Esky's new goggles

Before I 're-shelled' Esky, he had goggles. But they didn't fit right on his new head. They were big enough, but the proportions were different and they looked wonky on the new one.

Here is a crappy picture of old Esky with the old goggles, just for reference. (In the middle)

Anyway, I"ve been saving a sheet of plastic for ages to try and make new ones for new Esky, so I cut out a rectangle and wrapped it around his head and drew in the shape I wanted. Then I attached it to spare elastic from a pair of safety goggles. Here is Esky modeling the goggles in their beginning stages.

And here is how they look when they are not on his head.

The airbrush doesn't want to stick to them very well, so I've been doing it in very thin layers and letting each one dry before I do another. This is how the goggles look after four layers. This may be the last one I do, depending on how it turns out when dry.

And the completed goggles on Esky's face. Someday I may go in and add some accent dealies around the edges but for now this will work!

Aeri's new dress and pictures of Esky and Shino

Selly and I agreed that the shiny fabric at the bottom of Aeri's dress wasn't really meshing with the rest of the ensemble since it was so white up top, so I removed the lower part of the skirt and have tried another design that Selly liked.

I feel like perhaps the top part's ruffles go too far down for this to mesh perfectly, but I will see what Selly thinks.

Some pictures of Aeri that show off the bottom of the dress.

And just a random shot of her from the shoot that I liked.

Also was screwing around with watermark-esque things in photoshop just for fun and to throw them on images to be obnoxious and so that in the extremely unlikely even that someone finds the images floating around the net, people can figure out where they came from. /shrug

 Few random shots of Esky in natural, slightly overpowering, lighting.

And a few pictures of Shino after I gave his face the same magic erasering that I gave Esky's. So now they both have minimal spots with weird discoloration and I can stand to look at them in places with decent lighting.

For Shino's pictures I switched the camera into manual so that I could stop it from taking in so much light and washing him out. I probably should have re-shot Esky after figuring out a good setting, but I didn't. Because I'm dumb.

more learning experiences

So I'm fine with half-assing things when I think no one else but me has to see it. It's one of the reasons I was willing to work at improving my face up skills rather than commissioning people.

Anyway, my last post showcased (or more like tried not to showcase) my terrible face up skills after a dye job. And Selly came home and examined one of those face ups. As always, Selly is very polite about these things and never says anything bad, but I felt stupid having someone see my work in person where a camera can't hide the flaws. XD

So I hastily wiped Esky's face, scolding myself for my stupidity the whole time. And then I realized something:

scrubbing off the face up with the magic eraser was removing the uneven areas in the dye job.

I decided this required an experiment with trying the face up again without airbrushing first and, sure enough, it worked! There is only one spot on the side of Esky's nose where it's messed up, and it's not bad enough that I'd be worried if anyone saw it.

Tomorrow (or sometime) I may go in and try to fix Shino with said magic eraser.

 Picture of the new face up. Which I'm not entirely pleased with, but at least it doesn't have silly explosion spots.

face ups after dyeing: a learning experience

Today I came home from an outing and gave Shino and Esky face ups. Sadly, this only highlighted the uneven areas in the dye job and they now look like they've been in an action movie with lots of explosions (which, of course, neither of them would look at).

Next time I do this I will use the airbrush to even out the color first, but for now I am too tired to worry about that. And if I ignore the color inconsistencies I'm pretty happy with them overall. Esky looks a bit more yellow than tan in some lights (possibly because the lighting in my room is super yellow anyway) but he and Shino look much more like the way I imagine them in my head.

 A shot of Esky (the best one I was able to get, sadly. And it's hard to tell he's any darker than he was before).

 And a couple shots of Shino. I tried natural lighting for both of them, but the weird coloration was showing up too well out there. It might not have photographed as well, but it bugged me so I took them back to my room where I don't notice it as much.

Crappiest photos ever, but I do not care at this moment.And in the future if anyone gets dyed, I will not be using straight up tan. Perhaps at some point I will re-dye Esky so he's less yellowy, but again... too lazy at this moment. I'll give it more time to see if it grows on me.

going crazy with dye

I decided it was finally time to mod Esky's nose today. I didn't do it initially because when he first arrived I just wanted to give him a face up and make sure he would work right for Esky (because on several occasions I've gone straight to work on modding, only to later realize that the mold wouldn't work for the character anyway).

So since he's worked well as Esky for a few months now, I went ahead and changed the shape of his nose and chin a bit and ended up having to wipe his face up.

When I dyed Malesar, the only thing keeping me from just throwing Esky and Shino in the pot right after him (because I was having so much fun with dyeing) was that they both had face ups and I was feeling too lazy to wipe them.

But since I had to wipe Esky's anyway today, I figured I'd just go ahead and dye him. And then I figured I might as well wipe Shino's face as well and get him done right after.

I started with just straight up Rit dye in tan for Esky.

Here you can see his head and some body parts that have already been dyed next to his torso which has not yet been dyed.

After Esky was all done, I added a bit of royal blue and dark brown to the mix to change up the color some, because I didn't want them to be the same color.

Here you can see half of Shino's limbs are dyed and half aren't. j

And here's the two of them next to each other, color corrected to the best of my ability at this late hour. I decided to restring Esky tighter and with thicker elastic, and that proved a bit exhausting (especially given that I was already pretty tired after working on this for three hours).

Anyway, tomorrow they will both get new face ups and be all complete and properly colored!

There are some random spots on Esky that came out oddly, but they mostly won't be visible when he's clothed. Shino's color came out incredibly even, in my opinion. It's almost eerie. It looks like he was cast that way. Perhaps that means I'm just getting better at this dyeing business (neither of them has mismatched arms to body like Malesar) so it's too bad I don't think anyone else needs a dye job. XD

Side note: after doing these two, I'm incredibly surprised that I got Malesar's body to match his head as well as I did, considering I had no idea what I was doing and it was my first attempt. Neither Esky nor Shino came anywhere close to matching my Phonolus head. Must be some color that was in the Pearl Grey that helped that work out. Not that I'm complaining! I'm glad Malesar matches and all my tan dudes are unique shades.

Aeri's dress, nearly completed

I've been working on a dress for Aeri, Selly's Zaoll Luv.  So as not to overwhelm myself or cause myself to rush into error like I usually do, I've been taking it slow and doing it in segments over the course of a few days.

Here is a shot of it from front and back (ish).

A flash shot to s how how shimmery the thing appears in person.

 

And a random picture of Aeri sitting amid a zillion white fabrics. 

New eyes

When I modded Statik's eyes smaller, I forgot to take eye size into account and ended up not having anything in the right size/color combo. So I got him some new eyes that are 12mm with a smaller iris.

So here he is sitting on my desk with his new eyes. It's going to take some adjusting to because by the time these arrived I had gotten pretty used to the other ones. But they are definitely the right color and he has white parts in his eyes again. XD (could barely see those with the other ones).

Time to go work on Aeri's dress some more and see if I can't figure out how to do the skirts.

doll projects when the internet is out

Our ISP went bankrupt and left us internetless with absolutely no warning. Was quite frustrating as I am a bit of an internet addict, but I chose to make the best of the situation and find things to do that didn't require the internet. Yesterday Selly and I went fabric shopping for her Zaoll Luv, Aeri, who I am going to make a dress for.

An ambitious project as I have never made a dress before! But Selly seemed relatively pleased with the progress so far, so that made me happy.

Selly has already posted some pictures of it on her blog, but since it's a project I'm working on it belongs here too.

Since Statik is also a Zaoll Luv (albeit a modded one) I wanted to get a shot of the two of them together! They are unicorn twins. :D

This is the only picture I got of another modding project I did. I gave Doppelganger swivel joints in his thighs.

more head mods

I got my hands on an Iplehouse Jessica head a while back with the intention of using it to fill the void left in my heart by my inability to get my hands on a Nabarro Har. Sadly, in person it really didn't work as a substitute. And this is why you don't buy heads based on one person's pictures.

I was going to sell it, but then as I was putting Iplehouse's Bianca on my wishlist I decided to do what I usually do and ruin the resale value of my items by modding them to death. So I smoothed down the very sharp brow line and the nose and reshaped the lips and cheeks a bit.

 I believe I will use the head as my Aleksandr. I do not have the right eye color for him yet so he's using some random ones I have in the eye jar. They're a bit big but kinda cute in person. His hair is also better looking in person. He looks pretty effeminate but in a different way than the head originally did, so I think it works for him. He's supposed to be like 15 or so.

As usual, Deidara's body is stolen for newbies. Poor Dei is in an eternal state of being modded since I started on him before I knew what I was doing. I could probably finish his mods now but I'm less motivated than I was at the time that I started them, so he keeps getting shoved to the back burner.

On the plus side, Shino will finally have someone to hang out with. Even if it isn't someone he's overly close to, at least they're on the same side.

skull mask part 2

It took pretty much the rest of the day, but I finished the paper mache part of the mask. This thing does not photograph well from the front. And the plastic over his face was a bit too loose so the mask didn't mold exactly to his face, but it's pretty close.

After several coats it was starting to hold the correct shape on its own so I was able to do the underside.

And once that dried I was able to remove the plastic and put the mask and his hair back on. It ends up looking really strange from the front, but I rather like it in profile.

It doesn't really 'need' paint because I used a kind of off white tissue paper for the paper mache part (courtesy of one of Selly's Sephora purchases I believe). But I may go in and add some brownish accents or something to make it look more aged and dirty.

At some point Scileraen will get his actual clothes. I've been putting that off for ages though. But at least now he has one more accessory.

skull mask

I write (and occasionally draw) Scileraen wearing a mask over the lower half of his face that is part of a dragon skull. A few weeks ago I found something I thought I could use to help me construct something like this.

It was something like the above. Just plastic thing in the shape of a longhorn skull. Mine was less detailed but I can't find a picture of it and I didn't take any before cutting it up.

But here is the shape I was left with after cutting it so that it would fit over his face and be somewhat proportional to his head.

Here is me testing the fit against his face before I start my project.

Because I want to make sure it molds properly to his face, I want it to be on him when I do this. At least initially. So I've covered his face in plastic to keep it safe.

And then I secured the mask on his face and created a smock out of more plastic so that it wouldn't drip all over his body. When my brother was in high school they had a venetian mask themed dance and I made him one out of a basic mask form, adding embellishments with cardboard and then paper mache-ing the whole thing. So I figured I'd try something similar with this because I want it to be more matte and to hold its shape somewhat.

Here it is after a couple layers of paper mache.

And from the side to give a better idea of proportion since it ends up looking quite a bit bigger from the front.

Now I'm waiting for this to dry so that I can work on it more.

crown

I made Esyrlon a pseudo-crown dealy a while back and decided Theorin needed one as well, at least for use some of the time.

The design is very simple, but probably a little too um... elegant(?) to go with the rest of his ensemble.

Thinking it possibly might work better if the thing didn't stick up so high. I have ideas in my head that would work for this thing and make it mesh with the outfit better but they would be rather challenging to pull off with materials I have readily available.

Anyway, if this doesn't work out for Theorin I can modify it and give it to someone else for something.

structural modifcation (revisited)

I tend to have this problem where after I get a new doll that I am absolutely in love with, I start finding flaws in the others for a bit. This is usually a pretty brief stage where I just can't see anything wrong with the newbie and and think they're absolutely perfect and end up being like a horrible parent who tells all their other kids to be like the 'perfect' one.

Well, somehow during this phase I ended up doing a wig-swap with Scileraen and Malesar. I just never seem to be able to make myself 100% happy with Scileraen, so this was probably a terrible idea.

But anyway, I ended up finding Scileraen lacking  by comparison, and it didn't help that he's always been not-quite-perfect for his character. The main thing that has stopped me from just finding a different head is that I chopped up his ears to mod on the spiky fin ears from the Vega Last Song set. And getting those pieces apart would be enough of a pain as it is without also worrying about how unsightly his ears are underneath that.

So in a moment of impulsive insanity, two nights ago I started going to town on Scileraen's face with the 60 grit sandpaper.

Here you can see the beginnings of said sanding. Only the left side has been started at this point.

Then I skipped ahead to an almost completed shot. I sanded down the cheeks and under the eyes some and over the eyes/near the nose.

I gave it a quick face up, trying to imitate the old one, and shoved it back on the body. I absolutely hated it and wished I hadn't touched it in the first place. (oddly enough, I don't get that feeling from the picture, but he always photographs better than he looks to me in real life. Looking at photos, I can never see what it is I'm not happy with).

So, I wiped his lips, having decided they were the problem, and filled in the little indent in his lower lip (which never particularly appealed to me as I felt it made his lips look a little too full and pillowy. I also took this opportunity to make him frown more.

I then let the epoxy cure overnight and when I woke up I just painted on some liquitex matte medium and then blushed the lips and glossed them.

I was still unhappy and prepared to just chuck the head off the balcony along with myself, but then I put it back on the body and gave him his wig and suddenly felt so much better about the whole thing.
Scileraen is supposed to be grouchy so the smiley lip corners never quite worked for me. (A lot of things didn't, obviously).

When I'm less fed up with this project I will go back in and do a bit of sanding and airbrushing to make sure the lips mesh with the face better (since one can still see where the mods end, because it was a lot harder to match tan with epoxy tinting.

pants and jewelry

Today I made Malesar some pants and a necklace dealy. Elaria has this necklace dealy that's um... got these hanging doodads in various lengths. And since Esyrlon and Theorin have somewhat matching neck gear, I thought it might be nice if Malesar's somewhat matched Elaria's.

I initially just had the dangly doodads around his neck, but it just didn't look as interesting as I wanted it to. (His dangly doodads are just plain metal, whereas Elaria's have little red gem dealies to spice them up). So I disassembled two other jewelry items to create a slightly more elaborate necklace with the dangly doodads.

My descriptive skills are lacking, but here is a picture.

And a picture to show that he is indeed wearing pants. I don't know what I want to dress him in yet so I just followed a really quick and easy tutorial for making pants with an elastic waistband. So now he has some pants so he doesn't have to run around naked.

In natural lighting the difference in parts from my dye job is more apparent. In my room it's hardly noticeable. It doesn't bother me. The arms match the head better than the torso, but I like the torso color better. XD So... I have no regrets on that front.

As usual, still slightly waffling on my character choice. In an ideal world my Malesar would be grey, and while I've pointed out the problems with this actually coming to pass, I'm not sure if I want to settle. So I am pondering a bit about what other character this guy could potentially be if I decide to hold out for my ideal Malesar.