Blue…Eyes

So is her hair. I don’t know who this figurine is or which series, or eroge she comes from. But one thing’s for sure, I like her. I like the look of her eyes but I also like the sculpt of her face and her body. You’d have to see for yourself though. The pics are a bit NSFW so beware the people behind you when you browse Amiami.com.

PS I Love You Novel (A Mediocre Review)

I finished reading the entire novel in less than two days and I must say, it’s definitely far more enjoyable than the movie itself although the movie did give me faces to paste on SOME of the characters.

Here are some differences that I noticed from novel as against the movie:

1. They’re all Irish. You don’t see any Americans running around.
2. Holly gets all the letters from the start instead of the mum secretly giving it to her one by one.
3. The start of the novel is the already the part where Holly has locked herself up inside their place.
4. Holly’s parents are together.
5. Holly does have a crazy sister, far crazier than the one shown in the movie.
6. She also has other siblings so her family’s a lot bigger than in the movie (and they’re all Irish. Oh yeah, I mentioned that already.)
7. The guy linked to Holly in the novel is the guy who owns the bar rather than her mum.
8. The all-girl trip is to Lanzarote, Spain and not in Ireland.
9. Holly does not start a business of designing shoes but she does shoot for the moon which lands her a job in a popular magazine company.
10. Holly is not entirely in good terms with her in-laws (Gerry’s parents) in the novel unlike in the movie where they kiss and make-up at some point.
11. Leo’s not in the film! How can they not include Leo?! The cheek of them!
12. You don’t meet Richard, the eccentric older brother in the movie.
13. You don’t meet Declan, the aspiring film-maker, youngest brother in the movie.
14. You don’t meet Jack, Holly’s closest brother in the movie.
15. There’s Ciara, the crazy sister but her hair’s not pink in the movie.
16. You don’t meet Meredith, Richard’s bitch-wife-from-hell in the movie.
17. Denise in the novel is a player. Or you could say she dates around and just doesn’t like getting tied down. Thus the surprise of  Holly and the rest when she decides to get married.
18. John, Sharon’s husband, is Gerry’s best friend since they started school.
19. Sharon, John, Gerry and Holly have been close mates since they were young.
20. Holly’s maiden name is Kennedy. Gerry’s surname is Clarke. No Reilly there.
21. Daniel is not some sappy lame guy who has a penchant for awkward comments. But he has a thing for crazy-ass dramatic bitches.
22. In short, if you only watched the movie, you missed a shiteload of stuff. Really.

Personal thoughts:

Well, they say the novel is predictable. I didn’t find it predictable. But then, I’ve always been a sucker for tragic love stories like these (well not entirely tragic). I love the comedy of the conversations and imagining actual people delivering the lines in Irish just cracks me up everytime, especially when Leo first sees Holly after coming out of her seclusion. The paperback is a thick book but I also find it a fast read. It won’t take a person long to get into the pace of reading it.

Is it literary genius? Not exactly. It’s not something that you would put in the ranks of Charles Dickens and the others. But it’s definitely a novel that can stand the test of time. Shame that I only found out about this novel now. I’m definitely giving this book a second pass once Chil’s done reading it. She was the one who introduced me to the genre and the novel itself. Quite happy with occasional change from battling elves, humans, dwarves and dragons to mushy love stories.

I’m currently reading Rosie Dunne/Love, Rosie which is like a mushy-yet-frustrating romance novel done in similar style to C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters.

Good stuff, I tell you.

Exia Overkill

I’ve always viewed Gundam Exia as a sleek and quick MS that slices and dices its opponents then retreats real fast, ninja-style. That’s why an FA (Full Armor) Exia just completely escapes my imagination. Apparently, someone did daydream of it and put it down to illustration.

Think Exia would still be able to kick ass with all that bulk? It doesn’t even look like it can turn its head properly with all those doodads and add-ons attached to it.

Note: This illustration was from the Mecha Pics Thread of SRWG.org.

Shirt Tripping

Today at work, I had a discussion with my team regarding plans of having a team shirt made for everyone so I hunted over the intarwubz for a collared vector shirt template to put some designs on. After we had finished finalizing the designs, I fancied doing a simple design for my blog as well. If I were to have this shirt made, at just a single piece to five pieces if I had the cash, it would most likely cost me around Php1,000 a pop. But it must be nice to walk around wearing a brand that’s just yours, your own blog.

Of course, I had to have that tagline at the back. I must admit, that small icon project has grown on me and I’m flattered that there are several blogs who have generously placed my icon in their blogs. The shirt design is obviously very simplistic. No snazzy tag lines or whatever. Just my blog title. Maybe I’ll toss in a winterheim|photography icon there when I attend events where I’d be shooting pictures to cover said event (if ever I do get to go to one). Perhaps the upcoming ToyCon would be a good start to take pictures of events but I doubt the shirt would be done by that time.

I’m not even sure if this shirt will become a reality. I’m just enjoying my blog’s branding too much at the moment.

Photo blog

As people who visit this place know, this has been my blog for the longest time, talking about my hobbies and interests. But ever since I purchased my first DSLR (and still my current), I’ve been a bit torn about putting photos that I’ve taken on this blog, feeling that it’s out of place with what my entire blog is mainly about even though it IS one of my interests/hobbies. I’ve been contemplating over building a new blog just for this and recently, has been considering doing so. So when I stumbled upon Maki’s post about her putting up a photo blog separate from her main blog, and WordPress.com announcing a new theme design that was mainly for photobloggers, I decided that it was the right time to do so. Thus, winterheim|photography finally gets its own place.

winterheim|photography blog screenshot

It’s using a simple theme called Monotone which changes color according to the dominant color of the picture. Interesting stuff if you ask me. The downside is that for the color algorithm to work, I’d have to upload the image directly into WordPress.com which isn’t something I’m not too fond of doing since I only have 3Gb of space and I’m not yet that willing to expand my storage space. Flickr is working pretty well for me right now so I’ll see if I’ll be having problems with simply hotlinking in the next posts.

My entries contain the settings used for the shot as well as other stuff like filters used or editing software used.

Also, I’ve made another winterheim group called winterheimportraits. This would focus mainly on people I admire or have taken quite an interest in whether they’re in my personal offline life or on the worldwide web. Images will be put up in both blogs but the bulk of the entry would depend on where I feel like writing it in.

So I’ll be putting a link to my photoblog soon but I do hope you people visit it every now and then. I’d rather not put in pictures I’ve posted here already before so for now, it only has three: one new pic, and two recycled ones from my 3 Pics, 3 Places set.

So…Iron Man

Iron Man standing over a beaten Captain America in an alternate cover for Civil War. There’s a different cover that has both heroes switched with Cap standing over a beaten Iron Man.

Saw the movie. Loved every minute of it. Robert Downey Jr. was made for this film. It’s like he was born to be Tony Stark and to be honest, I can’t imagine anyone else taking on this role but him, both prior to seeing the movie and after.

Once again Industrial Light & Magic live up to their name. After Transformers and the third Pirates of the Caribbean, there was no doubt that ILM would make this movie’s CG animation of Iron Man’s suit in action absolutely spectacular and yet still quite grounded in realism.

This movie has a lot of comedy in it too. Comical moments which helped stave off the stale asshole-to-good guy transformation that could have made this movie fail simply because the depth of character that Tony had in the comic book would not be reflected in the film.

Some say the best weapon is one you never have to fire. I prefer the weapon you have to fire only once. That’s how Dad did it, that’s how America does it, and it’s worked out pretty well so far.

-Tony Stark (line written by Robert Downey Jr.)

The origin for the hero in this film is probably the closest depiction by far. Spidey’s web was organic in the film while in the comic book, he started with webshooters until there was this arc where he became one with his inner spider (ewww) and started evolving his powers. Tony really had been captured by terrorists, suffered from shrapnel injuries, needed an electromagnet and had a fellow prisoner named Yinsen/Yin Sen.

There were a good number of nods to past and current storylines in the comic books. This first film pretty much covered past, recent past and current storylines. What with talk about accountability and at revealing himself as Iron Man at the end of the film gives a big, big nod to the Civil War arc (Superhero Registration Act).

I could rave on all day but half of the time, words escape me and I just look back at how awesome this film is. I’m aware that this will be a trilogy, announced by the director prior to the film, and with the success of this film, without a doubt will push through. But I’m both delighted and afraid of how the second and third films will turn out to be like. Sequels tend to suck on the second and third rounds but I’m really hoping the Favreau/Downey combo is going to save the trilogy and make an epic out of it.

Definitely 9.5/10. Why not ten? Nobody’s perfect. The film isn’t perfect. But not perfect does not equate to not awesome. This is definitely a film made of win. A must see.

What I did forget though is to stay after the credits to see Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury telling Stark about the Avenger Initiative.

And no I don’t think Gwyneth Paltrow is a miscast. She’s one hot Pepper Potts.

Transformers Musical Score

Aside from the awesome animation, thanks to ILM, there’s another thing that I really liked in Bay’s Transformers and that’s the musical score that Steve Jablonksy made for the film. It’s like that feeling you got when the oil diggers from Armageddon were in their best moments in the film coupled with awesomely animated robots who are there to save the world.

Lots of awesome. I mean. AWESOME.

I just really like the feel of the musical score, particularly Bumblebee Captured (which also sounds alot like Optimus Prime’s musical score). You hear it in some of the moving moments of the film and it’s not entirely just connected to the capture of Bumblebee.

Anyhoo, for those Transformer fans or head-geeks as Michael Bay would love to call them/us, who have not yet gotten the musical score for this film (not the OST where Linkin Park and Goo Goo Dolls are), I highly suggest that you get a copy.

Like NOW!

Unicorn Progress: 0%

Yeah. I was supposed to start working on my Unicorn today but decided to still put a hold on it since my camera is not with me. My parents and a whole bunch o relatives went off to the province to attend the funeral of Lola Rose.

I bought twelve pieces of small alligator clamps yesterday from the local hardware store. I’ll be converting these into piece holders for when I paint or repaint small pieces that I had to sandpaper or carve. Hopefully, I can start finishing them by tonight. Buying the Gunze Sangyo one is too expensive so I decided to go for a DIY one.

The reason I put the building on hold due to being camera-less is because I wanted to record using photos the progress I’ve been doing for this pair of model kits. So hopefully I can start cracking on them soon. I’ll probably wash the runners while I still have nothing else to do.

I’m halfway through PS I Love You now. God, the left out so much good stuff in the movie.

Btw, the image above is NPGPM’s work. Click the image to see the rest of his gallery.

Two Books

Chil and I met up today at Megamall for some lunch before she accompanied my brother to Bench Fix for a much-needed way-overdue haircut. But before that, she bought me a late birthday treat: two books by Cecilia Ahern. Although not entirely altruistic in nature (heheh), I’ve come to like Cecilia Ahern’s work thanks to watching PS I Love You with Chil and am now quite engrossed in reading the book version which I believe would turn out to be far better than the movie itself. I just find it nice to have a face to pin against the characters.

The ironic thing about this is that I’ve left my name to practically every book store that I’ve visited, hoping that they’d contact me the moment there’s a copy of PS I Love You which Chil has been wanting to own for herself for the longest time. To think she’d be the one to buy me (us) a copy.

The other book is called Love, Rosie which was formerly published as Rosie Dunne. I’ll read that when I’m done crying over PS I Love You. And no, don’t go awwwww on me. I’m one person who would not hide his tears when they’re worth shedding.

I’ve yet to cover up Chil’s other Cecilia Ahern book which I bought for her in plastic so as a “first aid” for these two new books, I lined the right edged of the cover (these books have a two-piece front cover) with some 3M tape (damn, I love that matte finish). Then, like all the books that I own, I marked it with my name inside the first page and the date it was purchased. For these two, I wrote Mark & Chil Parreñas - May 1, 2008. I’m sure Chil would not mind. ^_^

Time to grab some dinner. I’m starving!

Gundam Unicorn MS in Hobby Japan 6

Got this torrent of Hobby Japan 6 scans from SRWHotnews. Really interesting stuff inside. What I’d like to focus on here would be the mods/scratchbuilds of this UC series’s MS’s.

The magazine showed a hefty amount of model kit mods and they look quite gorgeous. One thing’s for sure: it made me wish Bandai would invest in producing these model kits exactly as they look like in these images.

MSN-06S Sinanju

First up is the MSN-06S Sinanju which is the custom mobile suit piloted by Full Frontal or who is known as the “Second Coming of Char”. He dresses, acts and sounds exactly like Char. Now whether he would still retain the classic rivalry that Amuro and Char had in the previous UC series from OYW (One Year War 0079) all the way to CCA (Char’s Counterattack) with the protagonist of this series is yet to be seen.

I am definitely loving the military uniform trim that is classic to Zeon shown in the designs of the MS’s themselves and the Sinanju is no exception. What you would normally see as uniform trim on Char or Full Frontal’s top coat is also seen in his mobile suit. This is also done in all Neo-Zeon units in this series which is really awesome. I know that there are a lot of Zeon MS fans out there and this one would add to their love for Zeon mechs.

NZ-666 Kshatriya

The Green Demon. This mobile suit appears to have been based on the design of the Quin Mantha. I can’t remember who pilots this but this was one of the first units that appeared in the official website. I’m definitely its design as well. Like I mentioned above for the Sinanju, the military trim makes it look a lot like a very serious mobile suit. In fact, the Neo-Zeon units here look even more serious that the Feddie mechs. The Kshatriya’s main armament appears to be fin funnels housed underneath those large shield-like protrusions on its shoulders, quite similar to those of the Quin Mantha.

I remember in SEED and SEED Destiny, there were Djinns that had additional ranking trim and paint for ceremonial purposes. These ones have rank designations based on the emblems on their chests which also mirror the emblem/trim on the chest of the uniforms of those assigned to pilot them.

AMS-129 Geara Zulu (Guard Custom and Angelo Sauper Custom)

Incidentally, I forgot about the existence of the AMS-119 Geara Doga, which was a mobile suit produced by Anaheim Electronics for Neo-Zeon for the Neo-Zeon war. If you were to look at it, the design is a lot closer to Geara Zulu’s design than people might think (me included). So whatever references on Feddie units that were derived from this MS design gets booted out the window.

I remember having written about Angelo Sauper’s Geara Zulu. It’s the first purple mech that I actually liked. I’m surprised it was a Zeon unit and not an actual Gundam. The Geara Zulu’s design looks really nice although I’m not exactly too fond of the 0079-ish GM-looking feet. Would have been nicer if Hajime Katoki had just recycled the feet from the Kshatriya.

The Guard Custom is a Geara Zulu with additional stuff added to the armor and armaments. The head reminds me of a Nazi helmet, actually. It looks scary and can deal death quite easily. Obvious cosmetic differences between the guard custom and the regular Geara Zulu would be the shoulders which have the spikes that the Zakus were known for but it has it on both sides, with military trim that makes it look really awesome-scary. It also has a high mobility backpack as well as spare magazines mounted on the front skirt. It doesn’t carry a bazooka like the regular Geara Zulu so I guess the guard custom is more for honor guard, ceremonial purposes rather than actual military combat.

Angelo’s custom mobile suit, aside from being painted purple, looks almost exactly like the guard custom. The emblem on the chest shows a higher rank than both the guard custom and the regular Geara Zulu. It sports a shield that reminds me of the shield that the ZZ Gundam had as well as additional thrusters at the back that remind me of the thruster found at the back of the GP01 Fb. (EDIT: The shield is actually closer to the one used by a Geara Doga) And instead of the Gear Zulu’s usual firearm, it carries around a sniper rifle. It also has that command array/rank antenna on top of its head similar to how Zakus were distinguished by rank back then.

The regular Geara Zulu’s main difference is its bazooka, beam axe and the shoulder shield that was seen in the Zakus while the guard custom has no shield whatsoever but I guess it would be safe to assume that this one has higher mobility and serves as strike units rather than cannon fodder.

MSN-001A1 Delta P Plus

I wrote about this transforming MS sometime way back then. For those who don’t know yet, the Delta Gundam had been under development as far back as during the Gryps conflict. In fact, it was supposed to be a mass-production MS for that particular war. But then they could not seem to perfect the transformation ability so what happened instead was that AEUG just locked it in mobile suit mode, discarded its waverider capabilities and named it Hyaku Shiki, Quattro Bajina aka Char Aznable aka Casval Rem Deikun’s golden mobile suit in Z Gundam.

In this UC series, they’ve finally perfected the mobile suit, probably much thanks to Camille Bidan developing the Zeta Gundam (Zeta, Delta, Greek characters, you get the drift) which is capable of transforming into waverider mode. Sadly, to maximize the Zeta Gundam’s full potential, a newtype, particularly the one who developed it, Camille, would have to be the one to pilot it. Delta Gundam also needs a newtype to pilot it, thus the N designation in its unit code. As for who the pilot is, I do not know.