Indeed! I never had much variation in my parties despite playing through both games several times. I waffled back and forth for a while but I decided to go with the harder-lit one, mainly because I thought it gave a more interesting look to her face. For example, I had this picture, which is basically identical to shot #2 other than the lighting, which is much softer and more even. I probably should’ve dialed down the overhead light on some of these shots, but I did take some pictures with softer light and they didn’t seem as interesting to me. I didn’t quite think that through when I painted the set in retrospect, I might have been better off going with gray, like I used for Saber Alter’s set, but on the other hand, I’m pretty happy with the way the brighter backdrop looks. It would have been more noticeable if the background were darker, but I was blasting a lot of light through the window to blow it out and since the set is painted white, pretty much all that light got reflected back. I wanted Sasara to have this shining knight look, like I did with Sigui’s human light bulb shots.

Haha, yeah, I went overboard on the overhead light. On the other hand, it still looks much better than with no textured paint at all I tried using one of the big pillars for my Darth Talon review last year and it turned out so badly that I dumped those photos. The grain comes from the props themselves I used some textured spray paint that I got from the crafts store next to the Wendy’s I like to go to for lunch, but I guess this stuff isn’t formulated for miniature scale-sized use. Yeah, I looked at the photos in Lightroom and I was surprised by how coarse the grain is. I think I first broke that rule with Rei Ayanami Alter’s 1/5 scale version of her was one of the first figures I bought, and then I got Yamato’s Shunya Yamashita-designed figure. I really wanted that figure for a long time (though looking at it again, it’s, uhh, somewhat hideous by contemporary standards) but I got Clayz’s figure around the same time that one was released.

I had a similar rule for a while, back when figure makers weren’t quite so prolific, and I wonder if that played some role in me not getting GSC’s old 1/8 scale Saber figure. Certainly Caliburn or Excalibur will look much better than Sasara’s broadsword, too. I put Rin’s swords back in her box since they don’t stay stuck in her base very well, but I’ll have to pull them out and see if they will work. I didn’t try any of the GSC Fate/stay night weapons, but that’s a good idea.

Hopefully her price will settle out a bit after the initial rush. She appears to be in decent demand even just a few weeks after her release there are only a few listings for her up on Yahoo Japan Auctions and the buyout prices for her are significantly higher than her retail price. I figured correctly, because pally Sasara is a very impressive figure indeed. I had some slight misgivings because Volks’s Moekore figures tend to not feature the cleanest production quality, but I figured Sasara looked good enough that I wouldn’t care. When Volks announced that their Sasara figure was called the “paladin” version, my curiosity was piqued, and when I saw the promo pictures, my interest was confirmed. I stayed away from World of Warcraft for years because I was told that paladins were only good for healing and I didn’t care to spend my game time staring at a CTRaid status window while mindlessly spamming the Decursive key (I wound up doing that after I bought the game, anyway). I played a paladin in EverQuest despite the hindrance of the hybrid experience penalty. My Baldur’s Gate parties always had two paladins – my player character and Ajantis in the first game and Keldorn in the second. My party leader in the Bard’s Tale games was always a paladin. I’ve always admired the ethos of the paladin: the self-sacrificing knight devoted to justice and charity.

Despite not being particularly religious, I always like to play as a paladin in role-playing games.

To heart 2 dungeon travelers ova