Nelke von Litfass

“Advertising columns were invented by the German printer Ernst Litfaß in 1854. Therefore, they are known as Litfaßsäulen.“

Nelke is taking a walk around Westwald on a sunny afternoon in midst of all its post-and-beam buildings.

About the figure:

This 1/7 figure of Nelke was released in October of last year by Amakuni. Since I already did a video review for her not long ago, I will keep this section brief. It’s a relatively tall figure with a solid paint job and a pose that make her quite versatile for figure photos.

For me the most interesting or rather strange part was how I obtained this figure. Sine I do like the overall good quality and craftsmanship of Atelier figures I was eager to preorder her. But for some reason Nippon-Yasan pushed me out of my order, saying that I didn’t made the payment in time, when in reality there was plenty of time left. I shrugged it off and didn’t look into it that much because she wasn’t a “most have” item to my collection (Spoiler alert: None of my figures really are). I know that NY has a terrible reputation among collectors but honestly, I never had a real bad experience with their service or goods. Their prizes are competitive and unlike AmiAmi they offer a type of shipping to my area where I don’t have to pay extra for the service fee of customs clearance.

But as you can see, I somehow still got her. How? Well, earlier this year there was some sort of clearance sale at NY and while normally I don’t look into those sorts of listings, since most of the time all those “leftover” items don’t match my taste or the sale will go over my head since I’m not stalking figure sites on a daily basis. But coincidentally I looked into this one and found Nelke for almost half the suggested retail price. I ordered her a second time and this time she was dispatched and got delivered to my doorstep shortly after.

About the series:

The Atelier series is a long running JRPG franchise beloved by many fans. But when Koei Tecmo started to crank up the release schedule and did all those ports to different systems I lost track on all the characters and titles. Therefore, I didn’t look into this game at all, assuming it was just the same, cookie cutter modern Atelier game. But when I did my research for the photo and this article, I found out that this game is some sort of spin-off that does include a town building element. And even if this sounds an awful lot like microtransactions and small DLC packages I’m kinda intrigued. But when I looked up the game on the e-shop I was still 60 bucks and I’m not THAT intrigued.

Speaking of intriguing projects: Apparently, they also released an English version of a mobile app called Atelier Online: Alchemist of Bressisle that is not only an online experience but also a homage of many of the previous entries in the series. The game itself was originally releases three years ago in Japan but now with an English localization I might give it a try since it’s a free to play experience.  

Thoughts about the picture:

For some strange reason I had the urge to build a miniature advertisement column to accompany this figure. I always liked this old school method of presenting flyers and posters. The base of the column is just a very sturdy core of a plastic shrinking foil roll. In fact, the cardboard was so thick that I had to ask a nearby carpenter to trim it because it was the only way to get a clean, straight cut.

After that I just added a few pieces of painted cardboard and sponge rubber to have it look like one of those old Morris columns you sometimes still see in the historical part of some cities. The most complicated part of this build was without a doubt the roof. Originally, I planned to use the rooftop of a model train set but then I made the column bigger and the roof didn’t fit anymore. Therefore, I bought those structure sheets with a rooftop pattern but didn’t take into account that they are fragile like a big potato chip. I struggled hard to cut out smaller pieces and if I hadn’t had my newly bought hot wire cutting table, I probably would still struggle to cut it.

The backdrop of this photo are just some pieces of cardboard where I crafted the structure of those old post-and-beam buildings on top of it. It looked quite cute but of course wasn’t in scale to the figure at all. But my hope was that it won’t be that noticeable in the final composition, because I didn’t want to make this contraption any bigger, than it already was. Last time I solved this problem by using a real building but since I don’t have those kind of houses nearby, I went for the good old DIY route.

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Together with the self-made baseplate and a few plastic plants it made for quite a lovey scenery, I think.

Sony Alpha 7R II, 55mm Sony lens / ISO 100 /Exposure time 1/10 sec. /aperture: f/5.6

Time and effort: Crafting those timber frame houses did take some time but was also kinda fun to do. Altogether it took my around 20-30 hours of crafting until I was able to take the pictures. 

Costs of the props: Strangely enough the most expensive part of this photo in terms of crafting materials were those plastic rooftop sheets. 16 Euros for a piece of plastic that cracks like crazy if you only look at it the wrong way. Total cost of this set was about 40-50 Euro.

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