I’m used to being surprised by something every time I open the door to the clubroom, but I wasn’t expecting this, not that I’m complaining. Miss Nagato in a swimsuit, now that’s a surprise I can live with on a daily basis. Anyway, I expected Haruhi to be doing all sorts of things around Miss Nagato, since after all, this wasn’t the type of thing Yuki would wear just out of the blue — “blue,” she said — but Yuki was alone in the clubroom.
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It’s odd though. Yuki knows everything from the weight of the world’s largest rubber band ball — “3,500 lbs.” — the speed of ketchup on a thirty degree incline, and all sorts of other things, but she has no idea how cute she looks right now. Oh man.
I guess even aliens have their funky sides. Books I knew about. Bears were kind of surprising, though nice. Lucky thing with Nagato is she doesn’t seem to notice when I start thinking to myself like this or at least thinks nothing odd about it.
Click image to enlarge or view on Flickr
Click image to enlarge or view on Flickr
Click image to enlarge or view on Flickr
Review of Alter’s Swimsuit Yuki Nagato
First off, the color in these pictures are a bit darker than what they look like on the actual figure, especially her hair. The promo shots are pretty accurate as far as that goes. Alter’s Swimsuit Yuki is a cute figure. Her finger sliding underneath the fabric is nice, simple, and fun. Keeps it from being a standard swimsuit figure pose and makes it more like Yuki, I think. Can’t really imagine Yuki posed all pinup like in most swimsuit figures.
Yuki comes with a colorless clear plastic disc for a base. It’s completely optional. On an uneven table or shelf, Yuki stands a good chance of tipping forward. Doesn’t take much at all for her to smack the ground with her head. The clear base is good though. A lot of companies tend to use a clear base in the promo shots, but never use them for the final product. I definitely like clear on this one, but I’ll probably not use the base to maximize shelf space.
Click to enlarge or view on Flickr
Click to enlarge or view on Flickr
Click image to enlarge or view on Flickr
Click image to enlarge or view on Flickr
Oh man she’s sweet! Tanaka Touji has put out a few nice sculpts recently. I love Yuki’s cool allure. She’s the perfect contrast to the other Haruhi heroines. Beautiful shots as per always ^_~
I was almost going to give up my preorder for Yuki because of all the bad reviews I’ve read about this, but apparently, your photos made me rethink my decision. I’m definitely collecting her now!
Hahaha, I was hoping to get this one before you so I could beat you to the photoshoot! Unfortunately it was not to be!
I haven’t gotten my Yuki figure yet, but you make me envious with those shots. Excellent camera work as usual. My own photos are shaping up so well in comparison, I have lots of work to do to catch up to your skill.
Do you process your pictures with an editor afterwards, at all? I just sort of shoot-then-upload, at least, I thought that was the standard procedure.
It’s not the worlds greatest figure, but I wonder why it’s getting bad reviews (I haven’t seen any in English, so only going by what you say)? There’s some artifacts around her butt, but nothing abnormal. From off axis angles, the figure tends to look less Yuki-like, but slightly weird looking off-axis is rather normal. Is there something I missed other than how just a slight nudge sends her face first? Overall, I find it fairly Yuki-esque and sweet.
Len, lately, maybe the last 6-7 shoots (maybe more at this point) I’ve been getting into processing the images. Before that I used to do a batch auto-contrast as my processing. I still start out with an auto-contrast to process and then take it from there.
i love the last 2 pics.
Ah, the reviews I read were in Japanese. There was a whole big fuss over the creases in her swimsuit.
So far from what I’ve seen, other remarks were that she’s pretty small. Being of 1/8 scale and of course, the kneeling pose which definitely doesn’t help the illusion of size, how’s the size compared to other figures like Tsukino Azusagawa in her swimsuit?
Too bad about the imbalance on Yuki though, but she looks great lying down as well at least as evident in shots 1, 7 & 8 ^^, perhaps if the imbalance gets annoying enough that would be the way to go =)
The furries make their return! I noticed it’s a bit hard positioning Yuki for other poses, but it doesn’t detract much from the other features of her figure. Her eyes tell me that’s she surprised by the appearance of the bears! XD
Nice use of cotton balls and little bears. I want to find little bears like that but I’ve had no luck. Not really much of a Yuki fan so this figure really does nothing for me and from reading of the comments, sounds like it isn’t too popular.
nice addition of the bear!
she looks great, i’m not the biggest yuki fan so i doubt i’ll be getting her any time soon. love the addition of the little bear.
Getting bad reviews probably because her face is not that accurate and the quality could had been better. For me I like her but since I’m lacking space and need to save cash I’m not getting her
Not bad, not really my style as I don’t get in to the more fanservice oriented figures (which is about 90% of them). Still though, her pose is subtle, her bust didn’t magically increase for the sculpt, and the detail is pretty decent for such a simple outfit.
Yuki is a little larger than the Tsukino swimsuit 1:8 figure or the Amami Haruka swimsuit 1:8 from GSC. It’s a little tough to compare scales on Noizi Ito based characters with other characters, since the Ito designed characters generally have enormous heads.
I’m happy with the purchase, sculpt, paint. Don’t feel that any of the manufacturing artifacts are below average. I like Yuki though, so it gets my approval.
sweet photo, love the warm color
Interresting… very interresting ^^;
The way she is “adjusting” her swimsuit with her finger is such a classic, and having this with Yuki add a special touch. Lovely Yuki.
That’s not fair, why this one deserved to have a clear round base?? ^^
Funny indeed that we had the same thought about this hehe.
Batch auto contrast, you say? It really makes the pictures come out vibrant and pretty.
I’ll start giving that a shot. I’ve been doing testing runs of pictures with mixed results. I’m slowly grasping how to config my camera for best effect but I’m still a long way off from being fully post worthy.
I just recently put up some shots of my first testing run with a few images, I did some more last night too for kicks but they’re not posted yet. I will probably end up buying another lamp to get some more shadow-elmination going on.
Your photos are beautiful as always
-Yeah, one of the things I wanted to do, especially in the shots where Yuki is on the puff balls, was to make it seem warm. Had to desaturate the pictures in the morning, because Yuki was super yellow in the stuff I processed at like 4AM. I find it better to upload them in the morning, than late at night, since tired eyes can let some weird looking stuff go through.
-More often than not photos benefit from an auto-levels or auto-contrast adjustment, depending on your lighting and white balance.
Hee hee I like the mob of bears invading her. I admit that this looks like a darn tootin’ sexy figure of Yuki, and isn’t something that you’d normally see… next thing you know, she’ll be wearing a ninja costume, or military garb. Ah, Sega… how you milk a license…
I’ve never used auto-levels, auto-color, or auto-whatever, as doing manual color balances tend to create moods more under your control, though from the looks of it, if you want some sharp and clean looking contrast photos, auto is the way to go.
Yea, my camera’s light balance settings are usually on ‘auto’, since I use a sort of mishmash of light sources until I buy two more Fullspectrum lamps for my little picture taking corner of my computer room. The effects you did on the pictures came out nice, I’m really impressed.
When I get the lights, I’ll probably move my camera into a full ‘white light’ mode, and test out stuff like evaluative metering to see if I can’t pull some nicer results.
I noticed at times your pictures have this warm fuzzy texture to them, I can’t recall which pictures in paritcular (and I may be completely barking up the wrong tree), but is that a camera effect or a process effect?
Well, now that I’m moving into more processing, the auto-contrast is just a start point now. One of these days I might wrap my head around curves and channels and all of that stuff. I definitely get what you mean about manual adjustment to create a mood, Radiant. But, your right that mostly I just want a clean image that brings out the lighting I tried to do.
Len, those fuzzy shots are just out of focus.^^ Just kidding. Point me to an example and I could tell you.
Hahaha!
Alright, when I get home from work I’ll post another comment with the examples, I don’t want to risk going through some of the more risque pictures on your flickr account from here!
Yuki being sexy O_O lol, not something she usually tries to do. That little touch where Yuki adjusts her suit is great, makes it a bit sexy yet doesn’t make her come out of character. Good thing I’m not a glasses man
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Hey ,very great photos man.
The figurine has very nice eyes and looks very well made.
I thought to order it from the day I saw the Yuki figurine.
I still prefer a female character wearing a two-piece swimsuit (bikinis). You get to see the curves and skin ^^
I guess Yuki’s an exception.
It depends. More often than not I’d say I like the classic tone a one-piece suit brings, but yes, on people who can wear it well a bikini is definitely the look I like.
very nice photos; I like Yuki the most in the SOS dan. I want to get this figure now >.<
I have no idea which one is my favorite, though it probably isn’t Mikuru. Yuki, Haruhi, and hangs around but isn’t a member, Tsuruya…can’t decide.
I like the bears
!
Nice! I got her too but haven’t been down to the store to collect. This is probably my last figure in a looooong time. No outstanding preorders anymore lol.
I really like the photography work done on the figures. It easily rivals the catalog pictures provided by manufacturers and retailer sites. I have a nice camera, but it’s 35mm, and I imagine there’s some trial and error involved in taking pictures like that. My lens is also not really good for close-ups.
Some people do get away without having a macro lens, but it’s better if you have one. With 35mm, it’s going to be more expensive. The main advantage with digital is it’s easier to learn by trial and error. You change something and can see the results pretty quickly. With 35mm, it’s harder to see cause and effect, because usually by the time you get the film back you might not remember what you did. On the other hand, digital makes it easier to be sloppy, careless, and to shoot without purpose since there’s almost no consequence.
sigh…
These photos make me regret cancelling the figure. Lovely shots, I love the way she looks on her side~
I’d been goin back and forth on her for awhile, but ended up not preordering her. Maybe I made a mistake lol. I love her soft curves and I also like the way you set her in the bed of fuzzy puffs lol
definitely one of the cutest Yuki figure out there and those bears, they are so cute. In the third pic it seems she’s wondering how the bear got there ^^
ahaha.. after changing into swimsuits, instead of going to the beach, she lies down in a furry bed with bears.. haha.. something new XD
wonderful shots as always..
I already wanted this and now I want it even more! Great shots, I especially like the one where she’s looking at the little bear, so cute!
Sadly, I was careless and left those little bears on the edge of the table. While I wasn’t looking my evil dog decided to chew up all of the bears.
But yeah, go Yuki!
Yeah, it would be quite costly do this with my 35mm. I do love my camera though, it is top of the line and affordable, where as an equivalent digital camera is still ridiculously expensive. I’ll get a high end digital at some point, but right now I’m just not comfortable spending that much money when megapixel numbers keep advancing so fast. I don’t want to spend nearly a grand only to have it obsolete the next year.
To be honest, I have a different concern with the increasing mega pixels. I fear most camera makers are going to put even more pixels on these small sensors, which will ramp up noise. This in turn forces more aggressive noise reduction, which will kill low contrast detail. There’s still room on a full size sensor, but for the smaller sensors like on the APS-C and 4:3 sensor formats, pixel counts are at a tipping point. At this point I hope they work on dynamic range, rather than pixel counts, but it’s harder to market dynamic range than it is to say this camera has 2 million more pixels than your old one! A whole 2 million more…where do I sign!!!
I think those bears are cuter than Yuki.
Well those bears are cute.
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if they wish really, i f***in them.