ANIMASIA: Figure Booth

After a presentation of the Animasia festival purpose, here the reason that brought me to participate : a figure booth!

First of all, I have to thank sir valho and sir e-jump who inspired me a lot and who gave me the idea to do the same things they are doing in their region. Everything started from there, so thank you guys! ^^

Then, a big thank to JC, Tiamat and ga8tan who went there with me, helped me to settle this and took their most beautiful figures to complete the stand.
Because yes, all we exposed was part of our personal collection, so it was very stressful to pack them all cautiously to avoid damages ^^;

Anyway, here the result once set-up!

We were situated in a corridor, so to maximize the place, the stand was from the wall. Being in a corridor was very good for the traffic. Indeed, this corridor led to the video game area, so almost everybody had to walk in front of us. The only inconvenience was that we had a very bad light. And as every photographer knows, bad light is our worst enemy ^^;
Consequently, I failed a lot of pictures… ahh nevermind.

The first two pictures is what our booth looked like on sunday, and the one below shows what it looked like on saturaday. Can you find the differences? ^^

Since the four of us are regular members of a French speaking forum about anime character figures, figuremaniax.com, we made some promotion for it with ads and leaflets.
And we used this Horo picture (moe.imouto.org rocks!) for the “Do not touch plz” papers.

Most popular figures

Among the 75 figures we displayed, some were very popular and became the main attraction of the booth.

Death Note is very famous. And those Medicom figures of Yagami Light and Amane Misa gathered a lot of attention. We heard a lot of “kkyyaaaa Misa-Misa!” from young ladies. I must say Medicom did fantastic articulated figures, and I am glad JC brought his, since they are quite fragile and expensive.

And the other kind of figure that was very popular with girls were the nendoroids. So nendoroids + Death Note = big hit. I love nendoroids too, but damn! Those one from first nendoroid series have such bad supports. Making Misa and Light standing was such a pain… please GoodSmile, try to find a better way to make the nendoroids stand!! and stop fooling us with promotional pitures… uh-huh, sorry about that personal moan.

Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu bunny girls were admired, but did not see any bunny girl cosplay though.

Nao, Rimu-chan, Kotona and Re Mie dancing, and my latest nendoroid Al Azif. Miku should join the band soon by the way g^^

And a little overview of the nendoroid line which was reduced on sunday.

The Kotobukiya Dokuro-chan was also very popular. Too bad I did not manage to take a proper picture of her. I am also sad for not having it in my collection ^^;

Some detailed pictures

For this figure showing, we chose to give priority to series well known by French public, and also characters coming in group. And fortunately, we had some nice stuff to display together. Though it was hard to make the selection, and I had to leave a lot of my favorite figures at home, such as the ALTER Peace@Pieces group, Nadie, Louise, or Max Factory Ayu, Eukanaria, Pachira, Chitose and GSC Sumomo-chan. Well, this will be for next time, I hope ^^

Fate/Zero pair from Max Factory. Saber was quite popular too. But a lot told me they prefer her in her casual clothes : blue dress, white shirt, blue ribbon. Exacly like in the poll result I post in this pair review.

The four girls from Bakuretsu Tenshi (Burst Angel). Jo is my favorite, but love Sei for her eyes and Amy is sooooo loli ^^

The Shuraki girls. I wasnt surprised few people paid attention to them. Unknown characters catch very hardly the attention. Though, I was pleased to hear a mother showing to her daughter how beautiful Chars hair was. Char is definitely my favorite.

Kureha, Shenhua and « Two Hands » Revy.

IKKI TOUSEN girls. I am sure every boys knew about them, but did not want to admit it ^^;

One Piece Portrait of Pirates figures, from MegaHouse. Nami is the old version, while Zoro and Luffy are v2. Very popular characters over here too.

Fuka, Yostuba and Danbo. Those figures belong to JC. I have not been seduced yet by Kaiyodo Yotsuba&! figures. But I guess next ones will got me ^^;

On sunday, Yotsuba became more aggressive against Danbo ^^
Shes ridding MegaHouse Tachikoma. Next to it is ALTER Kusanagi Motoko, and ga8tan brought his huge Tachikoma from Fewture. An impressive mechanic, but expensive too.

Evangelion girls. Asuka is 1/5 and from ALTER, Rei and Misato 1/6 and from Kotobukiya. They look great together. I was happy to receive Misato just the day before we leave for the conv. ^^

Kaiyodo EVA Revoltechs. We tryed to recreate the scene in Evangelion movie.

Still Revotechs, with this time rebuilt units-00 and-01, and old unit-00 bue. Alway fun to play with. No problem with their pose, and they never fell.

ga8tan brought as well his VF-1S Roy Focker (Macross) from Yamato, and a gundam (sorry, cannot remind which one it is… GAT-X 105 Aile Strike maybe?). The Macross was set in this middle pose first, which I prefer, and was then set in full mecha mode later.

Blazing Shana. So in love with this figure ^^;
Fewture Tachikoma had his red leds lighted on.

Ignis the White from Orchid Seed, who was place in the top center of the booth. Visitors were amazed by her dress, like all of us, but it was a bit hard to answer the question « What anime is she from? » ^^;
MegaHouse Clare in the background, had her share of success too. Lot of people are Claymore fans.

A bit of Saint Seiya. I was very anxious about Shiryu dragon “diadem” (can I call this a diadem?) during the transit, since is it easy to break.

Another completely-unkonwn-character for visitors, but Melissa was an awesome eye-catch ^^;
Pumpkin + devil lolita = mega combo. Love Melissa.

We also displayed the Max Factory Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu quintet, with the beems and cat accessories for Mikuru and Yuki.
Popularity ranking was Haruhi > Tsuruya-san > others. *nyoro~!*

GoodSmile Saber and Alice L. Marvin were set up as if they were fighting. Donnot have closer picture though, sorry orz

Since we did not have enough space to display some labels to put character names and figure editors, we decided to constitute a file containing all information about the displayed figures. I brought my music stand to support it, and I must say this solution was awesome. Big success. A lot of people were reading it. I guess people donnot like to be only specator, but enjoy being active ^^

On the first picture, you may have noticed two ALTER Black Dress Saber a bit appart from the rest. A real one, and a bootleg. This to warn and to make sensitive people about counterfeiting, and to try to help them to recognise fake figures. This caught visitors attention a lot, and I guess it was very instructive.
I must thank ga8tan who had the misfortune to purchase the bootleg but the idea to make this presentation, and JC who had the official one.

More Cosplay

I continue the cosplay tour, since I also took pictures of great costumes in front of our booth, but did not want to published them in previous article not to spoil this one ^^;

A group was cosplaying Tsubasa Chronicle characters. Here is Kurogane, Yuko-sama my favorite character, and a very cute Sakura.

And then Syaoran and Fay. Maru and Moro were also part of the group, but I didnt manage to take a picture of them… *sigh*

Athena and Shaka were back in our area, and they kindly accept to pose with Seiya and Shiryu ^^
Picture could have been better, but lack of light forced me to alter the quality. Too sad…

To end with, a kind of “in the mood” picture, showing people passing.

And a last funny one showing guys from the organizing committee recording a video in front of the figure booth ^^

And thats all folks! I really enjoyed this two day exhibition. Met a lot of friendly people, and it was pleasant to share this passion with fans and novices. Will definitely look for another opportunity to reiterate this… awaiting next year Animasia where we are already invited ^^

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  • http://hobbyjapan.blogspot.com/ Timotei

    Awesome pictures. I wish I could be there too, unyuu~.

  • http://www.otadesho.com ron~

    awesome! I also want to do this kind of thing in here ^^

    btw, how much did you pay for the booth?

  • http://animesugoi.animeblogger.net/ AS

    I wish I was there to see all of the awesome figures. Maybe I should organize something like that lol, too late this year though as te local convention starts in a few weeks. “Bad light is our worst enemy ^^;” so true lol ;p.

  • http://animesugoi.animeblogger.net/ AS

    I wish I was there to see all of the awesome figures. Maybe I should organize something like that lol, too late this year though as te local convention starts in a few weeks. “Bad light is our worst enemy ^^;” so true lol ;p.

  • http://alafista.com alafista

    Woah awesome collection, I’m sure those were only 10% of what your total stash is =P

  • http://toysworkz.wordpress.com valho

    awesome booth, glad that you transported all you figures safely, in the previous event I lost my Mei Feng weapon, fortunately found it later in one of my friend’s figure box ^^.
    The setup looks great and the info file is a good idea too, hmm we might consider doing that too next time. The comparison between bootleg and original figure is great something we should consider doing during our next event as well ^^

  • http://www.lilkev84.com/otaku LilKeV84

    XD nice work on the booth!~
    like valho said, we can consider each other’s setup and experience and improve after each event ^^

    anyway, good job on the exhibit! \^_^/

  • http://animestuff.wordpress.com Belela-san

    Hey a Gundam and a Valkyrie in the middle of Bishin figures XD, yes its Aile Strike alright ^^. Great idea in creating a file about the figures themselves although a label with their names is always good because it saves the time to search for them in the file via pictures.

    The “Don’t touch please” is always a must, although I never exposed my collection because there’s no figure expo here I always get a cold sweat when someone is touching my gundams, yes especially the gundams because they’re not as sturdy as the figures.

    Wish I could do this as well one day.

  • http://www.moemoerabu.net/ Adun

    A nice amount of variety displaying there, and it’s usually the key to having a good display of figures. I would love to do something like this one day but really I’m better off having people just tour my room instead, lol.

  • http://hangmen13.16ops.com/ Hangmen

    What can I say? Nice figures, nice events! In my country (Malaysia), a lot of the great attractions happen in the West Peninsula (as you can see in ejump’s and Valho’s blogs), but not much here in the East Peninsula. The anime and manga community here did attempt to organize their first event called Hobbycon. A good start, but still pales in comparison with the WP. Hopefully this year, with a bigger following garnered as the aftermath of last year’s events, the event will be better.

  • http://moeidolatry.com Aya Kyunik

    Oh, nice nice~

    I’ve been seeing quite a bit of these figure exhibitions and I’ve been tempted to organise one myself for the local con. But…I’m too lazy ^^;; I really can’t be bothered getting it all organised, then packing up most of my figures, then transporting them, then displaying them on the stand in which I’ll have to help set up, then at the end of the day when all I want to do is go home, I’ll have to pack em up and etc etc @_@;;……….plus most of my figures might not be known well anyway, like the shuraki series.

    BUT! Great job on the display, I love the booklet on the music stand, classy touch :3

  • http://koiaichaku.com/ Rin

    HOLY CRAP!!!!!!! That is sooooo cool. Maybe I should start this in my region. I just have to say…..WOW!!!!!!!! That’s a lot of figures!!! Some of those figures I want!!!!!! Nice Job!!! I’m being so temped to do this, but dunno should I though. No one at conventions I go to did this before. I’m just should I do this. If I do, I’ll give it a try. It must had been hell to look after all those figures and made sure that people don’t steal them. Did you have a person come up and try to take your figures? Also, most people that go to cons expected to buy figures. If I do that, people are going to ask are they for sell. Still…looks like fun. I might try it in the near future!!!

  • http://www.mukyaa.com lu-k

    Timotei : thanks ^^

    ron~ : 0 EUR. I presented our project to the organizing committee and they found us a nice location. We werent paid and we paid nothing. Well, of course to build the stand we had some expenses, like the rope, the bubble-paper to pack figures etc…

    AS : if what I do can inspire some, after being inspired by friends from The Figure Mall, well I will be happy ^^

    alafista : hehe I would say 25% actually ^^;

    valho : well in fact I realised I broke a minor part of Megs rifle. Not a big deal though. And I lost the hat’s ring Van use to call Dann. Fortunately, there is an other one in the box *relieved*
    People really looked interresting in the information file. Some even start to read it before looking at the booth. A nice feature to try.

    LilKeV84 : thank you! I am glad our work can give some little ideas to other… since at first, I was inspired by yours hehe ^^
    We also decided to take a black coth to enhance a bit more figures’ colors. And the result was pretty good in my opinion.

    Belela-san : ah nice, I was afraid of naming the gundam wrong, since I dont know much about them ^^;
    There were some Gundam fans, and they appreciated to see one in the middle of those anime bishoujos hehe.
    Actually, we prepared labels, but once we set up the booth will all figures, there was no more space for labels. We had 3m long, but wasnt enough :/

    Adun : I recall seen an article talking about female students opening their room to visitors (in Japan I guess, this is the only place where this could happen haha)… well, dont know if an otaku room would have the same success ^^;

    Hangmen : Oh really? I did know there was such a “separation” between East and West. But good to heard manga/anime comminuty is growing.

    Aya Kyunik : organisation was exhaustive… took me 3 hours to pack my figures alone, and it took us more than two hours to set up the booth (and we were four guys!). We were dead at the end of the festival ^^;

    Rin : a young boy asked me if I was not afraid of figure being stolen. Well, we were four to watch the booth, so we were pretty confident. The only “trouble” was very young lads who tried to touch them and crossed to rope, but we were here to call them to order.
    A lot of people asked if figures were for sell, indeed. The most wanted figure was Clare from Claymore by the way ^^;

  • http://www.radiantdreamer.net Radiant

    that’s awesome! It must be super cool to have a display of figures to show off an a convention like that!! It’s good to see some of my favorites are put up there too, even the Saint Seiya ones!

    Nice one on the Yotsuba. She’s always getting into trouble! :)

  • http://otaku.prim3.org Prim3

    Great booth.. great amount of figures.. great event! XD

  • http://ejump.wordpress.com/ e-jump

    Wow.. Nice booth setup
    I like the way you guys setup the tiers, and use dark cloth for background up until top.
    Also using the file info stand.
    Creativity :)

    Currently not much event for april-may here, so thats why we’ve got no displaying activities since march.

    And for Real-bootleg comparo, awesome stuff to educate new collectors :)

    The most fun part when setting up booth, is when people come taking pics, and asking/discussing about specific figures

  • http://blog.iveanime.org/ rain

    you given me more inspiration for the convention im part off. XD

  • http://www.moeside.net/weblog Windbell

    Do you have a picture of the real saber and bootleg saber together? I have always wanted to see what’s the difference ^^;

    Nice post nevertheless!

  • http://www.mukyaa.com lu-k

    Radiant : it was a fantastic experience indeed. Id love doing this again now!
    Figures are such nice visual objects that an exposition can obviously have a lot of success. Glad to read there was some of your favorite pieces ^^
    JC who brought the Yotsuba figures had a great inspiration, setting up first the same pose we saw in a previous WHF, the changing her face in aggressive mode and placing her on the tachikoma. Articulated figures are sure fun to play with!

    Prim3 : yeah that was quite a lot of figure for only the four of us. Not easy to transport all, but it was worth the trouble.

    e-jump : thanks! and indeed, the most interresting part is when having some thought sharing with curious folks.

    rain : glad to hear that ^^

    Windbell : forgot to take a decent picture of both the real and the bootleg, but one of the cosplayer, the one who did Syaoran, has a really nice one where you can see the differences clearly.

  • http://www.dannychoo.com/ Danny Choo

    Hmmm. YOu are giving me ideas ^^;

  • http://www.sakuafk.com Saku

    I have to say that this is really an interesting idea and I’ve never seen this done in Anime North (yearly anime convention in toronto) or other cons in toronto area. It sure sparks some inspiration on me to do the same ^^

    Nice pics overall and I really like Shana and Melissa figures ^^

  • http://myanimelist.net/profile/kakebuke k.

    That’s really impressive. I hope I can be there if you do this again. :)

    Btw, did you end up going through with the birthday contest thing or not?

  • http://demonsky.livejournal.com Shaka

    Here is Shaka !

    Yeah. The one you asked to pose with his goddess front of your beautiful stand. ;)

    Thanks for the photo. It proves that I can bear the Bronze saints in my Buddha’s hand. XD

    See you next year in Animasia !

  • littelneko

    Hello Hello

    Maru for the animasia 2008 if You whant pictur I can get them for you really easly. All be at the animasia in 2009, so have a eye out for un person cosplay in green. I’m not spoiling any more than that =p

  • Konakona

    Han Oo, too well!

  • R0B!N

    Wow! that is so awesome! i wish i was there… i only have 4 nendorodis, 3 of them are ordered today so 1 figurine for now…. nice job! you should be really proud of this! :D
    hope your collection will grow to a museum! XD