My ANH Luke review…with pictures!

• I took a few snaps of Luke last week and I’ll be posting a few here and uploading the whole batch to my gallery. I’ll put a link to the specific section in the sidebar somewhere soon. Plus, there’ll be a mini-review of Luke.

• I hate to do it, but I might drop Indy from my pre-orders. With me working on three bashes right now, $90 could buy a lot of parts.

• McFarlane will be doing 12″ Halo figures, as I’ve stated here earlier. I won’t get Master Chief (out of scale), but I am looking to pick up one of the other Spartans, specifically the Blue Spartan to be sold exclusively at Wal-Mart. The Wal-Mart I go to doesn’t carry any Halo stuff, so I might have to get slick to snag me one. I also still want one of the Kotobukiya statues. There’s now a Red Spartan and a Steel variant of the MC Field of Battle statue. The red guy is up for pre-order, but I haven’t found the FoB variant anywhere yet.

Oooh, there’s a red variant of the Field of Battle statue, too! Yummy!

• I really need to get serious about setting aside space for working on my bashes. It’s time to get rid of some stuff I’ve been holding on. I really miss my drawing table; when I moved to my current place, I gave it away because there was nowhere to put it.

I’m new to customizing/kit-bashing, so I don’t know all of how things work. One of the next bashes I’m planning needs a specific headsculpt, namely African-American. Not many choices out there, so I have to go off the beaten path. I was eyeing Barbie dolls for a while, then I saw the Holiday Barbie for this year. And I couldn’t stop looking at that doll. I mean, this is it! A little bit of paint, redo the hair, there you go! But–that’s the only thing I want from the doll. So, essentially, I would be spending $40 for a headsculpt.

Have I gone too far? I’m not sure. I’m also contemplating buy a figure for the stuff and selling the headless, handless, footless body. Otaku bodies are in high demand right now, but I don’t have any use for them. But I want the stuff. $60 for the figure, but this is different from the Barbie thing.

Or is it?

…it came out of the box like that. Finally, after weeks of waiting, Luke came home. I’ll get some pics done on the next sunny day.

Other stuff: I’m getting together the part for my first custom. What I’m lacking is a bow, a sword, a shirt, a bedroll and a pair of grasping hands. The boots I finally settled on are too long, so I’m going take an X-acto knife to them soon. There are a couple more pieces that need to be made or altered.

I was just playing around in the above pic, dressing up my Perfect Body figure so I could practice with my new camera. The Hasbro costume isn’t bad at all; it fit her pretty well, even with the “more endowed” chest plate. Not long ago I was looking at the pics and thinking this wouldn’t be a bad Barriss Offee custom if I got brave enough to do the paint. All I would need as far as parts are concerned are boots, a lightsaber, and probably a balaclava that isn’t so hard to get on and off her head. The hair might be cut, but I’m not too worried about that. The most difficult thing would be the tattoos on her face and hands. Scary stuff for someone who hasn’t painted in years and has never painted figures.

I’ve had an interest in swords for a long time, and when I saw this to the left among Snake Eyes’ stuff, I got curious. This nasty-looking piece of hardware is called a falchion. It’s a weapon of medieval European origin, despite its obvious resemblance to a scimitar. The falchion combines the versatility of a sword with the heft of an axe. Not many examples have survived, as they may have been of less quality than other swords, or they were used for other tasks along side waging war. One of the most famous examples is the Conyers Falchion, which resembles more of a meat cleaver than the sleek weapon pictured here.

I guess there’s a reason why Snake Eyes would have this very conspicuous weapon even though you’d think he’d use something more appropriate for stealthy work. Other than “it looks cool”. But then, “it looks cool” is enough.

By the way, the Sword of Snake Eyes is available at Museum Replicas.

Now that I have my camera, I’m shooting everything. But I have noticed something. You’ve got to shoot a lot of pictures before you find even one you’re happy with. So was the case with Shrek here. He’s the stunt guy of my collection, standing where I don’t want my more expensive figures standing and taking the hits. He’s lost his head a couple of times.

GI Joe isn’t a line I’ve ever been into. I did watch the cartoon series back in the 80s, but I never wanted an actual figure from it. Well, that might change. The release of Snake Eyes up there has set me to drooling again. Just look at all the stuff he comes with! How anybody can get everything on him, I don’t care, I want the stuff.

I can see the coolness factor with this guy: mysterious silent type with commando and ninja training. There was always the question in my mind of how the other Joes understood him since he couldn’t speak and you couldn’t see his face. But when he went into action, it really didn’t matter. You were just glad he’s on your side.

Ordering this would be a no-brainer except for one thing: the price tag. $120 is bordering on insane, but the exclusive version sold out. And retailers’ allotments are starting to sell out as well, at very slightly lower prices in some cases. I’d expect this for a licensed Hot Toys figure, and that’s on the low side. Their unlicensed stuff is just below that. $80-100 is more acceptable to me. I’m tempted to put this on my grail list, but a decent bash can be done if I were so inclined.

I saved money for the camera I wanted. It’s not a fancy-schmancy DSLR, but it will do for now. I wanted a slightly older model that would work with the non-cutting-edge operating system on my computer. Skulking around Wal-Mart, I thought I had found it. Then the photo section changed their shelving last month and clearanced out a lot of stuff. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the money to get anything so I missed out. I checked their website, and they had something close to what I was looking for. It’s good I ordered from them because the shipping is free, and, because it’s going to the store and not to my door, there won’t be a chance the delivery guy will miss me if I’m not home. The other side of that is it will take longer to get. I’ll wait.

I could have ordered it sooner than I did, but I was stricken with a case of buyer’s anxiety. (Don’t look it up, it’s not anywhere.) Even though I had the money and the camera is something I really want, I got the shakes when I pulled up the website. Really weird. Maybe it’s because it’s a pretty pricey thing for me; the only thing I spend that much money on on a regular basis is bills and rent.