor parts.

The idea

The idea behind this shooting was to create something like a Japanese bamboo forest with Momohime walking through a dried out riverbed. The previous indoor shots had a quite artificial look with weird white balance and so this time I aimed to get something more natural.

 Used Materials and Preparations

I already had a few things at home like the little white stones and the pebbles. I only bought the grass and the two foam blocks at an arts and crafts shop. The foam blocks were cut in shape, after that they were wrapped with glue and paper and painted in earth and swampy colors.
A few pebbles received the same paintjob treatment to match the base of Momohime.

After everything dried properly, the foam blocks were ready for step 2, the previously cutted grass was pushed in the foam blocks in a tight pattern. Then I placed everything where I wanted it to be and pinned white and transparent green fabric at the wall behind.

Technical Equipmet

Comparing the new pictures with the old ones is a bit unfair from technical point of view, I guess I even had no flash at that time. For a little fill light I used my trustworthy 60×40 Walimex softbox, for some spotlight I used a bright led bulp. My two wireless flashes were placed randomly, it’s still some kind of gamble for me how the flashes will work in the pictures, even though the new one has a manual mode, one of the flashes was placed high above from behind.

The summary

After weeks of thinking about an idea for a better shooting or better said setting, I finally gathered all needed parts and motivation to get started to let Momohime shine again.
Im quite satisfied with the outcome of my reshoot, it was fitiing surrounding and the light setting helped a lot with creating the desired more natural look in terms of lighting and colors.

Overall aside from all the hassle, it was an rewarding task and Im glad that invested my time to achieve better results than 2010, check this “updated” old post for reference

What not worked in this setup was the fog effect, the little fog machine had no sufficent output to create the desired effect in the rather bright setting, when I think about it, I could have flooded the “riverbed” with water, but water in a room is no good idea and I have no idea how to clean up such a mess. Maybe I will try this in another shooting.

see you