Dakimakuras anyone?

Not a whole lot from me. Waiting on a batch of goodies from SMJ. I have a bunch of pictures that I need to resize/crop and upload. Maybe I'll get to it tonight or sometime this weekend.

I put up a new collection post http://www.figure.fm/en/post/44789/Dakimakura+Collection+51.html

And Yokatta seem to have lost one of my covers, after thinking they sent it to me when they didn't... will see how badly this turns out now D:

So what exactly motivates you guys to post on FigureFM when they make you censor your posts? If I had to guess, it would be the audience/viewership there. I mean, that's where I see the appeal, but still haven't really found a reason to post anything there.

Initially I never censored there, and had made 35 or more posts there before it ever became an issue and had to start. As such I continue now since I have a small group of "followers" who seem to appreciate it still.

Well, that's cool of you to continue posting there. I think I remember hearing something about them requesting censoring explicit images and that instantly turned me away.



BAM!
http://k-project.wikia.com/wiki/Neko
Oh, and here are some cute wallpapers of her too: http://konachan.com/post?tags=neko_%28k%29

Well, I have not seen much that I wanted and I was doing my exams just a while back. Anyway, I just placed an order for evening call's Fate and Nanoha cover.
Need more goodies!

Alright, I wanted to mention this days ago, but Street Fighter X Tekken training is sucking up my nighttime. I can't tell you how sick I am of the best players being as unoriginal as possible with Ryu/Ken and Kazuya/Murdoc/Zangief/Hugo/Any beyond-overpowered grappler that takes away a third of your health with one unavoidable move if you get too close. Seriously, why do Ryu and Ken (and their near-copies, like Akuma, Evil Ryu, Oni, Gouken, etc.) have to dominate every single Street Fighter game, when Capcom should realize by now that the reason they always win is because they've kept the same unstoppable moveset since 2? You can't have a character that controls all three zones: Ken is absolutely merciless in close-quarters, they all throw Hadokens fast enough to control long-range, and worst of all, they have virtually no recovery time for almost any of their moves. WHY? WHY DO THEY HAVE TO BE SO FAST? Why does Capcom refuse to learn from its lesson of everyone calling SFIV "Super Ken Fighter IV"? They either need a MAJOR speed nerf (their speed is ridiculous), or a massive decrease to their EX Shoryuken damage so it doesn't rip apart a third of your meter every time they connect it.

I tend to kick Ryu/Ken players out, or anyone who abuses Kazuya's absurd ability to juggle better than anyone else, bar none. They whine at me, sure, but when I make a beginner's room, that means everyone's just having fun. It doesn't mean people with A and B ranks can come to pick on the C and D ranks.

ACTUAL RELEVANT POST SPARING TANGENT

Oh, right, the Dakis. Yeah, okay, so I got my order of the three 2WT ones from HobbyHeart.

Bottom line for HobbyHeart overally quality: Worth every penny of the 50% price hike if you plan to actually cuddle it. Once you try 2WT, you'll never go back to Peachskin again. For display-pieces only, though, you can stick to Peachskin, at least with HH, who make very fine prints.

Very wrinkle-resistant, beautifully detailed art, and the elasticity is much more important than one would probably imagine compared to Peachskin, which has very similar art quality, but is also far less durable and has zero elasticity.

Other important note: The body pillow I recommended earlier that was available at Macy's, online-only, has changed its formula and lost a lot of quality. It is now, to put it simply, unusable for any purpose. They crinkle so loudly it's like handling a bag of Doritos, and they seriously lack support. The stuffing is no good, and because it isn't thick, the Daki is very easily prone to wrinkling.

However, a solution: After testing, the best alternative to an imported pillow is available at Bed, Bath, And Beyond, for the same price. It is very thick, maintains its proper shape, and actually works well when you realize that imported fabric isn't necessarily higher-quality, just with more length, but with a way, way higher price tag.

Still dealing with ADP. I'm not sure why they think I'm going to leave a good review by this point, since nothing at all has changed, and I still wish I had ordered from HH, which now carries the print--for all I know, they carried it all along, and I just missed it.

Again, if you actually plan to use a Daki for cuddling, 2WT is totally worth it. HH is hitting the buttons right with me, and I appreciate their customer service and very fast method of shipping (seems it's typical for me that it processes within a day, and can take as little as 5 days to arrive, depending on where you are in the USA. Because I live near Boston, it goes straight there and onto the truck, so I don't have to deal with the complications of long-distance traveling across the country.)

Finally, one last note: I believe it is totally worth it to use $5 registered mail if using HobbyHeart. The reason for this is because of the nature of registered versus unregistered mail. According to someone I know who once worked for the USPS, registered mail is treated differently from unregistered, and the bottom line is that it gets priority and better care. Unregistered mail is the stuff that tends to stay in one place for a long time, because its priority is lower. So, high-traffic times like now make registered mail a good option, and you get the bonus of tracking. Try your own experiment sometime, if you want, but it seems to me that using registered mail is both safer and faster.

In all fairness, man, you're pretty much in a thread of people who won't buy anything but 2WT. :P I always try to convince people not to buy bootlegs, because there definitely is a difference in quality between a legit cover and a bootleg. But if I absolutely can't convince them that the price increase is worth it, I always tell them to at least do themselves a favor and make sure that they buy 2WT over the other bootleg materials. Very few people end up listening, and that's truly their loss. I'd also like to say that in my experience, a legit 2WT absolutely blows away the print quality of the few peach skin covers I have; it's absolutely no comparison.

As far as pillows go, I'd recommend you check out Royalpillow.com, if you haven't already. You can get a pillow that will be a nice and snug fit for your case at about $20 + shipping, which shouldn't be too high for you since they're based in Florida. The main disadvantage to buying at a store like Macy's or Bed Bath and Beyond is that the size of the pillow is a lot shorter than most cases. I think the largest pillow I've seen at Bed Bath and Beyond is 140cm long; that would leave a good 20cm of slack at the end of my pillow, even more if you factor in the elasticity of the case. I have a 150cm Cospa pillow and all of my cases are 160 these days, so whenever I put a case on it, there's always a good 4-5 inches of slack at the end of the case, and it's a massive pain in the ass to sleep with.

I totally know where you're coming from, but I'm very sorry to say I'm currently one of those people. I might evolve later, but for now, I'm still in the experimental phase.

For what it's worth, I feel similarly opinionated about just about anything electronics-related, which is a field in which I'm professionally involved. Technically, my job only deals with administrating networking equipment for small business networks and general technical work for the businesses, but it branches out pretty heavily. HDTVs, cell phones and plans, audio systems, computers and computer peripherals and accessories ...I feel like most people make horrible buying decisions based on bad information in all of those departments (when people ask me about these kinds of things, I have to hide my personal opinion on the outright lies they were told by salesmen that were allegedly "saving them money", when they were just confusing the customer with nonsense until they broke).

I very much love my three 2WTs. They're just gorgeous. For the record:

The first is from Kyounetsu (a circle), the second is from Lass (a company), and the third is from Rabbit.net (a company.) That by itself wouldn't really be relevant to the discussion, but I think it's interesting to note because of the sample images. The Lass and Rabbit sample images don't look bad; in fact, the Lass sample image is pretty much a direct rip taken from the sample image the company originally published. If the prints are similar to the sample quality, then you didn't do too bad. It is worth noting that sometimes you can get legit company covers for pretty cheap; I have a Lass cover that I paid about 4k yen for brand new, and Mandarake has the new version of the character you bought for 10k (sample.)

On the other hand, and this isn't meant to make you feel bad (if you're happy with it, that's what ultimately matters), that the Kyounetsu bootleg is an abomination when compared to the real thing. It just looks lifeless to me. If all three sample images are representative of what you purchased, I probably wouldn't recommend purchasing legit copies of the company covers, but if you ever got a chance at the legit Kyounetsu cover, I would absolutely recommend it.

If you have a camera, you should try posting up the covers to give people a better impression of what they've turned out like! The sample shot of the first one looks like a vector trace of the original one or something, as it's lacking huge detail in the shading department. Or maybe it's an earlier mid-progress version of the original that they were somehow able to find..

Recent HOP cover:
Front:


Close-ups:




Back:


Close-ups:

Looking good; I regret passing it up. I especially love the juice/wet sheets on the backside.

Clochette Comiket cover revealed: http://clochette-soft.jp/html/event/

All the Dracu-Riot! covers seem to be getting a rerelease for comiket http://yuzu-soft.com/post/ja/674/%E3%82%B3%E3%83%9F%E3%82%B183.html which I guess may result in a price drop on YJA for anyone looking to pick one up, or they may do another webstore release afterwards too...

Stylus' new Carnelian work is pretty nice too: http://stylishstylus.cart.fc2.com/ca23/49/p-r-s/

Some new Koihime Musou wedding dress ones too: http://baseson.nexton-net.jp/c83/index.html Not as nice as the Kanu one, but I'll probably end up getting the Sousou one I reckon.

Loving the new Clochette and Baseson covers. I still want to get the one Dracu-Riot cover but don't necessarily need any of the others and it's already pretty reasonable on both YJA/Mandarake. But now at least I don't have to hurry to get it.

I'm probably most excited about the new Omega Star cover, that looks like a silver-haired Mafuyu: http://www.amiami.com/top/detail/detail?gcode=LTD-ETC-00039&page=top

Alright, it took a few tries (and learning that my phone's video capabilities are only 720p and 1080p, which makes for absolutely massive video sizes), as well as balancing out the quality of the uploaded video with the detail of the Dakis actually being noticeable, but I think I managed a decent first try.

The point of the video is a basic introduction to Dakis, the retailers, the common fabrics, bootlegs versus kosher, types of stuffing that can be used, bootlegs of bootlegs, eBay, different uses for them and how to best implement them for each, and other points I thought were worth going into some detail about.

You need a password to access it. It's "solutionsdaki", simply enough. I'm not really used to Vimeo, but they stream far, far better than SkyDrive, which I'm more used to using.

I tried to be comprehensive without being long-winded, but the video still turned out to be rather absurdly long. I'm starting a new web series soon, which is when I'll use all my energies to create something with a lot more effort with the editing.

https://vimeo.com/55227751

Ambitious. I'm rather surprised that you found someone to film it for you!
As for fighting games, I couldn't really get into SFxTekken. I'm more into Arc Sys Works fighters, not at a competition level, but just play to have fun. :)

It's a nicely put together video. Don't worry, it wasn't too long-winded. I do have some comments though, and I hope they don't come across too harshly:

1. You refer to all the covers as either being from an artist or a series, which I assume is similar to the comparison I use as "company" versus "circle". But I'm not entirely sure the point you were trying to get across. All of those covers are from a series, though some of the ones you may not be familiar with are from eroge. The difference between a "company" and "circle" cover is that the art for company covers is officially licensed where circle covers are fanmade art, essentially. I'd have to double check the video, but all of your covers except for the Kyounetsu one, are company covers. If I don't understand the point you were trying to get across, please correct me, because I'm honestly not sure.

2. I'm curious as to what you mean when you refer to the one cover as being ripped from Hobby Heart. How is it possible to rip off a bootlegger? A clear, high quality sample image is readily available on the internet, published by the company who created the cover in the first place. If anything, the bootleg that you purchased from eBay is just from another bootlegger who found the image online and added it to their catalog.

3. Yeah, the Evangelion cover sucks. Believe it or not, that's the only pillow of the batch that's licensed in the US. Though I think the Strike Witches one may have gotten an official release, I don't remember for certain if it did. That should just show you how shitty the US scene for dakimakura covers is.

4. Some pictures would still be nice. The video turned out to be kinda jaggy/dark, so it was hard to make out the details on most of the cases. A good still shot with some decent lighting would probably be better for comparing details.

5. From the detail I could make out, it seems as if all the company covers are fairly decent in detailing when compared to the official products, but the circle cover is definitely where it suffers.

I was wrong, then (and part of the reason why the video is private--I expected to be wrong on at least a few things). HH sometimes has things in a section called "Artist", which I assumed meant were original characters, as opposed to their "Misc" section, which is a variety of characters, too few of which exist to have their own category. Clearly, I misread the information.



I meant that they had originally purchased it from HH themselves, then just resold it. I figured it was only one individual trying to sell their own unwanted print. Generally, to me, it looks like retailers don't like making a print and then having it returned. That doesn't make for good business relations.



That's a good idea. Video just can't reach the resolution it needs to when it's being streamed from someplace. My Nokia Lumia 920 can definitely take an ultra-high-res photo with flash to get the fine detail.