A Conversation With Kamiko, aka An Exercise In Futility (picture essay)

A beautiful sunny day for my first day's vacation here and I took the opportunity to visit another local park where I spied big rock retaining walls through the use of Google maps.  Not as good as the one I tried to shoot at last week but couldn't due to ongoing construction, but nonetheless not bad.  For those who have not been following my posts, these stories are set in a post-apocalyptic American Southwest where rival factions fight for control of the oil field an the single remaining refinery in New Mexico.  Kamiko Takahara is a Japanese-American woman with a slightly mysterious past and a real bad-ass, while Erika von Stroheim is a PTSD suffering Bundewehr veteran of Afghanistan and WWII and has difficulty telling between her great grandfathers wartime experiences and her own. She commands the forces of a rival faction to the one Kamiko belongs to.

Disclaimer:  
"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."

The characters depicted in this story are purely fictional and any resemblance to any living person is purely coincidental.

No animals or action figures were harmed in the creation of this photo series, though I did get a lot of strange looks from passersby in the park.

1 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr
Miyori, on sentry spots Erika as she approaches for a parlay with Kamiko.


2 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr
I just couldn't resist using this classic WWII era movie line.

3 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr
Miyori and Kamiko disagree on how to greet Erika.

4 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr

5 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr

6 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr
Miyori is still clearly unhappy with the situation

7 by Gary Menten, on Flickr

8 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr

9 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr
And Erika walks right into Kamiko's trap.


10 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr


12 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr

13 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr


14a by Gary  Menten, on Flickr

15 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr

16 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr

17 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr

18 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr


19 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr


20 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr


21 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr


22 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr

And suddenly the conversation goes way, way off track.

23 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr

And Kamiko steps on the gas pedal leaving "silly" behind and speeding towards absurd.

24 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr

25 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr

26 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr

27 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr

As always, I hope you have enjoyed the photos and my off-beat humor. Your feedback is always appreciated.

Sheesh, and Kamiko is the one we're supposed to like? I think I know what the problem is, but I won't dare suggest the solution. By the way it should have been "Soldatin," not "soldat," among a few other slips. Still, another round of great outdoors photos.

GubernatorFan wrote:Sheesh, and Kamiko is the one we're supposed to like? I think I know what the problem is, but I won't dare suggest the solution. By the way it should have been "Soldatin," not "soldat," among a few other slips. Still, another round of great outdoors photos.

It is "soldat" In the singular.  Ich bin ein deutscher Soldat


Kamiko is up-front and direct in nature. She has all the subtlety of an Leopard Tank. On the positive side, Kamiko is highly courageous, has a strong sense of honor, is  deeply loyal to her friends and family, patriotic, quick thinking, and behind closed doors, an amazing lover.  On the negative side, she's a sarcastic, condescending and insolent b_tch.

ThePhotogsBlog wrote:It is "soldat" In the singular.  Ich bin ein deutscher Soldat

Not if you are female. Then you are "eine Soldatin." And the plural you were thinking of would be "Soldaten."

Perhaps follow James Bond's lead and keep it in English mangled by a generic bad guy (or gal) foreign accent...

GubernatorFan wrote:

ThePhotogsBlog wrote:It is "soldat" In the singular.  Ich bin ein deutscher Soldat

Not if you are female. Then you are "eine Soldatin." And the plural you were thinking of would be "Soldaten."

Perhaps follow James Bond's lead and keep it in English mangled by a generic bad guy (or gal) foreign accent...

Ah! I was just using the classic movie line you often hear but which is always spoken by a male and checking it with Google translate, which doesn't differentiate the feminine from the masculine when translating from English. i can change it easily enough,

GubernatorFan wrote:

ThePhotogsBlog wrote:It is "soldat" In the singular.  Ich bin ein deutscher Soldat

Not if you are female. Then you are "eine Soldatin." And the plural you were thinking of would be "Soldaten."

Perhaps follow James Bond's lead and keep it in English mangled by a generic bad guy (or gal) foreign accent...

Et voila! The change is done!  Thanks for the correction.  Image sequence corrected also. Constructive help is always appreciated.

Nice photo shoot, I'm glad the weather cooperated for you! And these ladies are pretty intense.

skywalkersaga wrote:Nice photo shoot, I'm glad the weather cooperated for you! And these ladies are pretty intense.

Kamiko is usually very flippant, in the same way Sean Connery portrayed James Bond. Miyori quick to pull the trigger. Erika...a poor Erika with her traumatic brain injury and PTSD. Half the time, she doesn't know which world war she is fighting.

Haha, yeah James Bond was/is rather sadistic, psychotic murderer in case anyone forgot. Glad you could visit your park again, looks like it was in the magic hours again. Good and precise characterization for all three of them. Didn't know much about Miyori before, but now I get which direction she is going.

Another nitpick, in her first bubble it would actually be 'deutsche'  instead of 'Deutscher', as the adjective is now refering to a female.  But wrong evil language was always part of the old action movie charme. Germans having problems with their first language in New Mexico makes me think of Breaking Bad.

I don't see any mistakes in the Japanese. Although I couldn't tell if she was talking about the weather or if she is reading instructions.

Pretty funny. Some of the word ballon placement was a bit confusing — like a Japanese comic, you have to read from right to left, instead of the Western left to right.

Stryker2011 wrote:Pretty funny. Some of the word ballon placement was a bit confusing — like a Japanese comic, you have to read from right to left, instead of the Western left to right.

I agree on the placement of the word balloons and I'm going to make it a priority to work on that and make them less confusing.

Ovy wrote:Haha, yeah James Bond was/is rather sadistic, psychotic murderer in case anyone forgot. Glad you could visit your park again, looks like it was in the magic hours again. Good and precise characterization for all three of them. Didn't know much about Miyori before, but now I get which direction she is going.

Another nitpick, in her first bubble it would actually be 'deutsche'  instead of 'Deutscher', as the adjective is now refering to a female.  But wrong evil language was always part of the old action movie charme. Germans having problems with their first language in New Mexico makes me think of Breaking Bad.

I don't see any mistakes in the Japanese. Although I couldn't tell if she was talking about the weather or if she is reading instructions.

I never saw Sean Connery / James being sadistic, but he was cold-blooded killer as far as I'm concerned and the scene in which this is most obvious is in the first film, Dr. No.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YELwJtgDkO8

The way in which I originally wrote Kamiko and Miyori when they were DAZ 3D characters only is that she was Kamiko's closest friend. It was tradition in Kamiko's family that the childred should be sent to live in Japan and attend school there a few years as teenagers with the intention that they return home to America with a Japanese born spouse, thus guaranteeing that each generation would maintain both strong American and Japanese identity. Kamiko and Miyori (or Pinky as she is sometimes referred to by Kamiko) were both bi-curious and became sexually involved with one another as well. Consequently, their bonds go beyond mere friendship. Miyori is highly devoted to Kamiko, and protective of her, and there is a rumor that she helped Kamiko kill a Yakuza member back in Japan and that both were recruited thereafter into the nascent Japanese secret service. It is also rumored they were an assassination team within said organization. No proof of either story has ever surfaced however.

For what it is worth, in my experience it is often quite difficult to place the word balloons in a logical way if you are trying to avoid obscuring specific characters or parts of the background, so I can only sympathize.

"Soldatin" is now correct; since you want to keep the German, at the risk of annoying you, there are a whole bunch of other mistakes (just what I spotted) --

"Amerikanisch zigaretten" should be "amerikanische Zigaretten";
"versteh" should be "verstehe";
"Verdammter Amerikaner" should be "Verdammte Amerikanerin";
"Tomaten" should always be capitalized (same with any other noun), and in several instances it was not (also, there is no German form "tomahten" -- for the first instance in which you use it);
"dumkopf" should be "Dummkopf", although I'm not sure even that is correct, as it is masculine and she is feminine (but here there might be an exception and the term might be sexist and exist only in a masculine form).
And, probably just an oversight, unless you mean for Kamiko to come across as less American (despite her assertion to the contrary), "cousins has" should be "cousins have".

GubernatorFan wrote:For what it is worth, in my experience it is often quite difficult to place the word balloons in a logical way if you are trying to avoid obscuring specific characters or parts of the background, so I can only sympathize.

"Soldatin" is now correct; since you want to keep the German, at the risk of annoying you, there are a whole bunch of other mistakes (just what I spotted) --

"Amerikanisch zigaretten" should be "amerikanische Zigaretten";
"versteh" should be "verstehe";
"Verdammter Amerikaner" should be "Verdammte Amerikanerin";
"Tomaten" should always be capitalized (same with any other noun), and in several instances it was not (also, there is no German form "tomahten" -- for the first instance in which you use it).
"dumkopf" should be "Dummkopf", although I'm not sure even that is correct, as it is masculine and she is feminine (but here there might be an exception and the term might be sexist and exist only in a masculine form).
And, probably just an oversight, unless you mean for Kamiko to come across as less American (despite her assertion to the contrary), "cousins has" should be "cousins have".

Thanks for the help. I'll go about fixing those things and maybe work on the text balloons to make them less confusing.

ThePhotogsBlog wrote:Thanks for the help. I'll go about fixing those things and maybe work on the text balloons to make them less confusing.

No problem. I don't know how much can effectively be done about the balloon placement, because you cannot have them in a consistently left-to-right arrangement. Perhaps what you can do is make sure that the overall vertical order is clear: so whether it is left or right, the first speech balloon begins at a higher point than any other, and so on. But even there, this is as long as your background and figures allow for that (I hate "interrupting" certain elements with these "balloons," hence the difficulty in placing them).

GubernatorFan wrote:

ThePhotogsBlog wrote:Thanks for the help. I'll go about fixing those things and maybe work on the text balloons to make them less confusing.

No problem. I don't know how much can effectively be done about the balloon placement, because you cannot have them in a consistently left-to-right arrangement. Perhaps what you can do is make sure that the overall vertical order is clear: so whether it is left or right, the first speech balloon begins at a higher point than any other, and so on. But even there, this is as long as your background and figures allow for that (I hate "interrupting" certain elements with these "balloons," hence the difficulty in placing them).

I created this series with a bit of experience behind me and so kept layered Photoshop files of all the images so that it would be easy to correct spelling, or move the balloons about afterward.

GubernatorFan wrote:

ThePhotogsBlog wrote:Thanks for the help. I'll go about fixing those things and maybe work on the text balloons to make them less confusing.

No problem. I don't know how much can effectively be done about the balloon placement, because you cannot have them in a consistently left-to-right arrangement. Perhaps what you can do is make sure that the overall vertical order is clear: so whether it is left or right, the first speech balloon begins at a higher point than any other, and so on. But even there, this is as long as your background and figures allow for that (I hate "interrupting" certain elements with these "balloons," hence the difficulty in placing them).

.I think it's all been fixed now. Again...thanks for the help!

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a comic book artist/writer, and this type of photo story is pretty much the same thing. It seems pretty obvious that you had your story in mind (and what you wanted the characters to say), but perhaps — and I’m just speculating — you may have forgotten about figure placement... I would have put Kamiko and Myori on the Left (of the “screen”), and Erika on the right — that way, your word balloons would be started on the “correct” side of the story, and the confusion would be lessened. I know it doesn’t make sense to just “flip” the images to correct the issue, as it would then be everyone holding things in the incorrect hands, hair styles opposite, etc. — just something to think about for the next story. (I apologize if that comes across as condescending— I’m just trying to help).

Stryker2011 wrote:When I was a kid, I wanted to be a comic book artist/writer, and this type of photo story is pretty much the same thing. It seems pretty obvious that you had your story in mind (and what you wanted the characters to say), but perhaps — and I’m just speculating — you may have forgotten about figure placement... I would have put Kamiko and Myori on the Left (of the “screen”), and Erika on the right — that way, your word balloons would be started on the “correct” side of the story, and the confusion would be lessened. I know it doesn’t make sense to just “flip” the images to correct the issue, as it would then be everyone holding things in the incorrect hands, hair styles opposite, etc. — just something to think about for the next story. (I apologize if that comes across as condescending— I’m just trying to help).

There is in inherent difference between photography and drawing and that is that the illustrator can draw the image from which ever perspective he wishes to while the photographer does not always have that choice and has to work with the landscape and lighting (in this case allows). To complicate things, I did not have a copy of the script with me and could shoot from only one side of the figures more or less. To boot, the original script was much longer than what I've included in the images and would have required more than twice as many images, so around 55- 6o images total.

I had orignially intended to post the whole script interspersed with a few images but discarded the idea insofar as I think this site is more like a comic book in that the members want to see images of the figures more than they want to read about what they might be saying. I can send you a copy of the original script if you like.....

All these things being said, I don't know if you've had a look, but I've reworked the images where each character has multiple text balloons to make them simpler to follow. I followed the style of another guy who posts this sort of image on Flickr and does a pretty good job of using his action figures to do comic-book style images.

At the end of the day though, I always appreciate feedback and suggestions so I don't view any suggestions, advice or comments intended to help improve the work as being condescending. I'm a graduate of a commercial photography program and if you think what you're doing is nit-picking, then you should sit in a public portfolio evaluation where four industry professionals pick apart and publicly critique the images you've presented in front of an audience of over a hundred people.

Well, everything looks corrected, but I was a little confused by the new style of balloons, with the initial words below the ones that follow (yes, I get it, they are closest to the mouth of the speaker, but we expect things to proceed from up to down, even more so than from left to right -- just ask the Ancient Egyptians).

I don't always get it entirely right, but here are some examples:
https://onesixthfigures.forumotion.com/t1076-star-wars-christmas-revised-edition?highlight=star+wars+christmas (the "Thank you, we'll let you know. Next!" part in the first set was consistently in the wrong spot, so that would be an example of what to avoid, although it would have been difficult to put it anywhere else unless one had foreseen the issue before starting the photo shoot in the first place; I did better in the subsequent sets.)

To avoid the issue with the placement and sequence of the balloons, I've also experimented with "excerpts" from a fake script, as in here:
https://onesixthfigures.forumotion.com/t2799-star-wars-the-further-adventures-of-darth-maul-part-i

GubernatorFan wrote:Well, everything looks corrected, but I was a little confused by the new style of balloons, with the initial words below the ones that follow (yes, I get it, they are closest to the mouth of the speaker, but we expect things to proceed from up to down, even more so than from left to right -- just ask the Ancient Egyptians).

I don't always get it entirely right, but here are some examples:
https://onesixthfigures.forumotion.com/t1076-star-wars-christmas-revised-edition?highlight=star+wars+christmas (the "Thank you, we'll let you know. Next!" part in the first set was consistently in the wrong spot, so that would be an example of what to avoid, although it would have been difficult to put

it anywhere else unless one had foreseen the issue before starting the photo shoot in the first place; I did better in the subsequent sets.)

To avoid the issue with the placement and sequence of the balloons, I've also experimented with "excerpts" from a fake script, as in here:
https://onesixthfigures.forumotion.com/t2799-star-wars-the-further-adventures-of-darth-maul-part-i

Okay, I get it now.Let me try again....

GubernatorFan wrote:Well, everything looks corrected, but I was a little confused by the new style of balloons, with the initial words below the ones that follow (yes, I get it, they are closest to the mouth of the speaker, but we expect things to proceed from up to down, even more so than from left to right -- just ask the Ancient Egyptians).

I don't always get it entirely right, but here are some examples:
https://onesixthfigures.forumotion.com/t1076-star-wars-christmas-revised-edition?highlight=star+wars+christmas (the "Thank you, we'll let you know. Next!" part in the first set was consistently in the wrong spot, so that would be an example of what to avoid, although it would have been difficult to put it anywhere else unless one had foreseen the issue before starting the photo shoot in the first place; I did better in the subsequent sets.)

To avoid the issue with the placement and sequence of the balloons, I've also experimented with "excerpts" from a fake script, as in here:
https://onesixthfigures.forumotion.com/t2799-star-wars-the-further-adventures-of-darth-maul-part-i

See if you like it better now.

I think it's definitely less confusing.

All the way from Buenos Aires? that's quite the trip and then Kamiko drops all her sass at you, kinda feel bad for panzer britches.

Theboo-bomb wrote:All the way from Buenos Aires? that's quite the trip and then Kamiko drops all her sass at you, kinda feel bad for panzer britches.

The implication here is that they are descendants of Nazis who fled to South America, particularly Argentina after WWII.  The "Blondes from Buenos Aires" is s play on "The Boys From Brazil." In an earlier, extended version of the script, Erika explains that she first fled to South America when Germany crumbled and hoped to make a life there, but things soon even worse in South America and so she and some cousins and the descendants of other expatriates essentially commandeered (or hi-jacked) a jet and had it flown to New Mexico.