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INTEREST: Good Smile Offers Sesame Ball... as a Plastic Model with 900+ Parts




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Emerje



Joined: 10 Aug 2002
Posts: 7341
Location: Maine
PostPosted: Mon Oct 23, 2023 8:46 pm Reply with quote
When I saw this last week it really annoyed me that the person building this couldn't be bothered to nip off the little sprue nubs on each seed for the beauty shots. Could have at least done the ones facing the camera.

Emerje
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Sorraffy



Joined: 26 Feb 2008
Posts: 159
PostPosted: Mon Oct 23, 2023 8:52 pm Reply with quote
couldn't you just cut all the seeds out, place them on a clean surface, put the adhesive ball together and then just roll the ball around in the seeds? Using the tweezers for the whole process and not just at the end seems like a huge waste of time ...
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Hiroki not Takuya



Joined: 17 Apr 2012
Posts: 2518
PostPosted: Mon Oct 23, 2023 10:53 pm Reply with quote
^^But, to the connoisseur model assembly enthusiast this fine product is clearly aimed at, doing so would drive you mad every time you looked at the result as every out-of-place seed or overlapping seed or too-large gap would remind you all of the ways that it should look better and that you would have done better. You'd miss the joy and satisfaction of being able to gaze on the product of hours of labor, knowing how you decided precisely where the place the next "seed" to achieve perfection in realism. Wink
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Chris Handsome



Joined: 07 Sep 2010
Posts: 281
PostPosted: Tue Oct 24, 2023 3:39 am Reply with quote
For $10 you could buy a big container full of the real thing.

Also probably not something you'd want to leave around with small children.


Last edited by Chris Handsome on Tue Oct 24, 2023 10:43 am; edited 1 time in total
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Hoppy800



Joined: 09 Aug 2013
Posts: 3331
PostPosted: Tue Oct 24, 2023 9:43 am Reply with quote
This is basically the new "ship in a bottle" for an even more niche audience as most people would just buy the real sesame ball, as you can eat it.
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Aura Ichadora



Joined: 25 Apr 2008
Posts: 2284
Location: In front of my computer
PostPosted: Tue Oct 24, 2023 11:23 am Reply with quote
I showed this to my husband last night, and his first response was that he wouldn't want to get it because he'd be too tempted to eat it. Laughing

I mean, it is neat! But yeah, I'd rather just have the real thing.
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tasukete



Joined: 30 Jan 2004
Posts: 17
PostPosted: Tue Oct 24, 2023 1:49 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Quote:
couldn't you just... roll the ball around in the seeds?

But, to the connoisseur model assembly enthusiast this fine product is clearly aimed at, doing so would drive you mad every time you looked at the result as every out-of-place seed or overlapping seed or too-large gap would remind you all of the ways that it should look better

That's what gets me, though. I eat these things all the time, so I really appreciated Goodsmile for investing in such a fanciful model. And yet, something seemed really wrong about the photo. I couldn't put my finger on it until today: it's the perfection that makes it look unrealistic. Still very cool, but it looks artificial in a way that sets off the "wait, that's not actually food!" alarm in my head.

"Perfection in realism" is almost an oxymoron, because perfect things don't look real.

Realism looks like this:



Instead of this:

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Rob J.



Joined: 26 Apr 2023
Posts: 46
PostPosted: Tue Oct 24, 2023 2:58 pm Reply with quote
Well, there's a class action lawsuit over children choking to death that's just waiting to happen. Rolling Eyes
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Deacon Blues



Joined: 09 Mar 2005
Posts: 388
Location: Albuquerque, NM
PostPosted: Tue Oct 24, 2023 3:20 pm Reply with quote
Emerje wrote:
When I saw this last week it really annoyed me that the person building this couldn't be bothered to nip off the little sprue nubs on each seed for the beauty shots. Could have at least done the ones facing the camera.

Emerje


You do know that sesame seeds aren't perfect like that, right?

Rob J. wrote:
Well, there's a class action lawsuit over children choking to death that's just waiting to happen. Rolling Eyes


Maybe for the tide-pod-eating children of America, but I don't think the other side of the pond has to worry about that. It's certainly not the first nor the last food inspired model that's been released.
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Hiroki not Takuya



Joined: 17 Apr 2012
Posts: 2518
PostPosted: Tue Oct 24, 2023 8:52 pm Reply with quote
tasukete wrote:
...I really appreciated Goodsmile for investing in such a fanciful model..., but it looks artificial in a way ..."Perfection in realism" is almost an oxymoron, because perfect things don't look real....
You are correct of course, but I propose that the element that set off your perception of unreality isn't that it was perfectly done, but that the seed placement on a large scale was very regular on average even if it wasn't when viewed over the scale of a small number of seeds. Also, as Emerje noted, the "seeds" were identical and did not perfectly match the shape and variety of shape of actual sesame seeds. A little care, like lightly sanding the seed ends, would have helped to fix that issue.

Random processes in nature have irregularity at all size scales and people are used to seeing such in real items, even if unconsciously. The use of fractal math, which has this property, to generate images with CGI is what has allowed cinema in recent times to create such realistic imagery. The example model was likely assembled by some random person at GSC with some expectation of finishing in a short time but someone putting one seed on at a time and then gazing at the whole result to gauge where the next should go to avoid regularity would have replicated reality much more closely, approaching "Perfection in Realism"
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