Azone International is celebrating Spring 2017. And to mark the merry occasion they’re presenting the super adorable EX-Cute Raili.
She’s Alice’s Tea Party Alice Raili!
And she’s an Azone International Direct Store Exclusive special doll.
Alice Raili’s Story:
the White Rabbit and the Mad Hatter’s tea party is about to begin.
“I must hurry, or I’ll be late for the tea party!”
All dressed up, Alice rushes to the tea party.Azone International
Oh, this Raili is soooooooo cute!
Dang it!
Pink hair, cute outfit (though I would like it in a different color) . . . I’m sick from the cuteness overload.
What is Azone trying to do to us?
This is only the 2nd month in the year and they’re making it so hard for us to turn down these delightful girls/boys.
I can’t decide if it’s a Pro or Con that Raili is an exclusive girl?
I want her so bad but maybe it’s a good thing that she’s an exclusive :0
Yet, there’s a part of me that is fuming because she’s only available in Japan.
This is probably a good time as any to practice my deep breathing exercises.
I’m going to need something to get me through this release.
Product Information:
- Body: Pure Neemo Flection Full M
- Skin Tone: White
- Hair Color: Pastel Pink
- Eye Color: Pastel Green
- Headband
- One Piece Dress
- Collar
- Underskirt
- Apron
- Shorts
- High Socks
- Shoes
Where to Order:
- Azonet Online Shop (February 26, 2017)
- Factory Shop Shonan (February 24, 2017)
- Akihabara Label Shop (February 25, 2017)
- Nagoya Label Shop (February 25, 2017)
- Osaka Label Shop (February 25, 2017)
- Custom Dolls Party
Release Date: February 2017
Price: ¥12,000 about $107
Over To You:
What are your thoughts about Alice’s Tea Party Alice Raili?
Do you likey or no?
And could you answer this question that keeps coming up with each announcement?
How is Azone able to create such heart grabbing, wallet damaging girls/boys?
Their dolls keep getting cuter and cuter with each release.
How . . . Why?
Ugh, inquiring minds want to know.
Leave a comment in the box below. I can’t wait to hear what you think about Raili.
And if you happen to know how Azone is able to increase the cuteness with each release let us know below.
I look forward to chatting with you about Raili.
…Oh man.
Here I am, getting back into photographing Pure Neemos, and thinking how nice it’d be to have a girl with light hair (Ririchiyo is beautiful but her pale skin and dark hair are hard to photograph). So I’ve been looking through all the Ex Cute releases, and realizing how much I’d like a fantasy-hair-shade girl, and also remembering how much I always preferred Raili, and now I come here and see this for the first time and…
…and she’s a direct store exclusive. x__x
Hi LC,
So awesome your getting back into photography.
I’m getting started with photographing my girls & boys too.
I’ve ordered a few books, and I’m watching several tutorials.
I plan to share my photos within a month or so.
Do you have any tips for a newbie photographer?
We contacted Custom Dolls Party to see if they can help a collector or 2 with getting this doll.
If I hear any good news from them, I’ll update this comment with the info.
If you have a Facebook account you may try contacting them here.
Thanks for stopping by and chatting with me about Alice’s Tea Party Alice Raili.
Tatyana
P.S. Do let us know how your pure neemo photography goes 🙂
Hi Tatyana,
Great to hear that you’re getting into photography! It’s one of my favorite parts of this hobby because it allows you to create visual narratives with your dolls, and to allow the viewers to step into their tiny worlds.
Here are some things I’ve learned and picked up:
I. clothing, props, settings
I like to have the doll’s outfit and the props if any either match the predominant colors in the setting, or be complementary colors to them. This makes the color composition vivid and pleasing.
Props are always nice to have because they enhance the verisimilitude of the doll’s world. For approximately 1/6th scale props, Re-ment miniatures are my favorite. They can be purchased without a proxy on ToySanta on Rakuten as well as at AmiAmi. iamneverbored.com and the Re-Ment Addicts flickr groups are good places to look at all the releases, and the latter also shows the props being used with Licca, Momoko, Pure Neemos, Blythe, etc. so you can get a sense of scale.
For settings, unless you want it to look like your doll is a tiny person in a giant world, try to make sure there’s nothing in the setting that’s off-scale. For example, dry leaves outside that are as big as the doll’s torso 😛 On that note, moss makes a good “grass” for 1/6 dolls. Snow and sand are relatively “scale-free” so they also make good settings. And look out for nooks and crannies that, if shot close up, naturally look like they could be miniature places. (This is always fun for me. It’s like a photographic treasure hunt!)
The clothing and props should match the setting, also. For example I did a photoset with a doll in the snow, but I didn’t have a jacket for her, so it looked kind of strange and made the viewer think ‘isn’t she freezing?’
II. posing
The doll should also be “responding” to the setting (particularly for outdoors shoots). For example, in the second shoot I did with my doll in the snow, I made her a coat and posed her so she was hugging herself to keep warm.
In snow or sand, leave a small trail of footprints behind where the doll stands, so that it doesn’t look like she just dropped down by parachute. (Unless, of course, she did.)
For figuring out a realistic pose, it helps me to imagine how I’d sit/stand etc if I was where the doll was. Even if you’re a different body type or gender, imagining how you would pose and adjusting the doll to match that generally makes a more realistic pose than simply putting the doll in a generic position.
III. angles
I usually try to shoot at an angle so that the picture looks as if a doll-sized photographer took it. For example, keeping the camera on a horizontal with the doll’s head, or, if shooting a child doll, keeping the camera at the height where an adult doll’s head would be, and angling slightly down. Of course, doing bird’s eye and bug’s eye (very low) can also produce great shots, but if you aren’t going for an effect shot it’s generally better to stick with the above guidelines.
IV. lighting
The proverbial most important part of photography!
Unless you have studio lighting or off camera flashes and such, the best light is natural light. Harsh shadows generally look bad on smaller dolls, so avoid direct sunlight unless you do want harsh shadows. I’ve found a good lighting place to be in the space under a window through which streams direct sunlight. There is a triangle bounded by the wall, the floor, and the ray of light, and inside it there is a soft, glowing light that comes from the reflection of the light off the floor. (It helps to put something white over the place where the light hits the floor, to avoid your shot being tinted to the color of the floor).
Another way to get good lighting is with a reflector. I have a 18″ diameter reflector which works great for doll shots. They are fairly cheap but you can also make your own with white foam core, covered in tinfoil on one side. The white side reflects softer, dimmer light, and the silvery one reflects harsher light. Using the white side to reflect sunlight onto your doll gives very nice lighting. In dimmer light, the silvery side can be used to reflect light onto the darker side of the doll’s face, evening out the lighting.
It’s also very important to make sure the eyes are well lit, particularly for anime-style eyes, because if they’re dark and look totally black the doll can look rather hellish.
V. focus
Unless you want the focus to be on something the doll is holding, I recommend focusing the camera on the doll’s eyes. The eyes are what humans are drawn to first, so one gets a better initial impression of the photo if the eyes are crisp and sharp, not blurry. I recommend, also, checking each shot for focus after taking it. It sucks to have a good composition and then realize, after the shoot, that you actually focused on the back wall and not your doll 😛
VI. editing
I use GIMP as an editor on my computer (it’s free!) and Snapseed and VSCO for phone shots. My usual edits are 1. correct color cast if there is one (i.e. remove a blue/magenta/green/etc tint), 2. crop and straighten if needed (I like to make sure the main vertical/horizontal lines are exactly on the vertical or horizonal, as opposed to just sort of close) 3. increase contrast if needed using the Curves tool in GIMP/Snapseed, and 4. increase saturation slightly to make colors pop more. It helps to look at an edited photo you like as a reference to get the contrast and saturation to what you want.
If I want to do anything fancy, like tints and textures (basically like a filter) I do it after all the basic edits are finished.
VII. telling a story
Technical aspects aside, a great part of doll photography is the ability to show others the world you imagine for your doll–whether it’s as simple as ‘he’s a schoolboy finishing his homework on the last day of summer break’ or as complex as ‘she’s a dragon-rider from a story I’ve been working on for the past eight years’. Props and setting are very important in conveying a story. The way that the doll interacts with them is, too. What is she looking at? Is she holding something? Does her pose indicate tension or relaxation?
A doll in the snow standing proudly beside her horse and looking at the trail ahead tells a different story from the same doll, in the same place, huddling against her horse with her body turned towards it and her face looking up at the snowy sky. Similarly, a doll at his desk sitting straight, looking at a notebook with pencil in hand, tells a different story from the same doll, slumping over his desk, pencil fallen right below his hand, staring out into space.
Looking at guides and references on showing emotion and story for cartoonists and animators is very useful for learning more about visual storytelling.
Ahah, I wrote a lot here x__x But I hope that it will be helpful to you. Best wishes for your photography!
Hello LC,
Thank you so much for the detail information about photographing dolls.
I wrote your tips & suggestions in my photography notebook to so I can easily refer back to it again & again.
You got me super excited to get started 🙂
I appreciate you taking the time to share your knowledge about photography with us all.
Tatyana
I actually saw this Raili added to the My Figure Collection database yesterday and fell in love. I will hear on Monday if I’ll be able to get her through a dealer. Otherwise, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get my hands on her. Fingers crossed!
She would be my first Raili, my first white-skinned Pureneemo girl…and my third girl with pink hair, haha!
Hello Robyn,
Raili is insanely cute!
We’ll keep our fingers crossed that your dealer will be able to get Raili for you.
Sounds like you got some super adorable girls in your collection.
Beautiful fantasy hair is my weakness 😉
Thanks for taking the time to chat with me about Alice’s Tea Party Alice Raili.
Best of Luck bringing her home ^-^
Tatyana
I actually saw her on the Azone blog last night but couldn’t really make out the Japanese so I wasn’t aware she was an exclusive. I knew you’d report on her so I wanted to wait and see what you said about her.
Like you, I am kind of glad she is an exclusive but also not. When I first saw the photos of her, I thought, wow, I still don’t have a Raili and she has pink hair followed closely by, she’s going to be a massive click war doll. Gone in sixty seconds or something like that when she opens for pre-order.
But now I know she’s exclusive, well, I can breathe a sigh of relief. It’s a good thing as I just bought a new doll today! I do like her though. The only thing is the colour of her eyes. Not sure if I’m convinced on it. But then again, I didn’t think I would like Snow Queen Mia’s outfit either from her promo photos but when she arrived, I was surprised by how much I liked it. Sometimes, these dolls really do look way better in person than in the promo shots.
Hello Alasse Carnesir,
When I saw Raili I was in a fit of excitement and then I saw the word “exclusive” . . . That word is a mix blessing.
If Azone is kicking off 2017 like this, I’m going to need some energy & protein bars to keep up.
You’re either in a clicking war or trying to hunt down sellers who can get the exclusive dolls for you.
That’s a lot of running around for me but totally worth it when you get them home.
Oh, Snow Queen Mia arrived. Congratulations!
So glad to hear you like her so much.
I’ve seen a few owner pics and I can see why she sold out so quickly.
It’s nice to hear she looks better in person then in the promo pics.
A lot of of exciting dolls news came in that night/day.
I am glad we were able to get Raili posted for you.
Have a fabulous day and thanks for chatting with me about Alice’s Tea Party Alice Raili.
Tatyana
Hi!
Oh my… she is exactly what I like! Damn you Azone! Why do you make the most cutest dolls the exclusives ones?! I didn’t want to go again in the same mess as Happy New Year Yuzuha but it seem that I’m forced to do so…
Hi Anne-Sophie,
Alice’s Tea Party Alice Raili was such a total surprise for me!
I agree with you . . . she’s amazingly cute!
I was literally screaming when I first saw her.
First it was screams of happiness then it was screams of “Why, Azone, Why?!”
I’m throwing in the towel. It’s too exhausting. I can’t fight Azone anymore.
They’re girls/boys are too powerfully cute!
It seems the more we curse Azone for their cuteness and exclusive dolls the more they increase the cuteness.
Azone is making us jump through hoops this year.
I hope everyone remembers to do a proper warm-up before hunting down these dolls. Because this year Azone isn’t playing.
They’re out to make their dolls more irresistible then ever.
Our wallets don’t stand a chance against them.
But on the flip side, once we get the girls/boys home – oh, the fun we have with them in our collection.
Thanks for taking the time to share your thought about Alice’s Tea Party Alice Raili.
Tatyana