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.