Mod project: Cailath, continued

Apologies in advance for the horrible photos in this one. I couldn't get the camera to focus well.

I woke up this morning feeling sick and feared that all of my plans for today were ruined. So I went back to sleep and didn't bother to set an alarm, and when I woke up again I was feeling a lot better but still not 100%. I've tried to take it easy so I didn't end up doing as much as I'd originally planned, but I did do some sanding work on my project head and then gave it a quick face up to see if things were working out the way I wanted.

 Sadly, I felt like they really didn't look enough alike and of course crushing disappointment started to set in.

However, while I felt that the head wasn't working well as Cailath, I was relatively pleased with it overall and decided I should consider other looks for him. (in the above picture he was borrowing Kael's hair since I did not get to mess around with attempting to make him a wig today like I'd planned to initially)

I threw one of my red wigs on him for funsies. I'm keen on redheads so I had difficulty telling if I actually liked this on him or if I just was biased because it was red.

And then I threw a shorter blonde wig on him and have been letting him sit around on the computer desk like that. In looking at the pictures, I think part of the problem is perhaps the shape of his chin and jawline. And of course there is the issue of the way his lower face (in particular around the lips) protrudes by comparison. It was much more intense when I first got the head but still very noticeable (to me) when compared to Aura.

The nose shape also might be part of it.

I am less displeased with things overall as I give it time but I'm not sure I have the patience required to make this work for what I'd intended. I will see how I feel after sleeping on it.

modification project: Cailath

Last night I was screwing around and put Auralion's head on Loren's body on a whim. He may not end up getting it back. Aura was kind of on a temp body (which was a modified Angelsdoll v2, and I didn't much care for it before mods and then I kind of botched the mod job and cared for it even less but had ruined the resale value at that point and have been too lazy to try to modify it to the point where it's reasonably decent looking again.)

Anyway, I much preferred the Popodoll 68cm body I stole from Loren. It felt like a more appropriate size, being a little more slender and less muscular.

_{(Loren's body had been sitting around in black pants for 90 years and had various stains on it so Aura got a bath)}

This got me wanting to do more stuff with Aura again and then I was feeling bad that he doesn't really have anyone to hang out with since most of the rest of my dolls are characters from my story and he's from WoW.

So I decided to actually buckle down and try to work on Cailath for more than five minutes at a time.

Brought out the various grits of sandpaper and my pointy sanding tool (and later on I also got out some dremel bits and used them sans dremel)

I took some side by side pics shortly after I began sanding to get a feel for how much further I had to go and how things were coming along.


Ideally, I would have to take in the entire lower face a bit, but that would be a LOT of work and require a lot of additive sculpting to fix so they will probably have to settle for looking like fraternal twins.

Here is another picture after more sanding. It doesn't look that different since the outside kind of washes out the white and also I didn't want to work with really low grit sandpaper and overdo anything. I then took the head inside for some additive work on the lips.

I ran out of time before work so this was as far as I got. I will need to do a bit more sanding on the nose and mouth and possibly the chin. I was going to work on the eyes a bit but the resin there is very thin so I don't think much can be done. I'll just have to try to use creative blushing to give the illusion that that area is similarly shaped. I will probably leave the eyes more open than Aura's because Cailath is less of a snooty prick.

Really minor updates

It has been so long since I posted here that I don't know what I have posted about and what I haven't. So I'll just kind of start rambling and you can ignore it if it's something that's been posted about.

A loooong time ago, Kael had a Mecha Angel body, but I never really warmed to the 80cm size. So I looked and looked to find a smaller alternative and discovered the Spiritdoll Proud body, which was in the 70cm range and had broader shoulders and a less slender build than many 70cm bodies I'd owned in the past.

So I sold the Mecha Angel body and purchased that. Later on down the line, having less disposable income, I came across a cheap SSDF body and decided to get that and sell my Spiritdoll body. Kael was a bit bobble-headed on the SSDF body but it wasn't so bad I couldn't stand it so I was fine with that for a while. But then a while later when I had more disposable income again, I found a (relatively) cheap Spiritdoll Proud body and decided I preferred that look after all.

So I got that body and gave it back to Kael and used the SSDF body for my IOS Infernale head.

But then recently I got a damaged Iplehouse Arvid head on impulse (he's missing most of one ear and has a chipped eye). I've wanted an Arvid for a while but never really had a set idea of what I'd do with him, so he kind of sat around being neglected because I didn't have any brilliant plans for him. I've kind of hit that point where I'm fairly content with my collection and there are only a few very specific things I can think of that I want.

So for whatever reason, I tried Kael's wig on the Arvid head and decided that he probably better fits my mental image of Kael than Soom's Vega did anyway (as that was more of an "I already have this doll so let me see if I can't make it look like this character I want to create" type deal). So I gave the Spiritdoll body to my IOS Infernale and I'm much happier with the proportions.

Sadly, my camera refuses to capture this and his head ends up looking huge.

I also decided to give Esyrlon a new face up a few months ago. I never posted it because I wasn't happy with it. I tried to give him lighter eyebrows because he has white hair and I felt like it made more sense, but I felt like his face just looked very washed out. I probably just need more practice with this sort of thing but anyway... after months of not even wanting to look at him, I went in an darkened his eyebrows and was instantly much happier with him.

Still might redo the whole thing at some point but for now I'm not unhappy enough to bother with it. Esyrlon is spoiled anyway and gets more frequent face ups than anyone else.

Another project I've been very slowly working on is modding a head to be a twin for my Nabarro Har, Auralion. I got a head from a fairly new company called Panda Workshop a while back and it sat in the head closet for a long time. I feel like the overall structure is similar enough to Har that it could be modded to look at least fairly similar to him. So that's been sort of an ongoing project. When I have more free time I will probably take shots of both heads from different angles to get a better handle on what would need to be added or subtracted to get the most similarity.

The head is in a more WS color because that was all the company offered, so I will probably see if I can't dye it a more pinkish or even light tan color since Aura is supposed to be the less healthy looking twin. I'd consider just switching which head portrayed which twin, but as Aura is my favorite, he gets the head that I know is functional and that I paid a small fortune for.