more mods and some face ups

I modded Orkas' head more after my post last night. I was looking at Elfdoll Vivien (a strong contender to take over the role if this head doesn't get its act together and work for me) and decided I would attempt to instill some of that sort of expression into the head I currently own because if it works out it will save me time and money.

Anyway....

Oh god that second one is orangey. Should have color corrected that but I so seldom feel the need to with the new camera that I didn't think about it. Oh well. Anyway... I still feel like he comes across a bit smirky or something when the camera is looking down on him. Also not sure I accomplished frowny squinty so much as just "the sun is in my eyes" squinty. But ... I chalk that up to my novice level of sculpting skills. I feel like it looks a bit better in person. He looks a bit young for his character now (I'm not sure why having smaller eyes makes him appear younger to me but... I have no idea how my brain works when it comes to 'shelling' characters.)

Here is a s hot of Iyrilaeth. His new face is very minimalist so far because I was quite frustrated after dealing with Orkas. I'm relatively pleased with his new, more neutral expression. I feel like ideally I should have built up the epoxy a bit more so there wasn't still an indent where his old mouth corners used to be. I'm too lazy to fix that right now though and it's functional on a basic level. This shot makes his nose look huge.

mouth mods

ended up deciding I did want to redo Orkas' face up. But then I decided one side of his mouth looked potentially more smiley than the other. During a discussion with Selly about why I needed to fix this, I realized that, whether or not I liked the Cyril sculpt as is, I needed to mod it if I wanted it to properly fit Iyrilaeth's character.

So after spending 90 years trying to tint epoxy and still failing spectacularly, I altered both of their mouths in an attempt to make them less smiley.

I decided to do Iyrilaeth's at the last second so his face up is only partly wiped because I was hurrying to make sure the epoxy wouldn't get too hard to be easily worked. I don't like how large Orkas' eyes are by comparison. Tempted to close them a bit or something. We'll see.

sweater attempts

I got pretty sick last weekend which kinda put Aura's outfit on hold. And, as so often happens, once I lose momentum it's hard to get it back. So today when I got inspired to try to work on some sort of project it was between redoing Orkas' face and making fitting clothes for Aleksandr.

Alek ended up winning in the end when I ran across a tutorial for making sweaters on DoA.

This is not the best sweater ever made and if I had it to do again I'd probably go with something with a tighter knit, but I really wanted this color and only had two pairs of socks lying around in this color. One would have resulted in a folded over turtleneck top part (which I liked) but would have made it impossible to avoid some sort of brand name or logo (which I didn't like).

I'd say it's not the greatest sweater I've ever made, but it actually is because I suck at sweaters. I think it will look passable once I make some sort of jacket for him to wear over it.

outfit progress (now with 'gloves')

Today I painstakingly crafted the glove dealies for this outfit. They're pretty simple, but it was a pain to get them right. The first attempt was fine with just the crushed panne velvet, but the brocade ruined the stretch so it didn't work anymore. If I had been thinking clearly, I would not have done this all in one piece and would have used snaps or velcro to fasten it in the back or something.

Anyway, after multiple attempts, I got these to work. I ended up having to hand sew most of them because I'm not good enough with the sewing machine to be accurate on such a small scale.

I'm relatively pleased with the results, however. Eventually I plan to remake the base robe in red silk and then add a semi-tabard dealy down the front and back so that the lower half of the robe doesn't look stupid boring by comparison.

It absolutely did not occur to me to even look at my sketch plans until after I posted this picture. I added the little parts around the wrist as an afterthought when I felt the gloves looked too plain. I was wondering why I didn't account for that. Then I realized that I DID. I just forgot. 

in progress clothing

after I got home from work today I got busy making outfits for Aura. I completely screwed up on the hood/cowl deal. I don't even know how it ended up the way it did but it comes to a point in the front and it was supposed to just be straight across. I don't know what I was thinking. So it looked weird and I added another layer under it and I liked it better. I still need to do the semi-tabard dealy and the gloves but I think I actually like this version of the top part better than my sketch or the modified version in my head.

I could not shoot this from an angle that didn't make it look stupid, so here's the best I managed.

attempting to design clothes

As much as I kind of like the look of the temporary outfit I have Aura in, I want him to have something of his own that isn't made of spare clothes and Batu's belt.

So I kind of sketched out something based on Priest tier 9. It's simplified because I couldn't make that outfit without wanting to chuck my sewing machine out the window after about five seconds of effort. Among other things.

So I sketched this thing out. I can't decide between the more WoW!Priest colors of greys and whites and black or something. And then the more blood elfy colors of red and gold. Aura's first RP outfit was red and gold but his actual priest tier 9 is more greys and whites.

The red and gold is probably more Aura cuz he's a flashy arrogant jerk. (But I love him that way). And he'd look too much like a unicorn in neutral colors. His hair is already lighter than I'd hoped (but it's growing on me) so I think the red and gold would liven him up some.

It's really hard to resist the urge to picspam him constantly. I'm so utterly and completely in love with his sculpt.

spam (because my new camera functions)

Just a quick update because I'm excited to have a functioning camera. It focuses so fast. I misremembered when I said I'd had my old one for six years. It would have been seven next year. It was old. And cost about 5 times as much as the camera I just bought today but such is the nature of technology.

I kept its old cord and put it on the new one to keep a part of it with me.

I have never had a camera that didn't require me to stop breathing to get a clear shot XD I'm very excited. (I don't need anything fancy. Just something that takes pictures. So this is a massively awesome feature for me.)

Here are two really quick shots taken next to my computer. I was super worried when the camera snapped the shots so fast because on my old one that almost guaranteed the shot was blurry. But then they weren't. It was so cool. XD

broken camera

My poor camera has combusted after six years of loyal service. I managed to get it working for a little bit this morning (long enough to take a zillion pictures of Auralion) and then once I turned it off it wouldn't work again.

So have some picspam and then I'm probably going to head off to start pricing cameras. Mine will be sorely missed.

 My camera didn't want to focus so out of over 120 pictures, these were some of the only ones that weren't blurry beyond recognition. Poor thing was so close to dying, but it was kind enough to allow me one last photoshoot.

Aura's hair is more of a platinum blonde irl but in photos it comes out very white.

I'm happier with this attempt at his face up. Hopefully once he has properly sized eyes he'll look better too! Right now he has 12mm eyes in and they're far too big. But I have some green glass ones in 10mm that should be coming soon. Found some cheap on the MP so that was exciting! Now I just need to make him some proper clothes instead of letting him borrow Batu's waist tie dealy combined with an inside out kimono. XD

Sadly there are 900 people in line ahead of him for clothing. But that doesn't always mean they get priority. So we'll see.

an unsuccessful evening of attempting to airbrush

I managed to color match the ears but I messed up on the face multiple times. Normal sealant and airbrush sealant were both giving me issues so the face up itself came out splotchy. I re-did it twice but finally gave up and just sealed it and put the head on a body because it's late and I didn't have time to redo it again and didn't want to leave him blank overnight.

Also his wig turned out much paler after the boiling. I'm used to wigs getting a little more dull after this treatment, but I was a little surprised at how light it was. Oh well. It's only a temp. It's way too wonky looking to be permanent.

Despite being out of focus, this shot was the only one I liked. Possibly because it's hard to see all the things that went wrong with the face up. And partly because I like the way the hair drapes in this one. Tomorrow after work I may give the face up another go. We'll see how it goes and if I feel up to dealing with the frustration.

When I do the official version of Aura's wig, I think I'll do it the way I draw it, with the part being off-center. One can't really tell where the part is in this picture, but it's in the center and I don't really like how it looks from the front.

more exciting arrivals (and some minor body and wig mods)

After I got my Cyril, I ended up selling a body I no longer needed in order to get him one of his very own. I did want to get him a Dollshe body and was just going to save up for that, but then a super duper cheap Angelsdoll 70cm body was up on the MP and I couldn't pass it up. It was the v1 body, not the v2. If it had been the second version I probably would have passed on it because I had some issues with my v2 prior to doing rather extensive mod work on it.

Anyway, RIGHT after I bought that someone decided to put up a Nabarro Har head on the MP. This was my dream head. I had up a WTB thread and was checking the MP for it every day. Seeing as I had just recently spent money, I was initially going to just pass on this, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew I would most likely regret it for a decent portion of forever if I didn't get this head.

Back story is done. Skipping forward a week and a half or so: the head and body both arrived today after I ran down to the mail box every thirty minutes or so. Sometimes every five minutes. I was a little over eager.

The packages sitting on the dining room table. I was going to just tear them open but I thought this was worth commemorating.

I opened the Har head first. Here you can see the boxception going on.

The mini-box was really quite cute.

My first glimpse of Har's head.

And he's free! His previous owner modded his mouth and gave him elf ears. I shall have to break out the airbrush to do some color matching.

For color comparison purposes, here is the body next to the head. Har's head doesn't match anything I own but that's not really a huge deal for me. I've never been hyper-concerned with resin matching. This does, however, show off the one drawback of this body (in my opinion). I've never been super keen on how inflated the chest looks. So it was off to the modding table outside to fix that...

I marked off the area where I wanted to dremel down the chest. Couldn't really mark the top part where I wanted to deflate it a bit but I mentally marked that.

After some dremel work, this is what I had. Well this is after dremel and a bit of sanding. It was pretty ugly at this stage. I was starting to thoroughly regret my entire life.

And then I spent more time sanding and started regretting life a little less as it smoothed out. It's still uneven but I was starting to lose the light so I figured it was good enough for the time being and called it quits. The pecs are still kind of a bit much compared to what I wanted for Iyrilaeth, but I may just leave them for the moment because I'm not 100% sure this will be his forever body. I also chose not to sand off the junk for that same reason (Iyrilaeth is androgynous). In the event that I do decide I am perfectly pleased with him on this body and do not want something else instead, mod work will continue.

After giving the body a quick shower to rinse off any leftover resin dust, I decided to get to work on giving Aura a temp wig.

This was a regular, center parted blonde wig. Using the ever-helpful boiling water, I re-styled it to allow it to be tied up in the back. It's not perfect but it will do for now.

picture spam

Just a wee bit of spammage of Iyrilaeth. Not very good pictures but I modded his wig a bit more last night. Straightened some parts that I felt were curling in too much. In all the red with his hair like this, I feel like he's trying to be Arthur from Disney's Sword in the Stone.

On my next off day I need to actually try to get decent pics of him not just sitting indoors under fluorescent lighting. The first picture I managed to color balance closer to his actual appearance, but I failed at doing it again for the second one despite the lighting being the same.

arrivals!

I believe this is my first box opening since starting this blog. Others can be found in the archives but they were re-posted from LJ.

 Yesterday while I was at work, the mail tried to deliver my Nabarro Cyril. (Which I have been waiting on forever. I stalked the sculptor for months in eager anticipation of his release.) And just so we're clear, by stalked I mean I visited their blog regularly.

Anyway, I woke up early this morning so I could make it to the post office before work. Here is the box-ception I was greeted with upon my return home.

This was the wee box within a box. I was, for some reason, under the impression that this head would be larger than normal and I might have to find some ungodly huge body for it. This box immediately put my mind at ease, as anything that could fit inside of it could not possibly require a larger than average body.

Here we have the first glimpse of his head.

And the eyes that were sent with it. Wasn't expecting free eyes, but that's neat! These won't work for what I have planned for the head, but I'm sure someone else can put them to use at some point.

And then I yanked out the head by the plastic bag. Thankfully, fuzzies did not go flying everywhere. I love his profile.

And here is the head, finally free of packaging. For now, he has absconded with Batu's body. The fit is good and I actually really like how the head sits on the neck, but the body is quite a bit too muscular for how I imagine Iyrilaeth, so someday we'll be finding an alternative. For now, this will have to do. Will have to attempt face ups after work.

EDIT:

 

 Here are some pics after a hastily applied face up to test out this mold's compatibility with Iyrilaeth's character. 

And here is a mock up of what I am potentially planning to do with the corners of the mouth:

The little dimply doodads at the sides have grown on me since seeing them in person but they don't really fit the character so if I do decide that this will work for Iyrilaeth, some modding will most likely be done.

And finally, a shot of Iyrilaeth modeling a wig I modified. Because I kinda sorta want him to have a fiber wig instead of a fur one. But I'm not sure this is quite his style even if I do like it.

mod work

A long time ago, there was a failed attempt to find an alternative to getting two Nabarro Hars to play the parts of Auralion and Cailath, my Rogue and Priest twins from WoW. Given that the head was limited to 50 and finding one, let alone two, was proving to be rather impossible, I got this brilliant idea to acquire two Iplehouse Jessica heads as a substitute.

This was entirely based on one person's awesome pictures of their Iplehouse Jessica boy. And the fact that the nose reminded me of the kinds of noses Nabarro gives their sculpts.

Sadly, in person, these heads just didn't work out that well. I ended up modding one and turning it into my Aleksandr (who has been posted about here before). The other was tied up in a potential trade for months (because I originally intended to sell the spare) but then that fell through and I decided I would just turn the spare into Layne since I waffled on having the first one be him anyway and he and Alek are supposed to look a lot alike.

A few hours later I had something I was relatively pleased with. I started with the same mod I did on Alek, which was reducing the cheeks around the sides of the mouth to reduce the smirky look. ANd then I took in the rest of the cheeks more to define the cheekbones better and I altered the brow bones some and added an indent in the middle to make it appear more frowny. Could've just done that with blushing but I was just kinda in the zone and not thinking.

So anyway.. I decided to go ahead and jump into face ups at this point because I was fairly happy with it.

The result: zombie Orkas. He just didn't want to wear any of the wigs that were more appropriate for Layne and I don't have the right hair for him lying around. I happened to put on Orkas' wig and I felt like it worked the best out of anything I'd tried.

I'll probably keep him as Orkas and just add the scar and stuff. And make him look less like a zombie later. I was never 100% happy with Orkas, because I mainly got the first one because the head was cheap and I really wanted an Orkas. And I had no idea what I was doing at the time.

Right now, since Orkas' old head was Elfdoll Homme skin on a light tan Domuya body, his current incarnation is borrowing the spare spare. Which is an ancient Customhouse body that I modded a bunch. This will have to do until I can afford something that matches.

Out of practice

When one doesn't do face ups in a few months, they get a bit out of practice and forget how to do simple things. When I'm doing them every other day (or on something like a regular basis) there are things that I remember to do or not to do.

As I mentioned in the last entry, I've begun to get back on a doll kick again. (in no small part because I have an incoming head that I have been looking forward to for months). So I've been spending time with the various dudes and ladydudes, mostly being more pleased with them than I remember being when last I was doing a lot of doll stuff.

The major exceptions to this have been Theorin and Defliel. Theorin's solution probably includes eye mods, but I'm not sure how to do additive mods on a doll like him, given the translucency of his skin. Defliel's issue was the face up I gave him months ago that I never was entirely sure I liked. After a while of trying to get used to it and even hanging out with him on a more frequent basis, I finally just let him sit on the shelf and tried to forget him for a while, hoping when I came back to him I'd be okay with it.

That was not the case, so today I wiped his face and proceeded to go about giving him a new one. Since Testor's Dullcote hates winter, I busted out the handy dandy airbrush (my sealant method of choice anyway) and decided it was about time I make his ears match his skin tone anyway. I've been lazy about sanding them smooth so that they mesh better with his head, but since they're mostly covered by hair it's not a big deal. Now, at a glance, they look like they match.

I tried about three or four times (I forget) to do his face up with my airbrush. I got better with each try, but I really need to just assault a head I'm not in any hurry to get done with this method so I can figure out how to do it right. I can get the left side of the face right almost every time, but for some reason I just cannot tell where I'm aiming the thing when I do the right side and this results in all kinds of weirdness.

So I finally gave up on that and decided to just go the pastels and acrylic paints route. This is where being out of practice comes in. I was just having at his head with the colors. This is something that often looks decent to my eye without eyes or a wig on the head, but the minute those things are present I'm like "OH GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE?!"

I actually felt like the first attempt wasn't too bad, even with the eyes and wig, but it just was not Defliel at all. I tried leaving it for about thirty minutes, and sometimes when I looked at him I liked it. Other times I hated it. In the end, hating it won out and I wiped it (mostly) off. I was fairly pleased with the lips and eyebrows, so I left those.

I re-did the blushing with subtler colors and was much happier with it. Until the wig and eyes happened. Again.

Here are two shots of the new face up. They helped me realize the eyebrows weren't quite even so I have fixed that since. But didn't bother to take after pics.(It also is painfully obvious that his body has not aged anywhere near as well as his head. Not that the two were a perfect match to begin with but it wasn't quite that bad.)

Of course, I say that and then feel compelled to take more pictures...

So here is another shot of Defliel. I actually think I like this shot the best. I also feel like my major problem with this face up is that he looks too pretty. I mean, he's supposed to be pretty. He's Illaiea's brother and half the cast has a crush on her.

Things I'm happy about: while Def looks like he walked out of a Japanese 3d animated movie, he also looks less depressed and miserable than before. Unlike Lyric, Defliel is not constantly in a state of feeling tormented and uncomfortable. I feel like he can pull off a reasonable degree of confidence now and this pleases me.

new clothes

Haven't done a whole lot with doll stuff, but I've had a bit of a resurgence of inspiration since ordering my Cyril head. (The one that, for those who have seen my wishlist, I have been eagerly anticipating for a while).

So while I transition from eagerly anticipating his release to eagerly awaiting his arrival, I am gearing myself up for getting back into things at least enough to give my potential Iyrilaeth a face up and such.

Anyway, for the most part I had been ignoring the doll world since going back to work, but I have tried to keep up with my sales threads a bit better than I usually do when I drop off the face of DoA for months at a time, and I ended up trading a head I was selling for some custom made clothes.

My trade partner was super stellar and made me a shirt, two jackets, and a vest in trade for one head. I feel like I got an unfairly good deal, but I'm super pleased so I'm not complaining.

The aforementioned shirt is for if Selly ever decides to get a Marshall Lee doll, but the coats and vest were for two of my hardest to clothe dolls, Statik and Avignon.

Here is Statik in his coat and vest. It has been forever since I've even glanced in the direction of my camera, so I'm rusty. I wish my sketchbook didn't have that weird block o' text on the back of it, throwing off its capability to double as a tasteful backdrop.

And here is Avignon, finally wearing something she would actually wear (not that I didn't like the white dress). Now she just needs some pants and shoes.

trying a new method of adding thigh swivel joints

I've been seeing people do this since I first joined DoA back in 2006, but I had never tried it myself. What I'm referring to is the use of PVC pipe to make a swivel joint in the thigh.

Normally I like to make it so the dolls can pull their knees up to their chests when doing a swivel joint, so I sculpt a rounded area with epoxy or cast it in resin (I used to have a small silicone mold to cast these in but I lost it in a move and haven't bothered to make a new one.)

Anyway, this PVC pipe method seemed simpler and easier so I had been meaning to give it a try. I brought small pieces of pipe for this about five years ago and only just today got around to trying this out.

I didn't take pictures because I didn't expect it to be worthwhile to do so. There are other tutorials on this subject and I've done step by step pictures of my other method of doing these before.

What I didn't anticipate was wanting pictures to compare and contrast the difficulty level of doing this vs. what I normally do. As it turns out, I feel like this is actually a lot more difficult (even if it is more straightforward) than my normal method. Getting the holes just the right size was very frustrating and I actually destroyed a dremel bit in the process. (Luckily it was one that I never use and since I never plan to do this sort of mod using this method again, I won't miss it much).

Anyway, Alek can now cross his legs and/or swing them off to the side. Good stuff. I marked off the legs for this mod about the same time as I got the pipe for it, so it's been a long time coming. (At the time this was Deidara's body but I'm not sure he'll be getting it back anytime soon).

Anyway, that was a bit more of a rant but oh well.

silly things

Today I finally broke down and got new Testor's Dullcote. I was just ignoring the issue for a bit because the airbrush was doing fine, but airbrushed sealant scratches off easier and after finally getting Shino a look I'm okay with I didn't want it to scratch off. So I grabbed a handy dandy 40% off coupon and headed to Michael's!

I came home and gave him and Statik a layer of Testor's sealing and re-glossed lips and eyelids. And then I decided to modify a coat for winter! I have a red wool coat (I like red) but it was too small on me before, but now it fits and I wanted to be able to wear it this winter. Was a bit plain though. No embellishments or anything. So I added some goldish sleeve... things. Um... see the picture. I also replaced all the buttons. That you can't really see in the picture.. because my batteries were dying and the camera didn't want to get a clear shot for some reason.

(The subtitle says it's a modification/customization blog focusing primarily on bjds. Not exclusively.)
Now you can see what I meant about the sleeve thingy. It didn't have anything there. Just a plain sleeve ending. I cut out some spare fabric from the inside of the coat where it wouldn't be missed to make the little red ... doodad that holds the gold strap in place. 

And I got a few new pictures of Shino. Not in natural lighting, but I feel like they came out better than yesterday's picture.

 Too bright. But you can see his face up okay.

And too dark. But.. I liked the composition. Sorta. XD I don't even know. I fail at getting an in-between setting on my camera.