They had us in the first half

“At first we started slow, we started real slow, and you know, that’s all right, because sometimes in life, you’re gonna start slow.”

Finally we made it halfway trough the year and since I worked on a few smaller projects which didn’t get their own blog entry (mainly because I only took one or two pictures) I thought it would be appropriate to summarize them in one article and give you a little run down about the first half of this year while also making an outlook for the second half.

I started this year with an unusual New Year’s resolution to not buy any new figures. Since I went way over budget in 2019 with new acquisitions, I really had the urge to step down from collecting, while focusing more on photography and on reducing my backlog.

Adding a new format 

The second major change to my usual pace was the addition of figure reviews in the form of YouTube videos. For that purpose I created a new format called “Scaled Affairs”. It was quite challenging to come up with a proper name that isn’t too generic but also rolls well from the tongue. I think Scaled Affairs does the job well enough and I’m a little proud of the fact that affairs and love go hand in hand and that you can’t spell affair without “ai”, the Japanese word for love or affection.As for the production quality of the show I aimed to have it as polished as possible and of course my experience in making videos helped me a ton in this regard. Therefore, after a couple of episodes I got a firm grip on how to produce those little reviews as efficient as possible. My goal is to upload at least two videos per month or in other words to reach a video count of 25 episodes (one standard half-year anime season) by the end of this year. It would also be nice to have at least a 100 subs at this point but that’s outside my area of influence *wink* *wink*

Keep on going – even in tough times

As you probably know the thing everyone talked the most in this past six months was the outbreak of COVID-19 and all the changes in our daily life as a result. For people who are interested in Anime figures this of course meant that countless releases got pushed back and many shipments are still delayed. After seeing all this, while also experiencing the downfall of Trans-logistics (a service partner of Nippon-Yasan) in late 2019, I wasn’t unhappy with my decision to not buy any figures in 2020. Other than that I’m happy to report that this recent pandemic had no major influx on my life whatsoever. Since my day job is in transport logistics, we had more work than ever thanks to all the increase in online shopping and thanks to the prudent actions of our government the outbreak in my home country was not that severe and also short lived.In May it was once again time to celebrate the anniversary of “Moe University” as my brand of choice under which I release all the figure related things I do. Three years is already quite a stretch and sometimes I have the feeling that I’m not producing as much content as I would like to do, but then I always remind myself that this is only a hobby of mine and that in the first five years of my previous project I didn’t generate much output either. For me it’s perfectly normal to only do a handful of photos each year and have ideas that I don’t come to fruition for quite some time.Of course, I also envy all those photographers with a constant, often weekly stream of publications but I also know that for me this is an unrealistic goal to have. Lately I’m a bit more active because the cancellation of all those events/conventions gave me a bit more spare time and also because of the constant work on those figure reviews. They don’t require much creativity and can be produced by pure crunch time.

What lies ahead?

So, what can you expect from Moe University in the near future? Well, I’m already planning for two new figure photos in the foreseeable future. Both might not have the most elaborate set design and will be a callback to my earlier works, where I put more emphasis on things like surrealism and the overall composition. Of course, I will also continue to upload new figure reviews every 2-3 weeks. And even if I’m not planning on buying any figures this year there are still a few pre-orders unpaid. So, don’t worry I still got lots of cool figures I want to show you and make pictures with.                            Therefore, if you want to follow me on my journey as a figure photographer feel free to hit me up on my various social media account. Currently I’m the most active on Twitter where you will not only see my latest releases but also behind the scene and making of stuff. Facebook on the other hand allows me to write a bit lengthier articles alongside my photos or videos and on Instagram you will probably find some of the bonus pictures, that are also published on this homepage. But to be honest I never liked Insta that much. Uploading pictures other than from your phone is unnecessary complicated and it is also restricted to landscape or box-shaped photos. To bad that nowadays it’s the only platform on which your pictures will get any traction. Of course, I also still upload my stuff to DeviantArt, Flickr and MFC and the YouTube channel is currently reserved for figure review. But maybe there will be other content as well in the future – who knows.Thank you for keep coming back and supporting me. It always brightens my day when I see how many people enjoy my photos and Anime figures in general. I will continue my work as a figure photographer and strive for the best possible pictures I can create. Hopefully the second half of 2020 doesn’t screw us all over like the first half did and if you liked this kind of summary, maybe I will write a second one when this years comes to an end. In the meantime: I wish you all the best. Keep collecting and keep creating!

 

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