Videogames in other media: Photography - Dangerous Pixels

An alle deutschen Leser: Diesmal gibt es eine Ausnahme, sodass der Artikel zwei Mal erscheint. Einmal auf Deutsch und ein Mal auf Englisch.

Heyho everyone,

this article is making an exception, so it is not directly about a game, rather about games in other media. I plan on writing more articles for this series from time to time (note: I already wrote an article about games in movies). Today I will introduce little figures called Nendoroids by the example of an artist called Dangerous pixels. You can find her here on Facebook or here on Patreon, to get a good look on what she is doing.

Quelle: https://www.facebook.com/Dang3r0usPix3ls/

Before I introduce Dangerous Pixels more detailed, I first want to answer the question: What on earth are Nendoroid figures? Nendoroids are tons of collectible figures made by the Japanese company GoodSmile. The special thing about them is that these figures are, opposite to many other collectibles, not really realistic or game-listic, but rather a Chibi-Adaption of the character. That means that these characters are portrait as cute as possible. These Nendoroids are not only made for games, but for other “artforms”, like anime as well. It is especially funny when the characters, who are shown as really cute, are actually pretty maleficent and deadly in there own world (like the Queen of Pain from Dota 2).

Quelle: www.goodsmile.info/en/product/6217/Nendoroid+Queen+of+Pain.html

Dangerous Pixels (Kyleigh Parker) loves to collect little Nendoroid-Figures, for which she builds little diorama-sets with her husband. When everything turns out to her satisfaction, she takes a picture of everything to make it look very realistic.

I found out many interesting things about the artist in a little interview, like the fact that she owns over a hundred Nendoroid-figures! Wow, I – on the other side – have as many as three…

I wondered how she got the ideas for all of her sets. Like the fact that she combined several figures to construct this beach-scene for Toon Link and Toon Zelda.

Quelle: https://www.facebook.com/Dang3r0usPix3ls

Dangerous Pixels takes many ideas for projects and sets from daily situations or childhood memories, like this diorama of Isabelle from Animal Crossing in her little greenhouse:

Quelle: https://www.facebook.com/Dang3r0usPix3ls/

Quelle: https://www.facebook.com/Dang3r0usPix3ls/

She also mentioned that, of course, she takes a big part of her inspiration from the videogames of the respective protagnois-Nendoroids, because the worlds are just so special or the characters have some really specials perks and traits, which can be perfectly shown in the pictures. I was also wondering why she chose a name like "Dangerous Pixels", because though it fits really well, it is in its own way really unique. the artists answered happily that she was quite adventerous as a child and that this name was given her by friends. And somehow, it stayed.

In the end, I asked her a question I really wanted to konw: What is your favorite game? Dangerous PIxels explained that that would presumably be the whole The Legend of Zelda series. It was a big source of inspiration for her during her childhood and got her into art. It may happened that she was caused to build her first props because of it as well. And you can see how everything turned out in this incredible pictue from the shooting with a nendoroid-figure from Breath of the Wild. I should probably mention that only the figure is bought and everything else is self-made (by hand and by 3D-printer). My personal favorite is the cute, little wolf-link.

Quelle: https://www.facebook.com/Dang3r0usPix3ls/

I am actually really impressed by Dangerous Pixels' photography and designs. Personally, I own some of Nendoroid-figures myself, namely Toon Link, Majoas's Mask Link and Toon Zelda (all three from the The Legend of Zelda-series). I am really looking forward to the Breath of the Wild Nendoroid Link, who is way too expensive in the Deluxe edition right now. While the average price for a Standard-Nendoroid is about 30 to 50€, Deluxe Version can sell for up to 70 to 80€ in retail. Also, a really cute Guardian from Breath of the Wild was also announced as a Nendoroid-figure!

What's up with you all? Do you collect figures of your favorite characters, and maybe even own a Nendoroid-version? Or maybe you even were - like me now - inspired to create an own diorama for you figures? Leave a comment - that would make me really happy!

- Neviadarya