DBZ Loot

It's about time I got around to make a post about the greatest love of my life, Dragonball! Which has, to my shame, been greatly unrepresented in this blog, but if I have to find something to pin the blame on, I'd blame the poor availability of the franchise in Finland. It is surprisingly difficult to find any DBZ merchandise (except the video games and the manga) without having to resort to buying them from abroad. It seems every time I order something from abroad, there will guaranteed be a problem I've to deal with to the point that I'm sick of it! ...... Well, anyway, I was super happy to find the following items in  my homeland, without having to deal with any post shipping mayhem! ^_^

To the left we have Dragon Ball GT Adventure Pack Series featuring Goku, Trunks (with Giru on his shoulder) and Pan. I can't find any markings on the figures and the slightly poor paint job would lead me to suspect these might be bootlegs, but I can't be really sure. As far as Dragonball Wiki can tell me, the manufacturer is unknown and the release date as well. Shame really, because the sculpt itself isn't bad, the paint is just a little "off" overall.
Top right, we have two stickers that came on top of a round bubble gum box lid. The best before date on the back of the box says 2002! I vaguely remember this bubblegum being sold in a few selected cheap stores back then. I recall buying this same brand, but the "gift" was some rub on tattoos instead of stickers. The bubble gum wasn't anything special that I can remember.
Down right. What are these? Game chips, tokens or coins, whatever you like to call them? It doesn't translate to the picture very well, but the red color is metallic and for whatever reason the Krillin one is slightly "shinier" than the others. On the back there's a star motif and it says "official"  and they all have different numbers. Krillin is labeled 5, Vegeta 4 and Raditz 2. They are made of thick plastic, so you can't just bend and break them easily.

Awesome Stickers!! With scenes not only from the series, but also TV specials/ movies! Hmm.... "gum lollipop" doesn't sound that good to me. If I would be picking my favorite sticker out of these, I'd choose number 25, Vegeta!

Assortment of collectible cards and game cards. There were so many of them game cards I didn't bother to photograph all of them. After all, I do prefer the collectible story cards instead of  the card game I will never understand the rules of. My favorites are the cut-in-half Freeza and possessed Piccolo <3

These ones definitely have to be game chips, because on the back side there are points, numbers and stuff. These are made out of much thinner plastic that could break much more easily than the black coins above. Favorites here are Tapion, "farewell" Goku and Super Buu smacking Goku and Vegeta on the head!

Kid Goku, Super Buu, Emperor Pilaf, Fortuneteller Baba and Grandpa Gohan DX Vinyl Series by Banpresto. When I first laid my eyes upon the Buu figure I naturally assumed that it was portraying Kid Buu, but it turned out to be Super Buu in chibi-style for real. I'm a little disappointed, I wanted Kid Buu! XD Anyways, all of the figures are very neat, and I'm very happy to add my very first Pilaf, Baba and Gohan pieces to my collection! I've found a whole new love for Pilaf ever since Battle of the Gods came out, he is so darn cute in  the movie!

Piccolo (Ultimate Figure Series?) and Trunks with his arsenal of switchable hands and faces. Yup, none of the figures came in their original packaging so I don't know the exact series they belong to, like Trunks here, despite my quick google search. It's obvious which one is the higher quality out of these two. Trunks isn't by no means my favorite character while Piccolo on the other hand is. That' why I'm sad to say that it's quite ugly! The green color of his skin is all wrong! Unfortunately, Trunks wins this round, all the little details of the sculpt are astonishing and not to mention they got his colors right!


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Not related to this, but I'm fighting the urge to change my banner again and maybe also the background, but I'm kinda busy with other things now so that'll have to wait.

Dragon Quest 8 Fanart

I had t some digging but I think I finally found every single little drawing of  DQ8 I ever made, which in the end didn't total up to that much. Most of them are just doodles and unfinished sketches done in 2007 - 2008. The latest one was done in 2012, I think. I usually put a date on the drawing if I start and finish it on the same day.  Sometimes I start a drawing and then leave it for a few days (.....or weeks.....or years) and then come back to it and when that happens the date becomes kind of irrelevant. And I don't put dates on what I consider to be sketches either. I guess the date only becomes important if you like to try to keep track on how much you have improved or not.

 

It's the damn same face over and over again and the reason for that is that whenever I was bored in class, I would take my phone out which had Hero (Spartan as I called him) on the cover which I used as a reference and drew it on whatever paper I had in front of me. Bonus Edward Elric from FMA!

 

 

Again with the damn face. I was in art class when the teacher asked everyone to choose 3 items they had on them and make an "interesting composition" out of them and then continue on and draw those 3 said items. This ones size is 72 x 51 cm. Made in 18.11.2007.

From the looks of it, this was done without a reference picture nearby during some physics class.

Unfinished sketch of Hero and Princess Medea as kids.

 

Various monsters (and a Xenomorph as a bonus) from the game I drew in my sketchbook in preparation for the acrylic painting (where something called in-scale has been thrown out the window). I am doomed without an eraser or an undo-button, so painting isn't really my strong suit.

 

Le Evil Dog. I kinda like it how the Sir is underlined. Can't remember if this was some kind of an in-game joke or not.

 

Look who it is again! I think this was one of my earlier pictures that I colored digitally. Makes me kinda happy to see I might have actually improved since this!

Evil Jessica is eevil! This is one of those drawings I would like to see finished and colored one day.

 

(left) The bad guy Dhoulmagus done in 09.04.2008. I know I had this one digitally colored as well, but when I looked for it all I could find was a corrupted file. Oh well, it probably wasn't that good anyhow! (right) Not really sure, what kind of phase I was having, trying to make Dhoulmagus appear cuter looking than he actually is...

Sketch of the Horse-Princess Medea without the bridle and a more "realistic" Medea.

This one is done on plain white paper, but the pencil markings were so light I had to darken it down a bit to be able to see something. This is my favorite even if  the horse's anatomy doesn't look quite right now when I look at it, but Hero turned out decent looking.

Dragon Quest 8 Collection

So we climb all this way and finally reach the top, only to be greeted by a monster ugly enough to turn milk sour. -Angelo

Dragon Quest VIII: The Journey of the Cursed King (released in Europe 2006) is one of my favorite games of all time. I've very fond and frustrating memories of this one. DQ8 is the second game I bought for the PS2 system. What initially got me interested in the game series was of course the fact that Akira Toriyama (Dragonball Z ♥) was responsible for the character design.

I bought the guidebook after my initial play through of the game, but it came in handy since I've played it two times after that. I won't bother to check it out, but I think I can safely say that I've put over 300+ hours into this game. Never did beat the secret boss and all of his damn forms, though.... so I guess I didn't truly complete the game.

Slightly off topic, Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker is so far the only other game of the DQ series that I've played....and never finished it. When I bought it, I didn't quite realize how different the gameplay was going to be. I obviously have to give this game another chance and I simply must pick up the previous installments of the series that were remade for the Nintendo DS.

Play Arts Action Figures. The box art on the back shows how supposedly posable the figures are, but I wouldn't risk it (I will never again trust the joints of an action figure, not after that one incident which ended with a figure with a broken arm). Each figure comes with a stand and a switchable set of hands; a pair of clenched fists and a pair of hands for holding their individual weapon, besides that there isn't any other accessories that comes with them. Which is a shame because there definitely would have been plenty of different weapons to choose from; spears, boomerangs (Hero), bows and arrows, magic staffs (Angelo), scythes, clubs, flails (Yangus), knives and whips (Jessica).

Hero/Eight or whatever you want to call him is my favorite out of the bunch. I find it so endearing that he doesn't talk throughout the game (although it is implied that he does talk). The game doesn't have a default name for him, so the player has to name him. I always named the hero "Spartan" for a reason I can no longer remember. Hero was the first of the DQ figures I bought.

By default the figure has clenched hands on them, so I had to switch Angelo's hands in order to make him hold the rapier. First of all the damn rapier was stuck in its hilt and second, the damn hands would not snap into their place.  Grrr >.< I say! As frustrating as it was trying to get a few pictures taken, this figure is nevertheless very elegant and one can only admire all the small details put into it.

 Yangus, what went wrong? When I first laid my eyes on it, I thought it was ugly and I passed the opportunity to buy this figure a few times just because I couldn't stand it. I finally gave up when it was on sale and now I am happy that I bought it even if it's still as ugly as ever. Don't really know what it is that bothers me so much in this figure, something's just off. Maybe it's my imagination, but the Yangus figure looks "stretched" which makes it look a lot taller than the in-game Yangus would be. It was a challenge to get figure to stand on its own, but that's no wonder, check out those tiny feet!

My party is incomplete because I'm missing the Jessica figure, but maybe someday...

There were two other keychains to choose from, the Thief's Key and the Magic Key but I chose the Ultimate Key because I thought it was the prettiest (it's the red gem that does it). Besides, who wouldn't want a key that can unlock any door? :D

Nothing official, but this is how my old phone used to look like. l loved that the Nokia 3200 (came out in 2003) had customizable covers. I'd probably still be using this phone if it was in working order, but unfortunately it's not.

That was short-lived... I was hoping to bask in the drunken delight of victory a little longer. -Angelo