change of plans (body mods and face up practice)

Everything was settled. I was planning to work on Batu's clothes today since I wasn't working.

Then last night I ended up looking at this Impldoll body I have and the proportions have always felt a bit off to me. It could just be the fact that it's more stylized so it doesn't look like it actually has hip bones. I don't know.

Anyway, somehow when I got home I ended up deciding to mod the body's torso shorter before I did anything else.

I decided to be slightly more 'scientific'(??) about it than usual since I wasn't entirely happy with how my last torso shortening turned out. So I marked off a few spots 1cm apart and then took a picture.

The body is too small for the head but I'm not really in a position to buy another one at the moment so it's just gonna have to do. Anyway I then took the picture into photoshop and put the upper part on a separate layer from the lower part and started to experiment with where I thought it looked best. Based on that, I was going to cut the torso 2cm above my chosen line and then round it out.

I ended up needing half markings because my favorite position was between two of my numbers. So I marked in half centimeters after the photoshop bit and figured out where I needed to cut. Then it was off to the great outdoors to saw away at things and bury myself in resin dust. The respirator kept everything out of my lungs but protective eye wear is a little less good at that since resin dust can sneak in through the ventilation holes.

I washed off all the pieces to get rid of all the dust and set them out to dry in the bathroom. I seldom bother to actually smooth out things like this because they're not going to be visible under any reasonable circumstance. Now that I know the joint functions, it would be something I would consider, but I wasn't keen on going to that much trouble if I might have to just dremel it some more in a few minutes.

I tested it with the upper body before restringing just to be sure it fit but sometimes joints seem fine and then you string the body and they're completely non-functional.

Here is the finished product. Not exactly like the mock up but pretty close and I am happier with it than before. I was going to attempt to make her into a character from my main story so she'd fit in better with everyone else, but I have had it in my head since I first got her that I wanted to make her into another character of mine, Selenor, whose name is based on my mis-hearing of the name Celaeno as a child, and who is also (not-so-coincidentally) a harpy.

Then I was going to really quickly give Andael and Statik new face ups and somehow that turned into airbrushing practice. Andael's face was coming along fairly well, and then I turned around and accidentally knocked his head off the table and it landed in a pile of charcoal and cement. Fun.

One of his elf ear mods came off (they're really crummy hastily applied ones anyway so it wasn't a huge loss and I just super glued it back on) and he got a small chip in his nose, but otherwise the only damage was to his face up. Often, when I like how something is coming along and it gets ruined, my first instinct is to try to salvage it rather than just start over even if I know that won't work.

But I tried to anyway and his face ended up way too dark as a result. I was about to start practicing on Statik but then Selly got home and we went to go see Captain America and I lose the light so I decided to finish him up with pastels since that was my plan in the beginning anyway. There are plenty of others who need new face ups who can be test subjects and Andael will need a redo at some point because he's far too dark for his body now.

But here they are:

Statik looks insanely pale next to Andael but I'm happier with his new look than I was with my older attempt at doing his face. I miss Andael's freckles. He wasn't even supposed to have them before. I just re-did the eyebrows from when his head was originally intended to be Aleksandr, but I like them so much I might just make them canon. But that will have to wait until I redo his face and make it less crazy over-colored. I actually don't mind the color but it just looks too out of place next to his body.

Tomorrow work is closed for Easter so I am hoping to actually get some clothing work done. Batu is theoretically first priority but I have given up on making myself any promises because sometimes inspiration just drags me off in another direction. I also have some ideas for clothes for my potential Selenor that I am tentatively excited about.

And of course Deidara needs something resembling proper clothes (thought I am fairly certain I still have his super simple flashback outfit lying around in the clothing drawer something) and my Istthraen also needs clothes. I'm really bad at designing skimpy clothes for guys though so that is proving challenging.