I have always considered Ultraviolet light and oxygen the two biggest enemies to my figure collection, so I have made it a point to never expose my figure collection under direct sunlight for an extended period of time since it can cause chemical reactions to the PVC or painted surfaces of the figure.  Oxygen on the other hand, is an extreme active agent that can react with just about anything, including but not limited to paint, plastic, metal given enough time.  Obviously, I cannot eliminate oxygen since I do not have a vacuum sealed display cabinet, but I have taken steps to slow down the oxidation process by restricting airflow to my figure collection through my Dust Shield +1.

So, after 6 years, how well have these Pia Carrot 3 figure aged?  Let’s take a closer look here.  In order to fully inspect the differences between the two figures, I will have to finally open the figure to the left….

One final look before we open it up!

Ta la!  I honestly think that the two figures looked about the same other than the fact that the figure to the right have leaned a little bit…

Taking a good look at the back side view where we got a enough flat surfaces to look at.  I honestly don’t detect any discoloration, even if there is, it appear to be fairly minimum.

And finally another close up view to the front side!

Since I have no reference point as to how these figure actually look back in 2004, so these will become my reference point in the future.  The figure on the left have already gone back into the box to minimize the exposure to oxygen, the figure on the right will remain inside my Dust Shield +1.  This will be the first part to a life cycle study on how this pair of figures will age through time.  Let’s come back and review this in one year!Similar Posts:

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Stumbling onto Dannychoo.com was a major turning point for me, I never knew there is an online community like that before! After spending a few days on Danny’s site, I decided I too want to become a blogger so I can really introduce myself to the community. After one whole year, I am confident to say that I have achieved way more than what I had in mind. I have made a bunch of new friends, gotten into Dollfie Dream (which is like the greatest thing since sliced bread), and even traveled to Japan to see Odaiba Gundam, Kamen Rider Decade and Evangelion 2.0 movie with fellow Dannychoo member Fumoffu.

Let’s take a quick look at the transformation that Wolfheinrich’s World has gone thru in the past year! I really had no idea what to blog about at the beginning, so I started off with a my room post soon after I began!

Added My Room Page

My room was a super messy place back then, and one could argue that it still is today because of the way I like to arrange my collection, I like being able to see as many things as possible, my motto is out of sight – out of mind, it’s very easy to forget what you have if you don’t see it often!

My first attempt in writing a product review, and my pick? One of the most expensive otaku good I have ever bought at the time! The Fate Stay Night Ipod!

Fate/stay night Digital Player -Holy ARK- arrived!

Later on, I hear a lot of people talk about having dust on the figures… I was like ehhh why don’t you cover it with something like I do? lol So, I decided to open the figure collection topic designed specifically to talk about the various issues that a figure collecting otaku might run into~

Figure Collection Topic – Dust off

The regular dust shield eventually got its own upgrade and became the new and improved dust shield + 1 later!

Figure Collection Topic – Dust shield +1

Officially adding Eroge game into the board range of topics that I intend to cover in my blog~ obviously regular visitors probably know how big of a project this eroge game category has transformed into.

Adding Eroge Game Category

And my first attempt of doing a figure photo shoot and my model was the newly acquired Ryoko Asakura

First Photo Shoot and Lighting construction

The result didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped… there was much to learn about digital photography for me.

My first attempt of writing an Eroge game heroine summary, which later expanded into much much much bigger than I ever thought I would ever attempt to do!

Chu x Chu Idol – Hiyori arc completed

My desire to introduce these visual novel heroines with the proper story and background has me began to write longer and longer summaries. Many of these visual novels have better story than most of your popular anime!

Feena Fam Earthlight

Estel Freesia

Natsuki Takamiazwa

And of course, last but definitely not least, totally close to 15000 words; the adorable Sasara Kusugawa from ToHeart 2, the most comprehensive story summary I have ever written.

And getting into Dollfie Dream, which is like the beginning of a new era for me!

Dollfie Dream Dynamite Escalayer

My first daughter Escalayer joined my collection and suddenly, adopting Dollfie Dream have become the utmost priority over all other otaku hobbies.

Dollfie Dream Completion Project

The Dollfie Dream Completion Project finally hitting high gear!

Dollfie Dream Completion Project arrival and other loots

And the official opening of the Hikari Photo Studio! Which later become the platform for the popular Dollfie Dream Theater (or so I thought)!

Dollfie Hikari Photo Studio

Dollfie Dream Theater

Participated in the Dannychoo X Kotobukiya project OTACOOL! Kotobukiya loves the otaku room photos that were submitted to the 20090326 giveaway so much that they are planning to publish a book based on otaku room photos named – OTACOOL. In response to Danny’s call to submit new photos, I once again took out my digital camera and started snapping photos of my command center

OTACOOL Room Photo Submission

And the Miss Dollfie Summer 2009 contest, another collaboration event between Dannychoo and HobbyLinkJapan. The Miss Dollfie Summer event was another major turning point for me. For the very first time I took my girls outside of the house and practice taking photos for them, gradually, I got better at it~

Miss Dollfie Summer 2009 Contest Entry – Escalayer

Miss Dollfie Summer 2009 Contest Entry – Asuka

My first ever Japan Trip!

Arrived in Japan

And of course, the most compact oversea vacation I have ever taken, Fumoffu and I were like Otaku Marines, in and out of Japan with our loots!

There were six major objectives!

1. See the Odaiba Gundam
2. Watch the Kamen Rider movie
3. Watch the Evangelion 2.0 movie You can (not) advance
4. Shopping in Akihabara
5. Shopping for Dollfie Clothes and appropriate size Rider belts
6. Go to a maid cafe

Japan trip loots

Japan Trip Report

And during my trip in Japan, a project that has been going on for a month or so finally materialized! A collaboration between Dollfie Dream Theater and The Melancholy of Saber Lily from blogging friend Lightningsabre!

Dollfie Dream Theater X Melancholy of Saber Lily

And after some serious consideration, I have finally decided to invest in a DSLR to improve the quality of the photo I can take for my Dollfie Dream girls, because they are worth it!

Early September loots – DSLR, M.O.E. Fate, Asuka and Saber Lily

And of course, what good does a DSLR do if I don’t take some pictures right?

Dollfie Dream Asuka, Rin and Saber Photo Session

Soon after I acquired the DSLR and have taken some outdoor photos, I realized the indoor lighting condition I had to deal with was just plain horrible, so once again, I decided to invest in the proper equipment to assist my indoor photo appetite!

Nikon D5k + Camera Control Pro and Hikari Photo Studio Upgrade

After some adjustment on the white balance settings, I was finally able to produce the quality of photo I was looking for, I quickly assembled my nine daughters for a pretty pretty family photo! And you know what? My room was selected to be one of 108 otaku around the world to be featured in OTACOOL!

Dollfie Dream Family Photo + DD Gathering Update + OTACOOL

Behind this group photo was an event that I had been thinking about for over a month, a first public event I have ever held; offering a second chance for those who wished to adopt Dollfie Dream Sasara but was unable to due to various circumstances!

Adopt a Dollfie Dream Sasara Contest Entries

Adopt a Dollfie Dream Sasara Contest Winner

And since there wasn’t any Dollfie Dream I wanted to adopt during Dolpa 22, I decided to proceed with my first home multimedia server buildout.

Otaku Project: Building of my first multimedia home server

And during the holiday season, I finally have enough time to work on the most ambitious Dollfie Dream Theater I have ever filmed, there were over 50 frames! So big I had to split it into two topics!

Dollfie Dream Theater – The New Scenario

And with Volks USA beating their own delivery schedule, I was able to accomplish my goal of taking the ten daughters group photo, and combining my Christmas greeting with Natsuki’s arrival.

Merry Christmas from my Dollfie Dream Daughters and Natsuki Arrival

Dollfie Dream Daughters Glorious Gathering Group Photo~

Soon after I decided to put together a White Album Dollfie Dream support message to show them my appreciation for their effort, I submitted my photos to Volks USA, and guess what? They liked it and posted it in their Sumika Times Blog!

My Dollfie Dream Daughters featured in Volks USA!

Wow, a ton of stuffs has happened in the past year! What a rewarding experience it has been! I suppose if you managed to read this post all the way down to here, you deserve a little reward! Haha, that’s right, to celebrate my blog’s anniversary, I have decided to host a PVC figure giveaway contest! This particular contest is of course designed to benefit those who find this blog interesting and stick around to read to the end of the post! I have no plan to announce this contest publicly on figure.fm or dannychoo.com for that matter, it’s for you, my visitor!

So, here is the detail of the contest:

Under the topic Dollfie Dream Completion Project arrival and other loots, there were three dollfie dream, namely Asuka, Feena and Saber that I acquired through Yahoo Japan Auction, your task here is to guess how much US dollars I have spent to acquire them including auction deputy fee and whatever fee that might have been charged! Easily right haha… there are hints of how much I have spent on them scattered throughout my blog and in my flickr account. You may not give your answer in Japanese Yen, or it would be wayyyy too easy, the answer must be in 2 decimal places, for example 1000.00 would be your answer if your guess is 1000 US dollars~

And here is the other criteria, you must be a figure.fm member, and you must identify yourself here with your figure.fm username and have posting history there ; because that’s the only way for me to identify you to be an unique individual, and not the same user under the disguise of several usernames. You have 2 chances to guess the actual dollar amount is, so give me two answers! The closest answer will be declared as winner and will receive this Max Factory Mikuru Adult version! In the case of multiple answers being correct or closest to the correct answer, the earlier respond will be declared as winner.

You have a week to give me your guesses, the contest will official close at the end of the day February 12th CST!

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I really didn’t know what to do at that time, first each of the Dioder has the exact length power cable toward the transformer, meaning by the time the I finish routing the cables inside the Detolf, the exit wire length would be different for each of the cable.  See the power adapter hanging in the middle of the air?  Just bloody awful looking >.>;

My main goal here is to hide the power adapter on the ground so I can’t see it, luckily I have saved all the extra cables from previous Dioder installations so I finally decided to splice all the DC power wires (in my opinion, it’s relatively safe to do custom work on the DC side of the wiring, since it’s low voltage and low current)  so they each have equal length at the end.  So I gathered all of my tools and the extra Dioder power cables and began splicing them into equal lengths.

Here I slipped a little heat shrink tube in before hand so I can insulate the solder joints after I am done.

Slipped the heat shrink tube over the solder joints so the wires won’t short to each other.

Testing the connectivity after I finished all the splicing.  It was simple DC wiring so there were’t many chances to screw up as long as I was careful to match up the wiring pair.

After everything was tested out, I slipped large diameter split sleeve over the wiring bundle, everything is nice and neat now with the power adapter sitting pretty at the end of the sleeving.

Got to manage the exit point so it’s nice and neat unlike the way I left it a month ago!

And we have the finish product!  The only outstanding task now is to find a way to tie the split sleeve to the corner of the Detolf, which won’t be too hard to do!

Edit: Added photo with0ut ambient light

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Picture Source: Hobby Link Japan

Overall, this is a fairly nice Asuka figure, nice facial expression (I like the deredere Asuka), the painting is good, just about everything is good except this figure can’t stand straight!  Like I have talked about in one of my earlier figure collection topic.  This figure has tortmented me for ages and I have tried various different techniques to try keep her straight.  I tried tipping her over, putting something under her base and even tried to glue her feet down to the base.  None of those techniques worked.  While I was working on my Detolf Dioder project earlier today (This Asuka has always been inside the Detolf), I finally decided to put an end to this problem.  But none of the previous techniques had worked before, what could I possibly do?  But I am an Engineer, I have to figure out a way around the problem!  Finally, it came to me… I need to pin her down like what people do with their resin kits!

Almost immediately, I took out my power tool, hand vice, drill set and began to work on her.

I started with the hand vice and tried to get the hole started, switched to my power tool once I felt comfortable enough with the pilot hole.  Next I inserted a brass pin that I have laying around my modeling desk.

And the result

In the attempt to balance Asuka so she won’t tip forward again, her left foot is now slightly lifted above the base.  And I have applied some super glue where the pin was inserted to fill up the remaining gap between the base and the brass pin so Asuka is now support by the brass pin reinforced left foot.

And the final result

It’s been a few hours since I completed the remodeling and I have yet to see sign of her tipping over.  Hopefully, this will put an end to the Asuka who used to play smooth criminal.  Now, pinning is not a new idea, it’s been used by resin kit modeler for many years; however this technique is rarely used among PVC figure collector.  Hopefully, this write up will help other collectors of this wonderful Asuka figure and keep her standing straight.Similar Posts:

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Another big problem with the Detolf has to do with it’s all around glass appearances, makes it very difficult to hide the wiring to the dioder strip.  Luckily, since the company I work for makes a wiring management product that looks like this.

Basically it’s a split sleeve that is widely used in industrial application where they use it to bundle wires together and I just pick out of the size that fit around the four aluminum posts of the Detolf.

Around the corners..

In this picture I showed another stick on cable restraint to help hold the wire in place on the top shelf.

And while we are at it, let me take a couple shots of the figurines in this cabinet

Overall, I am happy with the result, however the light could not spread out as much as I had hoped.  But at least I finished it like I promised myself!

There is another outstanding task remain to be done, which is to finish the cable management aspect of it outside of the cabinet… currently it looks like this:

Here I stick another cable clip to hold the wires together but it’s definitely not the finish article.  I need to think of a way to hold and constraint the wires outside the cabinet a little better than what I have now.Similar Posts:

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I have discussed how I use 3M film to protect my figurine collection from dust, but there was always a big flaw in my original plan.  The fact that I leave the bottom edge open for easy access has led to some figurines being covered in dust due to air draft from some of my computers.  As anyone who has done failure mode analysis would tell you, prevention is always weighted more importantly than detection.  Cleaning the dust after you see them is in no way as effective as preventing the dust from accumulating in the first place.  It’s also my believe that dust get attracted to object because of the charged ion in the air within indoor environment.  Conventionally, you would use a brush to brush off the dust, but that alone could generate static charge on the surface that ended up attracting the dust again.  Have you ever gotten the feeling why you can’t quite brush the dust off?

My new idea involves using another common household product.  I am sure most of you are familiar with Velco straps, but this is a little different, it’s call Tech-Tape Tak-Tape.  It’s thinner and has less strength but it’s perfect for what I am trying to do here.

First I pull off two strips of equal length that are long enough to cover the lower edge of the dust shield and tape them together.

Next I apply double sided tape to both sides of the tech tape Tak-Tape assembly.

The apply the combined strip to the dust shield.

And here is the result!

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Originally, I use this to protect my precious poster from dirt and dust, day to day wear and tear.  But when my figure collection grew from just a couple to over a hundred, it’s starting to get out of hand.  And since most of my earlier collection were made from polystone or cold cast resin, its better off that I don’t touch them at all (since they are rather rigid and brittle).  The result is like this:

I use the double sided tape to tape off the top, left and right side of my bookshelves, leaving the bottom side open for easy access.  This solution does not completely eliminate dust, but it cut it down quite well.

Edit: Add more pictures

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Hi, I am Lamia Loveless

And I am leaning over!

So, just why do they lean over like that?

Here I shall attempt to explain the mechanics behind the leaning figures. There are several factors that can contribute to this phenomenon:

1. Material stiffness
2. Temperature and Relative humidity
3. Weight distribution

Back in the early days of figure collecting, most of them were done in cold cast resin. PVC figures were no where near as popular as it is today. Cold cast resin figures are stiff, they generally don’t deform under normal circumstances. PVC figures on the other hand, behave a lot different when expose to high temperature (take a hair dryer, blow at your PVC figure and you will know what I mean). Nowadays, most manufacturers incorporate ABS resin into their figure to achieve better support and weight balance. However, ABS resin is not immune from deformation or stress relief under high temperature and humidity either. The injection molding process of ABS introduces shear stress to the part and cannot be avoided. When the parts are placed in high temperature and humidity, it can undergo stress relief and deform to where it naturally want to be. And finally, in order to capture liviness and artistic sense, most figures are sculpted in ways that often defy gravity.

The chest heavy Mikuru chan simply cannot maintain her position with one leg

This lovely Asuka in summer wear can't manage to stand on her own two feet

While there isn’t a one size fit all solution, not yet anyway… and ultimately, the responsibility lies with the figure manufacturer and sculptor to choose the right combination of material, provide adequate support if required. Here is an example, this Haruka Takamori from Alter has been standing on one feet for several months now and has yet to show any sign of leaning over. Now that’s a good design! The Kotobukiya version doesn’t look as graceful and require an ugly support bar.

I can stand on one feet!

If this was going to lean over, it should have done so months ago, but it hasn’t happen yet. And when I pick up Haruka, I noticed it feels fairly light. Although I don’t think it is necessary, I have positioned Saeki at the right place to offer her back as a support if the situation arises. Saeki looks pretty sturdy when she is down on all four like that

However, under most cases, I have to resort to tilting the figure to a point where it can maintain equibilium. The Mikuru chan above requires almost 30 degrees tilt to get the job done. It’s unsighty but it’s still better than having your precious figure playing smooth criminal. Luckily, out of all the figures I have collected up to this point, less than 5% of them are exhibiting this kinds of problem.

This investigation will remain as WIP, until one day that no Otaku in this world need to fear the smooth criminal.Similar Posts:

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