Project: Obitsu March 2015

Like Let's Joe!, this month's Project: Obitsu entry has been delayed by the same life drama crap. That's just as well though because it gave me time to reassess what I had planned and come up with something different. First of all, this is my first attempt at posting images from my iPhone camera to this blog. Second, this reintroduces a character not seen in my corner of the "blogosphere" in quite a while with her first new photo shoot in over two years.

Claire is an Obitsu 27 cm SB 2 body with a pre-painted W 02 "Pinkie" head. Once upon a time, she had an active online presence with her own blog and appearances at various message boards. Life changes, time moves on and the ability to maintain an "in character" online life for a doll diminished considerably. Anyway, here she is after an extended absence.

Most of Claire's outfit came from a couple of early Dragon female action figures. The first generation Dragon female body bore more than a passing resemblance to the Volks Dollfie (1/6 scale) of the time. Consequently, their clothes tend to fit Dollfie/Super Action Jenny sized bodies pretty well.  Her t-shirt is from Winona, an NYPD sniper, while the pants and boots come from the often hard to find "Hit Team" figure of HK actress Jo Kuk. The jacket is an early Azone piece that I had wanted for years and finally found on eBay a couple years ago. While not part of the fabled Azone Combat Gear line, it uses the camo pattern from one ACG outfit and so integrates well with those items. I would love to find the pants and field coat in this same pattern but that's about as likely as finding adamantium plated unobtainium Jabberwocky teeth!

Finally, here's a shot I took and posted to Instagram a few days ago:

Let's Joe! March 2015

Holy cow, I was starting to believe this month's entry wasn't going to happen! So much drama for one fairly unremarkable photo shoot....

Anyway, our Joe for March has been outfitted as a police officer. His body armor says SWAT so I'll say he's on the SWAT team too! Although he was a simple figure to put together, I'm generally happy with the way he turned out. I didn't come up with any kind of back story or even a name for him so I'll leave it to you the readers to fill in those blanks.

His outfit is mostly some old BBI stuff with a few (also old) 21st Century Toys items thrown in.

Finally, I included a shot of Joe hanging out and chatting with Officer Ryotsu Kankichi. Ryo-san is a Bandai figure from the late '90s and still one of my favorites. You'll notice that there's more than a passing similarity in the way these two are designed. The story is that when Hasbro was working on what would become the Super Articulated body, the designers were provided with one of these Ryo-san figures by a local collector and it may have influenced some of the engineering choices they made. Who knows whether that's the case but I know the Hasbro folks at least had a chance to examine a copy of Ryo-san when this version of GI Joe was being designed, so it's an interesting bit of trivia.

I hope to keep on chugging along with this project but like I said in my last post, it has been stupidly difficult recently to simply take photos or put together figures. I have been playing with Instagram the past few days (I'm Geektopian there too) and it's fun for quick, on the go shots. However, I don't see it quite filling the same role as this blog nor replacing it in the near future. I am determined to keep things going here at RoG but please bear with me if things get quiet around here from time to time. Meanwhile, I'll keep trying to crank out photos and posts about little plastic people!

Travelin' Doll, Instagram, et. al.

Sorry things have been quiet around here lately. Crap-tons of family drama combined with having two toddlers attached to me around the clock have conspired to eat up all the spare time I don't have. I don't plan to make any changes to the format of this blog in the near future but it occurs to me that I need to do something different to accommodate my life as it is. Two major problems are that Blogger isn't very usable in iOS and the photo host is somewhat limiting for loading cell phone pictures. Blogging on my home computer and lugging around my DSLR for photos has gotten much more difficult with my two "assistants" constantly underfoot and aforementioned lack of spare time.

So.... What to do? One thought that occurred to me was to do a sort of travelogue featuring one or two of my GI Joes and post it on Instagram or maybe Flickr. I nearly always have my phone with me or close by and I use it to do a lot of my actual blogging and other internet stuff as well. Of course, this photo blog doesn't have to be just Joes; it could feature Neemos, Obitsus or even some other dolls/action figures that I haven't shown around here. However, my thinking is that there would be one or two primary characters and not a "cast of thousands". Since I always have kids in tow or crawling on me, whatever subject I chose would need to be portable, durable and not too precious in terms of cost or rarity. So yeah, no super-rare 70cm resin ball joint dolls for this project!

So, how does this all work? I know a number of my readers have traveling doll blogs and use Instagram and/or Flickr with cellphone cameras. What was your experience with these services and were there any limitations, frustrations or pitfalls that I should know about? Can I cross post images from Instagram to other platforms like Blogger or (for the old-school among us) message boards? Any tips for photographing dolls with a cellphone camera? I find I still prefer my DSLR for image stability and quality but maybe I'm not giving the phone a fair chance. Finally, is this the sort of thing any of you would find interesting? Or would it be just more links to click and more sites to join just to look at some boring, silly pictures of dolls and action figures? Let me know what you think!

Project: Obitsu- February 2015

Next up for Project : Obitsu is Erena-Mission 2, an Obitsu/Azone Hybrid released about a decade ago. I don't know much about her backstory except that this is the second Erena and she appears to be some kind of original action/adventure/spy character. At least, I'm not aware of any other media featuring this lady. although I might've missed it. Anyway, I've always thought she was a cool little doll and when I had the chance to acquire her last year, I jumped at it. I posted a quick "in the box" photo review HERE so you can check out other photos and info there.

I promise that I didn't make her do this photo shoot in the cold! The combined effects of stretchy top material and the permanent "headlights on" molding of the Obitsu hard shell body conspire to make it seem like a cold day, though. A couple things I should've done with this photo shoot include showcasing the giant, heavy die-cast pistol she's armed with and dressing her in the hilarious cleaning lady disguise that comes with this set. (Complete with toilet plunger!) Maybe I can revisit her at some point in the future for more shots.

Let's Joe! February 2015

This month, Mike checks in as a sorta-kinda US Army Ranger. I won't promise that he is in any way "accurate" but the uniform and gear are what you might've seen in use from the late 1990s to mid 2000s. OK, maybe not all on the same guy or at the same time but well...yeah! Anyway....


Mike is, again, a GI Joe Super Articulated body. His basic uniform, boots and helmet are from BBI while his rifle and gear (body armor, chest rig and pouches) come from Dragon. This project proved to be more challenging than I first imagined. Highlights include uncooperative helmet straps, missing parts like knee pads, goggles and hand grenades and a bayonet that fell apart at the eleventh hour. *WHEW* Nevertheless, I'm pleased with what I managed to get done by photography day and I'll keep adding and adjusting things as I find them. Next month's Joe is going to be a lot simpler and will be paired with a special guest star. OK, on with the photos!

I've decided to spared every one a detailed "gear head" break-down of all the his equipment but I can certainly add it or answer specific questions if you'd like. 

Project: Obitsu January 2015

Here's the first entry in my monthly Project: Obitsu feature. I want to focus on a different Obitsu or Obitsu-based doll in my collection each month. All of these dolls are 1/6 scale and are either entirely Obitsu or based on Obitsu bodies with other heads. Some of these will include dolls from Azone's era of 1/6 scale hybrids and possibly other manufactures as well.

January's subject is a girl I purchased a year or so back exactly as you see her here. I'm not entirely sure of her background, although she looks a bit like one of the early Mama Chapp Usami-chan dolls. She could also be a custom doll although she looks factory made to me. Who knows? I think she's rather attractive so I don't really care either way!

When I did this photo set, I realized this poor girl didn't have a name or any sort of background. While I still need to come up with a biography, I decided to name her Rainy Mourning. Her last name is a bit of a hat tip to goth model and reality TV personality Wednesday Mourning. Rainy is based on a standard Obitsu 27 cm body with the "hard shell" torso. Her head looks somewhat like an early production Volks vinyl head but I can't be absolutely sure about that. I love here outfit although I think she might need some more elaborate shoes to really pull off this look. Meh...the flats will do for now.

Favorite Photos of 2014

Inspired by a recent post at iHime's Den, I decided to dig through my photo archive and find my three favorites of 2014.

Meg's snow day-

While there are other photos in this shoot that actually show Meg walking in the snow, I really like this close-up of her face. Just wish I'd gotten her face more in focus instead of her jacket. Snow days don't come around here very often so I always try to get some photos when they do. Meg is an Obitsu 27 cm doll, BTW.

In Memorium-

 

A bit of sad serendipity with this image as it was taken during the US Memorial Day weekend but was also posted to honor Don Levine, the man credited as the father of GI Joe for his efforts leading the design and development team at Hasbro in 1963. Mr. Levine had passed away shortly before this was taken and I thought it made a nice tribute to have two vintage style Joes in the photo. They aren't actual 1960s Joes but 40th Anniversary reproductions, since that's what I have.

Mio in the yard-

It's a bit hard to pick a favorite Pure Neemo girl but for me, Mio may have to be the one. I had wanted a Mia for several years and was thrilled when I finally bought one last year. Then older sister Mio was introduced and I was immediately charmed! This is from the first photo shoot I did with her and I like it because everything just seems "in balance" somehow. It really shows her to good advantage and my camera karma was working that day, in spite of high heat and humidity so bad, it fogged the lens. My favorite shot of my favorite PN girl? I think maybe so!