Alter Death Sensei in a Winter Wonderland
December 31st, 2007
The snow crunched under Death Sensei as she walked slow through the snow. She was late, but she knew most people didn’t mind it if she was. These end of year parties, she dreaded them. It wasn’t that she disdained these gatherings, far from it. Having to supply idle conversation was a critical skill she lacked, so parties just made her uncomfortable. What she did like about parties was walking to them and leaving them. The world becomes her own secret place on that walk home, where the white noise of the world can be heard clearly as the snow falls along the way.
Death Sensei from Alter
Alter’s line of Peace-at-Pieces “death” versions is probably my favorite series of figures. I love the character designs, particularly the outfits, plus the Hiromitsu Morikawa sculpts are cool and show the personality of the characters. Hikaru was playful. Nagi reserved. Death-Sensei invites you to bring it if you dare. The bird she carries kind of reminds me of Vicious from Cowboy Bebop, not that they look anything alike at all.
The strength of the Death Sensei figure is the strong lines of the hair and headdress. In a good way it is a lot for the eyes to take in. The ribbons and the bird look sweet. One of the details in this series of figures that impresses me each time is the clean and sharp lines for the patterns along the hems of the character’s outfits. I wish we’d see it more often. Face and hands might seem a little on the simple side, but that’s a lot to do with character design.
Death Sensei comes with a stark white plastic disc peg mount base, which connects to only one of the figure’s feet. With the increasing use of more rigid plastic for the boot area on figures, I personally am less concerned about warp (70+ figures, 2 warped). The other foot does take some of the weight off, so it’s not all resting on one support leg.
I like capping off the year with Death Sensei. I think there’s a couple of other characters in this series, I don’t really know, but if there are I hope Alter continues to add more Morikawa Peace-at-Pieces figures.
Idle Chatter: Diorama and Blogging
It’s been a long time since I’ve gone and used a diorama. Chalk it to one part laziness and one part finding them a distraction which sometimes draws attention away from the figure. Plus after doing this for a while, got an intuition for what works for me and sometimes just go straight to that without fiddling too much trying to find pieces that compliment the figure. When in doubt, I just leave it out. Still even if they don’t add to anything in the end, a diorama shoot and trying to find the right pieces is fun to do, which is really what this is all about, and I felt like Death Sensei would be a good one for it. Plus, the holiday season is the best time to find small objects for a diorama — that bag of fake snow I bought last year is only half done.
I guess I’ve been around long enough where I’m no longer a new blogger, though I still feel like one. I still don’t think I’m writing these entries properly at all and I certainly haven’t gotten any faster. Haha. Anyway, so long to 2007.
28 Responses to “Alter Death Sensei in a Winter Wonderland”
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December 31st, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Wow…she looks absolutely beautiful! I can’t wait to get my Death-sensei when she arrives!
December 31st, 2007 at 5:10 pm
Yeah, I found that Xmas is a great time to find trinkets and stuff. Bought myself 3 bags of fake snow, lol. For some reason I forgot that this figure existed, but it probably means that it didn’t interest me. Great photos!
December 31st, 2007 at 5:47 pm
Nice! But it’s not my favourite line of figures. Come to think of it, I don’t even have a favourite line.
December 31st, 2007 at 8:09 pm
hoo nice setup, and she looks very beautifull!
and also Happy New Year!!
January 1st, 2008 at 1:52 am
Saw her back in september and knew i had to get her. Especially like the strong and sharp details, and the well painted colors. nice shots, they accentuate the contrast between her and the bg well! happy new year too!
January 1st, 2008 at 2:43 am
Don’t put yourself down like that ^^, you’re one of my favorite figure bloggers. You and other figure bloggers inspired me to blog about my own figures. Happy New Year to you.
January 1st, 2008 at 4:50 am
nice! death never looked so moe~!!!
January 1st, 2008 at 7:57 am
Love the figure.. Love the backdrop.. can’t help but thinking should I get this figure now.. haha
Happy New Year!
January 1st, 2008 at 9:19 am
great looking diorama. the figure looks great too, the detail is just fantastic. the first shot would have to be my favourite. Happy New Year, looking foward to more great photos from you in 2008 ^^
January 1st, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Happy New Year!
Hemisphere is the 1337 commenter with the 1337th comment. No prize though.
Now that it’s a week after Christmas, it might be slim pickings for Christmas stuff, but anyone interested in building up some diorama fodder should go now as it’s likely 50% off or more.
Thanks, AS.
The first picture is my favorite one as well and is actually the first test-shot I took of the figure to check out if the trees would look too fake or not in the BG.
January 2nd, 2008 at 4:46 am
I am sorely tempted by this figure…maybe I’ll preorder it, we’ll see
January 2nd, 2008 at 8:20 am
Nice pictures. This figure is really interesting although I find the left hand a bit weird, it seems it’s out of proportion a bit to fat.
The set is incredible it really looks like she’s walking outside in the snow
January 2nd, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Her clothes look absolutely wonderful! I like the way it makes her look like she’s twirling (or something to that effect).
January 2nd, 2008 at 10:10 pm
I ended up reordering it just now xD;
January 3rd, 2008 at 12:40 am
The left hand is a little odd, yes.
Good job, Figured.
January 3rd, 2008 at 1:43 am
*preordering I meant.
lol thank super rats
ps. I think the hand thing is ’cause they wanted it cute, but the other one they wanted to be graceful holding the bird? I hope it looks more natural IRL but it didn’t stick out to me too much in the pictures.
January 4th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
i didn’t know where she came form or any of her backgrounds. But when I saw her when she was first available for pre-order I just knew i had to get her.
Just got mine Monday along with Kos-Mos.
And yes Death never look so Moe and I will repeat one of my favorite rants. Why didn’t any of my teachers in school look like this ;_;
January 4th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
I’ve had a couple of easy to look at teachers. I had a really really hot student teacher in 5th grade. I think every guy had a crush on her. I also remember having the hots for my 10th grade Spanish teacher.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
I have a whole collection of teacher/student manga…I am such a weirdo.
I <3 Teachers XD; Now…I have to order the Kodomo no Jikan figure tehe!
Ps. I <3 Noizi Ito designs!
January 5th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
This figure has to be one of the ’sleeper hits’ of what I have ordered in the past months. I preordered it as soon as I saw the previews, but forgot about it until it arrived. Now that it arrived, I am glad that this figure fell in the ‘don’t know about the character, but looks nice’ order category.
Super Rats: one of the best galleries you have done in a good while. Hats off to you.
January 5th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Lovely photos again XD
I love the last shot prolly the most.
I’m waiting for my figure to come, damn christmas and new years mails slowing it down!
I notice there’s a slight tint to some of the photos tho o_o
January 5th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Thanks VMan, I had fun with it…felt good to go all out with the diorama.
Aya, the tint on some is just a function of me just doing an ‘Auto Levels’ in Photoshop, rather than manually adjusting the levels so that they match. I try not to do too much in PS, because post processing bores me and ‘Auto Levels’ does enough to make them look presentable. Didn’t notice it until they were all uploaded, otherwise I probably would have gone in on the warmer ones and cooled them down.
January 8th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Ah, I know what you mean about the boredom part.
I tend to manually adjust the colour balance since the auto function usually screws my photos over, I guess that’s the curse of me having a digital snapshot camera =/
Still, love the photos you have XD
January 8th, 2008 at 11:30 am
You also shoot outdoors where the lighting changes, so that might be part of it too.
January 12th, 2008 at 8:46 am
Lovely set of photos! Where did you get those miniature pine trees from?
January 12th, 2008 at 10:42 am
I got them at a crafts store. Since they’re part of a line of Christmas displays, getting them after the holiday meant a 70% discount.