Tim’s Blog

Fixing the joints of my garage kit with putty

Today, I continued to work on building my garage kit (a figure that you assemble and paint). This time, I used putty to fill in any gaps in the join lines for the figure parts make the joints cleaner and fit nicely.

I’ve done this one before in my previous garage kit. At that time, doing this made the figure look much more nicer than I tried to paint it without puttying the joints. Since that worked pretty well, I’ve decided to do the same on this figure too.

It takes 6 hours for putty to cure, so this task is a bit troublesome. It takes such a long time, and during that time, you can’t do any more work on the figure while you wait.

As the pieces just finished curing, I gave the pieces a test fit, however, it seems that because of some excess putty, the parts don’t fit as cleanly as before. Ack! Seems like I made it worse. (>_<)

Actually, before I did the puttying, the joins were really quite a good fit, so today’s work seems to have just ruined that.

Anyways, now I plan to sand down the excess putty with some sand paper until the pieces fit together nicely again. If that doesn’t do the job, then i’ll just have to try remove and reapply the putty again.

Unfortunately, the weekend is almost finished, so it looks like I’ll have to do it next time. Though, waiting for the next weekend is frustrating.

My Octavia figure arrived!

My Kotobukiya Octavia figure which I preordered 2 months ago arrived today. The box that it arrived in was huge, although it was lighter than expected.

Shopping Spree

Lately, I’ve been doing quite a bit of shopping. The exchange rate is really bad for the Australian dollar, so for a while I’ve been holding off from spending, and have been thinking about what I should do about the sudden insane price rise of all things imported.

After some consideration, I decided that holding off buying the things that I enjoy for a period of half a year to a year or more until the economic crisis is over is pretty unrealistic, so I decided to just spend the money regardless of how much things cost and keep pursuing my hobbies.

To start my shopping, I decided on getting the latest volumes of the manga and novels I was reading, and also to get a copy of the already sold out limited edition copy of Negima! vol 23. I was unable to get the Negima! comic from BK1 (A great online Japanese book store), so instead, I bought it at YesAsia.com.

The YesAsia site had a huge sale on, where many figures, games and dvds were discounted by as much as 80%. Because of that sale, I ended up also buying a Nendoroid Tsuruya figure as well as some PSP and PS2 games that were heavily discounted.

The figures and games were very cheap, however, the Negima! limited edition manga was extremely expensive since it was sold out everywhere else, and was an unbelievable $70AU.

The goods that I ordered from YesAsia have all now arrived safely. I am very happy with my purchases, although my credit card bill this month was a lot higher than I expected. It seems the exchange rate used for my purchases was $1AU=56yen, so it was probably charged on my card on the day when the Aussie dollar was at it’s worst. Before the financial crisis, the exchange rate was $1AU=100yen, so this is really depressing.

Still, I’m glad that I bought all the goods. I have just finished reading vol 24 of the Negima! manga and really enjoyed it. Also the DVD that came with the limited edition was really great too. I also got several good Japanese games at 80% off, so I’m also very satisfied.

By the way, the Octavia figure that I preordered previously just got released in Japan last week, so I think I should receive mine in the mail possibly tomorrow. I have quite a backlog of preordered figures still, so I’m a bit concerned during this financial crisis, but I plan to keep to my decision of keeping to my normal spending habits.

My figure preorder of Riannon from Tears to Tiara arrived!

My preorder for the Riannon figure from Tears to Tiara and a figure modelling book called "Figure no tatsujin" for sculpting anime figures from clay arrived last Monday.

Since I really enjoy and like the characters from the Tears to Tiara game for the PS3, I straight away preordered when I heard news that the characters would be made into figures. Since there were plans for 3 of the characters to be made as figures, I preordered all 3 of them. (^_^;)

When I made the preorder, the reference picture was from a resin kit sample, so I knew the picture would of course be nicer than what the final product would actually be like. Because of this, I doubted the quality of the PVC version.

When the PVC version reference pictures were released, I was disappointed as the PVC version didn’t look as nice as I had hoped. However, when I finally received the figure and had opened and saw it with my own eyes, I was suprised at how highly detailed it was. Strangely, it looked much better than the resin kit reference picture.

This figure is really awesome. The pose is very lively and the details are crisp and well done.

When I look at this figure and compare it to the Tamaki Kawazoe figure from Bamboo Blade also made by Kotobukiya, I really admire the quality of Kotobukiya figures.

Normally, I prefer and like Good Smile figures as I often read dannychoo.com and tend to be influenced by his figure reviews, but now I think Kotobukiya figures are a new favorite.

By the way, this morning, 1999.co.jp just sent me a notification email letting me know that my Octavia figure also from the Tears to Tiara game is now in stock, so I look forward to that being shipped here soon.

Working on my Garage kit

Last weekend, I resumed working on my Illyasviel von Einzbern garage kit (a figure that you assemble and paint) from the series Fate/Stay Night which I had forgotten about and left half done.

That day, I used some sand paper to smoothen any irregular spots on the surface of the model and did a test fit of the parts to check how well the joins fit together.

This time, the sanding was a bit more difficult that the first garage kit that I made. Also, it seemed that from the test fitting, I noticed that the arms and the head parts didn’t fit correctly into their sockets, so it seems I’ll have to do some adjustments to those parts.

I plan to use some putty and sandpaper to help smoothen the surface, although it seems that I’ll have to do that next week. I actually would like to spray on some Mr.RESIN surfacer spray so I can start painting but in order to build the figure nicely, it’s important to concentrate on getting all the prep work done. How well the prep work is done will have an impact on how well the figure will turn out when I start to paint it.

I received my Ryoko Asakura figure!

It took quite a bit of effort to track down the Ryoko Asakura figure.

When I was looking for the figure, I found that almost all the online shops I visited listed it as sold out, and the only ones I could find on auction sites were 2nd hand ones being sold for about 3 times the normal price.

I managed to get my hands on one when the online store 1999.co.jp suprisingly got a restock of the figure and sold it at the recommended price rather than at a crazily inflated price. Thanks to that, I was able to secure an order at the site.

The figure itself arrived 2 weeks ago on Monday. It arrived a day earlier than I expected. (^o^)

The box was quite large, though it was actually quiet light so postage wasn’t that expensive.

I currently have the figure displayed in front of my monitor.

The quality of the figure is very detailed and just from looking at it, I am satisfied with the purchase. I’m glad I managed to get this figure.

Addicted to Mahou Sensei Negima!

Lately, I’ve been really into the Mahou Sensei Negima! (Magic Teacher Negima!) manga series. I first heard of the series from the time when the manga was being made into an anime series.

Since I really liked the Anime and wanted to know what happened next, I ended up ordering the manga. To tell the truth, over half of the volumes of the manga for this series was given to me from a good net friend, so I didn’t have to make a particularly large order.

When I read the manga, it was more different than I imagined. It seems that the anime is quite different from the manga. The manga is a very interesting as it has a well thought out plot, detailed character designs & settings and very verbose explanations for topics such as  such as information about the magic in that world.

It it done to such a degree that I am very impressed at the amount of time Akamatsu Ken, the author of the manga, spends on creating the world of Negima!

The things I like about this manga are the magic battle scenes and the section at the end of the comic named Majutsu goi shuu (Magical techniques vocabulary list) which contains explanations for vaious Magic chants and battle techniques encountered in the story.

The interesting thing is that many of the explanations are so detailed that it takes 2-3 pages to explain the concept, and it even explains many chants that are in other languages such as Latin and others I can’t identify. (^^;)

This weekend, I finished reading the last 3 volumes on the series that I have in my collection. I actually wanted to stretch it out a bit longer by reading it slower and enjoy it, but the story was so good that I had to keep reading only to end up reading all the volumes I had left.

Now I’m currently desperate to get my hands on the next volume which hasn’t been released yet, and have it preordered.

By the way, it seems that the new volumes 23, 24 and 25 have limited editions where they come with extras including an Anime DVD with some of the best scenes of the manga remade as an Anime OVA.

I really really want to get myself a copy of this limited edition of the manga, but the price is really expensive. Until now, I’ve been holding off, but now I want to order the next volume to find out what will happen next, and I don’t know if I should get the limited edition or the regular one.

It seems that the limited edition of volume 23 has been sold out with no planned reprints, although I should be able to get the limited editions of volumes 24 and 25 preordered through BK1 if I’m eager.

Still translating

There are still a few posts that are being translated from my Japanese blog, so there may be a gap in time from the last post and the next post.

This is just a placeholder to explain the gap in time.

About work

Two weeks ago on the weekend, my friend invited me to do one day of work with him. The work involved installing the internet for some company’s customers, however, since they didn’t have enough notebook computers, we were sent off to do some unrelated work instead.

I thought we were going to be doing some interesting work, but instead we were sent to do some door knocking and promoting the company.
During that time, I really wanted to go to the toilet, but since there were no public toilets nearby it was not a pleasant experience for my first job.

Anyways, it’s all in the past. It doesn’t matter to me anymore since today was payday. For one day of work, I got $195AU! Whohoo! I wonder what I should spend it on…

It seems like my wish for money has been granted. Haha!
I guess now I should be wishing to win the lottery.

Japan Book Plaza visits ECU!

There are very few Japanese study books available here no matter where you go, and the prices are about 2 to 3 times that of the normal price in Japan. However, today is rather special, since a specialized Japanese book store came all the way from the other side of Australia to my university to sell their goods with a 20% discount.

Of course, as a result, I ended up buying a lot of books that day. Normally those books would be uninteresting, but since I needed some resources to study for the JLPT Japanese proficiency test at the end of the year, it seemed like a dream come true.
The books I bought were:
Collection of Level 1 questions
一級問題集（日本語能力試験対策）

Perfect master Level 1 Reading comprehension
完全マスター１級　日本語能力試験読解問題対策

Perfect master Level 1 Grammar
完全マスター１級　日本語能力試験文法問題対策

Any time, How to use 500 intermediate and Advanced grammar expressions
どんな時、どう使う日本語表現文型５００中・上級　【短文成練習帳】

Thanks to my shopping spree on those textbooks, I’ve spent heaps despite the discounts.. ahh! need money!