#one day I want to do some cute display photos of my SD outfits like these too!

[flufflekiss]

Some official VOLKS x BABY, THE STARS SHINE BRIGHT collaboration photos that I especially love~ෆ

[montydollcrew]

Report: Tenshi no Sato visit

Last Saturday I visited Tenshi no Sato in Arashiyama, Kyoto for the first time. For those who don't know, this is the ‘mecca’ for Super Dollfie – Akihabara Doll Point is more the mecca for Dollfie Dream, although Tenshi no Sato is a great deal more impressive. Tenshi no Sato roughly something like ‘angel’s homeland’, and is partly a store, museum and an overall beautiful facility specifically for Super Dollfie fans. Photos weren’t allowed in all parts of TnS, but I did take as many as I could in the places where they were allowed. This is just a recap of my stay there and what it was like.

Tenshi no Sato is very easy to get to from Saga-Arashiyama station – and there’s actually a sign pointing the way near the station exit. 

The walk takes you around a massive wall – the area was way bigger than I expected! Eventually we get to the front entrance.

You can see the entrance to the garden. The garden is absolutely huge and surrounds the building.

 Visitors are free to walk around in it – however, they have to be Super Dollfie fans. I noticed on the website that it’s actually against the rules to come here if you only want to see the garden and have no interest in the dolls. I am willing to be that this has happened numerous times in the past – I mean the huge walled garden right near the station does kind of stand out and SD isn’t exactly mainstream. (Not to mention that this garden is absolutely beautiful) Whatever happened in the past, there’s now the explicit rule that normies aren’t allowed: if you aren’t here for dolls, then you aren’t here at all bucko.

This building you can see is the main building, which is four storeys high plus a basement floor! 

The first floor is a general meeting/photography area that has themed displays throughout the year, and many glass cases with the limited edition tenshi SDs within. There were also numerous props around to take souvenir-type photos, so I got a bunch of Renee, who I bought with me as she’s my first and currently only SD. (Even though Dollfie Dream are also made by Volks, they’re recently made them no longer allowed at Tenshi no Sato – except in the bookable private photo studios. Those are pretty cool, and I did consider booking so I could take pics of Rin there, but they were kinda pricey - the idea is to book the rooms with a bunch of people who all share the cost.)

There’s also a huge glass window that gives a nice view of the garden.’

At the far end of the hall is the…alter? I guess you would call it. People who get Full Choice orders here will get to welcome their dolls there in the Omukae (Greeting) Ceremony. Every Volks doll store in Japan (the Tenshi no Sumikas, plus Tenshi no Mado in Harajuku) have a special area for this, but the Sato one is incredibly extra. I was kinda hoping that I’d get to see one of the ceremonies happen, but unfortunately if any happened that day they were after we left. We were there as soon as it opened, so there weren’t that many people around the place (a lot more had shown up when we were leaving though.) I really should have taken a photo of it... I did put a short vid of the room here on instagram where you can see the alter in the back. You can borrow a basket to carry your doll around the facility with you, which is cute.

The basement floor is the store, and its laid out absolutely beautifully. Photos weren’t allowed, but there were 3 parts to the store. One part is the same part that’s at other Volks stores in Japan, Tenshi no Sumika (Angel’s Nest), where they sell all the licensed Volks outfits and accessories, as well as a small spot for non-official outfits sold by dealers. The second part, near the register, featured a bunch of special Kyoto-themed products that could only be bought at Tenshi no Sato, such as tea and snacks and some other merchandise featuring the creepy black cat mascot. The third part is the most exciting, the beautiful room full of coordinate models ready for purchase, some of which (like the yoSDs) can only be bought there. (Tenshi no Sato and Tenshi no Mado in Harajuku are the only Volks stores where they sell these coordinate models). For the second time I managed to resist buying a SDM40 boy. 8’)

I also just wanna mention that the shop staff were incredibly nice, helpful and also pretty adorable themselves. They all were really happy to see Renee and thought she looked adorable sitting in the basket, and when I said SDM40 was my favourite sculpt one of the staff made the SDM40 girl wave at me. Stop making this more difficult ;-; If I hadn’t just gotten Renee I would have almost certainly left that room with one of the 40s. It’s a hall of temptation.

Also on this floor was the huge room dedicated to the Full Choice system, where people can place their orders for customized dolls and consult with the staff about their head sculpts, eyes and what the makeup should look like. After the payment is done, the dolls will take about 2 months to be completed, after which the owners can either have them shipped to their (Japanese) address or come back to the store for the incredibly extra yet somewhat adorable ceremony. Full Choice is available at other Volks stores in Japan, but TnS has a few special options only available there – such as fantasy ear parts, tan skin and genderless bodies. I’m used to the relatively small Full Choice counter in the Fukuoka Volks showroom so seeing such a giant room was really cool. And extremely tempting. I resisted the urge because I just got Renee, but I’m still here for one year so who knows…anyway.

On the third and fourth floors is the Super Dollfie museum, where past models are displayed. Since I only joined this hobby proper about 2 years ago, it was really cool to see the older ones and how different they looked back then. It was also really cool seeing so many of the ones I’d only seen in photos in ‘person’. There was also a space for displaying the current One-off models for sale – dolls with previous limited edition sculpts with new makeup and clothing made especially for them by certain dealers. They’re always incredibly expensive but they’re fun to look at. (They also have these in most Volks stores)

Nearby there were some more chair props so I took a few more pics of Renee.

The top floor was another nice spot to relax, with a few more photo props.

It also had a really cool view of the town and mountains,  plus the beautiful garden.

By chance, there was another Renee there as well!

We then went back down to the café. I’ve seen people complain that the café is too expensive, but it doesn’t seem that drastically different to a lot of other Japanese cafes to me. (or Australian cafes, for that matter). The cakes were cute and the tea was nice, so I’m not complaining. It seems like they change up the cakes on offer every now and then cos the selection was different to what I saw in an online report from a year or so ago. I got the green apple mousse cake and some tea.

Next we went outside to explore the garden, which was a lot bigger than I expected.

 If you follow the path through you eventually get to the Beauty Salon, which is where they can fix up broken, dirty, yellowed etc dolls, redo damaged faceups, etc. I saw a troupe of guys head in there with a huge suitcase.

As for what these more traditional looking buildings are…I’m not sure. They didn’t seem to be open. I –think- they might have special events here sometimes, faceup classes, etc? If anyone knows enlighten me, I was really curious about them.

No one else was in the garden, and it made me wonder if you were even allowed to take photos of dolls here. But the gardener saw me taking Renee back out and didn’t complain. He actually did come up to offer to take a picture of me and deadybones though. I guess no one wanted to be outside because it was so damn hot…although there weren’t that many people inside either, and those that were seemed to have Full Choice appointments or were otherwise busy.

Some more pics of the garden:

Anyway, it was a beautiful building in a beautiful area and I was glad I got to visit and do Renee’s first proper photo shoot there. It was nice to have the place so empty as it felt like I had it to myself a lot of the time, but I’d like to go again when more people are around just to see everyone’s dolls.

I’m a VIP member since I currently live in Japan, but it’s still possible for overseas SD fans to visit Tenshi no Sato – you just need to apply for a one-day visitors pass which acts like a temporary VIP card. (The instructions are all on the website in English.) Note that it doesn’t allow you to do Full Choice – you need to live in Japan for that due to the 2 month wait – but you can buy any of the coordinate models.

[georginamarsdenfmp]

After the shoots hand finished completely I straight away started editing my video. I watched some Youtube videos beforehand to practise, as I’m not very familiar with this skill. To begin, I imported the footage from the SD card, which I had used for filming. I then created a new project in Adobe Premier Pro and dragged all of the clips onto the timeline. I began sorting through the clips trying to find the best pieces of footage and separating them from the not very good parts. When I hand finished this I assembled the footage into a rough timeline and kept the rest of the footage in case I needed any extra clips. I hand two ideas drawn out on a storyboard for the intro of my video, one option was all of the outfits on one clip next to each other and the other was the outfits displaying one after the other. I tried the first idea by creating a white line in Photoshop, saving it as a PNG file and inserting it as a reference. I then cut the chosen clip, which were long shots of the full outfits so they would fit in the border. I also made the second intro, which was just the outfit clips one after the other on the timeline. After I had done this I played it to see what I thought, I also asked my peers what they thought about it. After consideration I think I liked the second intro better, it went along to the beat of the music and as my video is a VHS style it should look sort of home-made and rough. Having the borders makes it look too edited and unnatural. Even though my peers felt like the first intro looked more interesting, they agreed that it doesn’t fit my video style. As I had already chosen my music I didn't need to find any then so I just downloaded the song and inserted it onto the timeline. The music is a very important element to the video, as it has to flow to the beat of the song. So I made fine edits of my video by clipping and placing the footage together so that it went in time to the song. When I had finished this I started colour correcting and grading the footage. As my video has a summer theme to it, I wanted the sky to look bluer as it sometimes wasn’t very on the days of the shoots. So I edited the colour selection so the blue was a higher value. As I had already edited the photos using a filter in Adobe Lightroom, I wanted to base my video off of this so my work flows and links together. I copy and pasted the same filter from Lightroom into the video and I also adjusted the brightness, highlights, saturation and contrast within the software. Throughout this editing process I constantly revised and reviewed my video to make sure it fits my theme and is going the way I planned. I then added the VHS effect. As I had no idea how to do this I followed a tutorial I found online which showed me how to create a VHS look. The tutorial told me to download different elements, which I added to certain clips throughout the video. This was called wave effects and wave warps. I also added noise, sharpened the image and gaussian blur to every clip by copy and pasting to make the video look more realistic. I looked online on a website called Freesound which has copyright free sound effects that anyone can download. I felt like this would add an extra element to the video and I found sounds such as a tennis ball bouncing. I imported the sound effects and dragged them onto the timeline and matched them to the clips. I then watched the whole video through to see how it looked. I realised that I didn’t really like the sound effects as it sounded quite odd, as you can't hear any other noises only the music and the specific sound effects. I again asked my peers how they felt and they said it didn’t sound natural and didn’t really fit. So I got rid of them. I created text elements on Adobe Illustrator such as the play symbol and the date to make it look like a VHS video and also end credits and special thanks. I used a font called ‘VCR’ and ‘Champagne & Limousines’ which I had downloaded from Dafont.com. I saved these as a PNG file and dragged them onto the timeline and added them to the appropriate parts. I used the date the 21st of June on the screen as this is the first day of summer and my video has a summer theme. Finally, I decided to create an intro before the video begins using a storyboard. I wanted this to look like a desktop of a computer and someone is clicking on the video. I feel like this will make the video look even more home-made and personal. It also adds an extra element to the video to make it unique and stand out from other stylised videos available. I created this by using a screen recording programme called QuickTime. I also followed instructions which I found online about how to change desktop icons to different images to continue the style of the video and make the desktop look cute. I then started recording the desktop screen and I moved the mouse towards the VHS tape icon called ‘Pastel Summer Lookbook’. I then added this recorded clip to the timeline at the start of the video. I added sound effects such as a slight computer whirring noise and a click noise to make it seem more realistic. Next I had to make the start of the video look like it had been actually clicked on, I animated the scale and position keyframes to make the video fill the whole screen. I’m really happy with the way my video has turned out. I used my research and inspiration throughout the video so that it looks exactly how I planned it to. I made sure to consider my constraints such as by not making it it explicit or inappropriate for my younger audience. I also made sure my target audience would also enjoy the video. As my target audience age range is quite large I didn't want to make the video too childish or serious and I think I found a good balance of this in my video. Overall, I’m so happy with the outcome.

[montydollcrew]

Doll’s Party 36 Photos and Stuff Part 2

geez this is really late because I kept trying to make it but tumblr often does this thing where it wont let me upload any images from the computer unless they’re in an image post so I haven’t been able to, but its finally letting me again.

Anyway, now I’ll share the photos of other peoples dolls. Dolpa (as well as I-doll and presumably other doll events too) have many tables available for rent where people can display their dolls for everyone else to marvel at. It’s really fun looking at them all, and at Dolpa there are a LOT. It just kept going and going so I couldn’t take photos of every single one I saw, just the ones I found most interesting. I was also surprised to see non-Volks dolls amongst them cos I always heard that Dolpa was for Volks dolls only, but if that rule did exist it wasn’t exactly policed. Obviously Super Dollfies and Dollfie Dreams still made up most of the dolls though. Sometimes the owners would be sitting nearby but sometimes they were nowhere to be seen. There must be a high degree of trust cos sadly all I can think of is how if this happened in the west there’d be a lot of thefts.

Look how cute this Len is? Wow.

More:

A whole load of cute lil MDDs. (And part of a Mini Sweets Doll at the end thats cut off there.)

Cute witches! I love the Kiki. Plus even more Mini Sweets Dolls. Those little guys are enormously popular in my local doll group in Fukuoka (as well as everywhere else in Japan it seems) and its getting harder and harder to resist the urge to get one.

A very cute Rin. I really want those stockings.

A game of pingpong going on over here...

Which sculpt is this?! She’s so cute!

A christmas party was happening over here.

Another angle, and I just realised the little ones seem to be drinking beer lol.

i have no absolutely no idea wtf is going on here

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah (anyway after wanting an MDD more and more every time I see one IRL I’m finally going to get one ; I have the head but can’t buy the body for a while longer though)

good gracious there’s some adorable sculpts here ;-;

I wish I’d gotten a closer pic of her, but on the right there’s one of the elusive tanned D’Coords (the DDH09 one). I also should have taken a photo but someone else had the DDH06 one out too. I didn’t get a photo because I thought I was buying one after Dolpa as I’d seen her in the Akiba Volks store the day before, but we got back there literally right as someone was buying the last one. They were legit boxing her up when I approached the counter. It’s been two months and I’m still salty.

Even more MDDs, these ones all have snacks. There was quite a lot of mini snack packets floating around the event and a lot of the dealers were including them as freebies.

The first group of custom ToukenRanbu dolls I saw, but not the last.

It was a big group. Those YoSDs are so damn cute.

MORE CUTIES, I love the dripping chocolate sweater. And the Arale!

I dont know what’s going on here but it looks like fun.

Certainly one of the more creative MDDs I saw lol. That hair.

Some Precures. There’s usually a bunch of them every year judging from photos I’ve seen but there seemed to be less this time.

aaaah I love the Disney ones!

Especially these two...

EVEN MORE CUTIES,  Including one of my fave twitter celebrities some people may recognize. I saw her at I-doll in Tokyo too.

Its the Sepang Racing Miku! A custom dye job.

There was a whole table of different Project Diva Mikus.

It was the most Mikus I’ve seen in one place...

I really like this one cos she reminds me of Tharja.

I was happy to see a Meiko too, in one of her Project Diva outfits.

The second of the custom Touken Danshi, which is 10 times better than the last solely because...

OF THE TINY LIL HOTARUMARU...

I was kinda tired by now so I sat down in one of the relax areas to put the stuff I got for Mel (eyes/hat/cardigan/scarf) on him. There’s one of the chocolates too, it’s a real Ghana, but the size makes it perfect for doll scale.

FUN FACT as I was doing this one of the VolksUSA staff approached me and asked if I was Torino from the DD forums. Apparently I can be recognized by my dolls lol. She was really nice though, she said a lot of the VolksUSA staff were present to get experience for the LA Doll’s Party this year. I’m really curious to know what that’s gonna be like so I’m looking foward to the reports from people who are going.

Also Mel is apparently so damn cute in person that he compelled her to go pick up a Len of her own afterwards.

Eventually it was time to play Bingo - it was free for anyone who bought the guidebook. There were some pretty amazing prizes, including tickets to the next Dolpa, a whole load of Yo-Tenshis, tickest to the SD Cruise and more. 

I had Mel hold my bingo card for luck.

I got hardly any numbers called, thanks Mel.

Anyway, Dolpa was really fun! I’d like to go to another one - I was going to go to the one in Kyoto cos it’s an easy daytrip from Fukuoka by train but it’s in 2 weeks and I dont really have enough money. I might to go to the Tokyo one in May, I haven’t decided, although I heard there’s gonna be one in Osaka too so I might go to that one (especially as I’ve been meaning to go to Universal Studios again so I can go to the Harry Potter part, as it was still under construction last time I went to USJ.),

[montydollcrew]

Doll’s Party 36 Photos and stuff - 1

In December I went to Doll’s Party 36 (Dolpa) at Tokyo Big Sight. It was my first Dolpa, and it was a lot of fun...although I wish I had taken a lot more photos of the dealers. I thought I’d post the photos I do have even though it’s not as much as I should have probably taken. Also my photos arent great, just a warning.

Can’t go to Big SIght and not take a photo of it. This was also my first time going to Big Sight so I really got a sense of the scale of it. Dolpa itself only took up one of the halls, but Comiket apparently takes up the entire complex which is honestly just overwhelmingly massive to me. Imagining all that completely full of people makes me more than a little nervous, so I still don’t really have much desire to visit Comiket.

Anyway there were a few cool exhibitions at this Dolpa, one of them was the special display of all the Fate dolls that currently exist. Starting with the Sabers (I will never understand why Volks still haven’t made BestSaber, by which I obviously mean /Zero (ie suit)Saber but I imagine they will eventually. The newest one, Santa Alter (who appeared in Fate/Grand Order) in the top centre there was one of the special dolls available for preorder at the event.

More after the jump.

Of course of interest to many is the one-off dolls Volks made especially for this christmas display.

Yep, that’s a Super Dollfie Archer.

With...some fried chicken. They put a ridiculous amount of effort into him for something they apparently don’t plan to mass-produce (or do they?) and to be honest I wonder what they even did with him after this. I expected them to auction him off, but I never heard anything. Maybe he’s just going into the Dollfie museum in Kyoto. It was kinda cool to see, but a little annoying in that ‘’hurry the hell up and make actual vinyl dollfie dream men, Volks, so you don’t have to keep making one-off super dollfies for display only, you absolute cocktease of a company.” Of course it wasn’t just Archer...

There was also a Gilgamesh, waiting for you to sit your own doll there to get a pic of him flirting with them. I think he looks more like Gil than the Archer looks like Archer. Kinda wish I’d thought to put Mel and Rin there now, but I had their bag in the cloak room for most of the day so it wouldn’t get in the way in the dealer’s room and once I took them out again I’d forgotten OTL Anyway, Gil and Archer apparently have the same SD head sculpt - I forget the number but one of the full choice system sculpts - just with different faceups/skintones. Anyway, there was a looooooot of interest in these too so  here’s hoping Volks have more concrete plans about it.

Prisma Illya looking cute up there...I badly want her head but she’s ludicrously expensive on the aftermarket.

And the new version of Rin, plus the old Sakura. They’re probably gonna make a new Sakura soon to go with the new Rin, I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t happen this year tbh.

On to the main exhibition.

Junichi Nakahara is an illustrator with a very striking style. A lot of his art collections/retro prints and stuff were on sale, as well as the huge exhibit dedicated to his artwork brought to life in Super Dollfie style.

There was a whole load of the two new Super Dollfies of Josephine March and Elizabeth March (two of the other limited preorder dolls for the event) based on his illustrations from Little Women, done up in numerous outfits based on other illustrations he’s done. All the outfits in this exhibit weren’t for sale, which pains me because to be honest these two dolls look so much better with these outfits and hairstyles than the ones they’re actually being sold with ;; Oh well. It was really cool to see! Big photo dump incoming:

And here’s how the actual purchasable dolls look. They still look nice, but nowhere near as striking as any of the above in my opinion. It was a really cool display, though.

Normally I would have had part 2 be dealers but I stupidly didn’t take enough photos of that. Next time I go to a Dolpa I’ll definitely try to take more photos of dealers!

This booth selling the SD13 Kaito outft just about made my day though. (I got one for my Kaito smartdoll)

Was very impressed by this very poseable plush doggy! You were able to play with the inner skeleton as you wanted so I put him in that ‘shake’ pose.

And this was Yutopia's(hicchi’s) booth - I follow her on twitter so it was cool to see her dolls IRL.

Part 2 will be the collector’s display area.