wig fixing and a picture of Orkas

I finally managed to get Elaria's wig into a tolerable state of existence. No photos yet because it's still drying after the boiling water treatment I gave it. I managed to pour boiling water straight onto my hand multiple times and give them lesser burns a few other times. And one could definitely make the argument that it wasn't worth it since I will likely replace this wig anyway since I don't hate it now but I don't love it either.

It's possible once it dries I'll like it better. I guess we'll see.

In other news, I've become very attached to my Vivien head/potential Orkas. I'm just not sure it's right for him.. but I really really want it to be. I'm going to try getting the right eyes (purple without the really bright centers) and see if that helps. If not, I will probably attempt a different wig possible. And if all else fails I will attempt to make the actual open eyed version of the head work.

It's also possible he just looks too healthy for Orkas. Between the homme skin and the more rounded features, he's just not capturing crazed telepath as well as I want him to. His eyes are uneven so maybe when/if I get around to fixing that I'll redo his face up with more blues and blush in the hollows of his cheeks more and see if that helps. Possibly increase the bags under his eyes too. Or something. I really don't know.

Could just be that since his last face was so intensely frowny, anything will seem pleasant by comparison. I can't really put my finger on what I didn't like about his previous head. I just have difficulties with making Iplehouse dolls work in person. Alek is probably the only exception to that. Though I do miss my Akando from time to time...

It might also be the lower lip... bit more full than I imagine Orkas' would be. But for some reason I'm terrified of modding the head further? Even though I already did crazy things to open the eyes??? I'm not actually sure what is stopping me. I'm generally not afraid of modding (Cailath's head was limited to 10 I think and I modded it beyond recognition because I'm a bad person...) but for some reason with a head I've wanted for so long, it just feels like I shouldn't. That whole obligation to make it work bit I guess. I don't know.

attempted photoshoot

I've been hanging out in the tumblr bjd community more because I tend to be very timid about posting on DoA. I'm still very timid about posting on tumblr... but anyway. I saw a few people doing this "how has your photography improved?" meme and thought it might be kind of neat to try to recreate an oooold photo to do a comparison.

I'm inclined to say that the most drastic improvement is in my ability to do face ups and style wigs. XD My photography is still 90% fumbling around attempting to make a point and click camera that is marginally better than a phone camera work. I saw an interesting photo tutorial on tumblr about using redirected flash to take decent pictures in poorly lit areas but it comes out very yellowy every time and my camera only has a few different settings for white balance, none of which really help.

I did attempt to do a proper photoshoot that way because I went ahead and drew in Orkas' scar last night and I think it helps. Attempted to also get proper photos of Avignon and Shinozaki and ended up deciding I hate Shino's new face up.

Avignon and Aura got some reasonably nice (if very 80s textbook) photos out of the deal. I have a fetish for garlands and may have put like 5 of them in as a backdrop for these photos.

face up: Shinozaki

Orkas's new head is growing on me. Of course, after I manage to order the open eyed version. I guess I'll just have to see how things go.

The humidity here has been awful. It's been raining on and off for over a week now. Horrible weather for face ups. But of course this is the time that I finally feel motivated to do them. Go figure.

Today's victim was Shinozaki. He didn't have the worst face up out of the bunch, but it was one I just wasn't happy with at all despite there being nothing really wrong with it.

His eyebrows aren't done yet. I'm really unsteady with paintbrushes so I tend to just use colored pencils for that sort of thing, and with the humidity being like it is, it takes a while for the sealant to dry enough that I can add lines to them without scratching it off.

So those will exist later. For now, this is what he looks like:

I think I put the eyebrows too high up. I have this tendency to do that because I want to put them along the brow bone. I guess technically eyebrows start beneath that point but it's really hard to remember that every time I'm trying to shade them in.

He looks a lot more pleasant than he probably should. But I guess this could pass for his neutral face. It was stupid windy out so his hair wouldn't cooperate either.

In case you didn't believe me about the wind. Photographic evidence.

Overall, I like it better than I liked his old face up. It's a bit dirty in spots because dust magically settles after I have carefully checked for it before spraying... sometimes I can get the little dust bunnies out but sometimes when I try to it just scratches off the face up and ruins everything. So I'm just going to live with it. It's not horribly visible indoors.

face ups: Orkas and Avignon

EDIT: I could just about punch myself in the face. I went to go check the Elfdoll website and they'd put a normal skin Vivien head up for sale. I guess someone must have cancelled or not paid or something. If I had just been patient I could have saved myself all of this trouble! 

I went ahead and bought it anyway. Seeing the head in person may help me figure out if I've done the eye mods correctly since it's hard to figure out based on photos.

I'm still not 100% sure this head will work the way I want it to or even that I like it enough to use for someone else if it doesn't work for Orkas... but here's a progress update anyway.

Last night I finished sanding epoxy and prepping the head for its first face up. I had this really stupid idea that I should wait until after the face up and see if I liked it before carving in eyelids. I don't even begin to know what I was thinking. Under what circumstances would not having eyelids be beneficial? I don't know.

So I gave it a face up. Hated it. My best friend pointed out that the eyelid area (where they SHOULD have been) needed some color or he needed eyelashes or something. So I wiped the head and left it alone for the night. Then today I went and carved in eyelids and decided to do attempt #2.

I can't decide if I just hate this thing because I did the mods poorly. Or because the wig just isn't doing it for me (I tried on a couple other wigs and liked it a lot better...). Or if it's the eyes I constructed for it (I say constructed because I didn't make the irises. I just assembled a base for them). The eyes are very bright. But they were what I had around that would work because regular 12mm eyes had irises that took up almost the whole eye socket.

He's a bit cross eyed here. It's hard to position his eyes properly due to the uneven eye sockets. I still haven't figured out how to fix that without potentially damaging something. I have since fixed the eyes a bit and can stand to look at him a little more. I don't like what I did with the colors on his face up. But it's better than last night. Last night was just embarrassing.

I went ahead and re-did Avignon's face up because I really want to like her and I've just struggled so much with managing to make her look like her character and look good at the same time. I tried on the first wig I bought for her after redoing her face up and didn't immediately hate it so that's something.

I am considering getting her a mohair wig or something because I just can't find a fiber wig that I'm happy with for her. It's just really hard to find the right color in any kind of wig though. I want something sort of like what she's wearing here but with slightly more red undertones. It kind of photographs like the color I want but in real life it's a more dull brown.

It's been a rather frustrating last few days on the doll front. Still haven't managed to fix Elaria's hair. I'm not sure this wig is even worth the trouble.

Mods going as expected

Which is to say, I want to punch myself in the mouth repeatedly and throw the head into oncoming traffic.

I got the dremel bit all properly attached to my dremel and drilled some holes through the area of the eyes I'd already carved out so that I could tell when I was getting close and (hopefully) not destroy the eyelids.

I started in on making the eyewells deeper, and very quickly realized I had to go a lot further than I'd thought. This is one of those cases where my ignorance made me brave enough (or stupid enough) to attempt something that I never would have if I had any idea of what I was getting into.

I kept at it very timidly until I got to about this point and figured I should stop using the dremel and do it by hand. That ended up being a very slow process and I wasn't really getting anywhere, so I figured it couldn't hurt to do just a little bit more dremel work.

Spoiler alert: this is where things start to go horribly wrong.

I was going along slowly, being very careful not to just obliterate the eyelids and leave a 12mm hole in the head, when suddenly the lower lids just start moving. My immediate thought was that I'd gone too far and they were just going to fall out, but I quickly realized that the heat of the dremel was just making them soft. So I immediately stopped, held the eyelid in place for a few seconds while it cooled, and all seemed okay. So I moved on to the next eye and did the same thing. Only on that eye, I had come in at a slightly different angle, so instead of just making the eyelid soft, one of them actually cracked.

It's not actually terribly easy to see in the photo but the right eye has a crack near the tear duct. I have glued it together but I think I will also reinforce behind it with epoxy putty.

With the eyewells deep enough for proper eye opening, I figured I'd go ahead and get started on that. I know from experience that I should not attempt to do eye openings with just an x-acto knife. I know this. I was telling myself not to do that even as I was doing it. But I couldn't stop myself. I kept thinking "it'll be so much quicker and I'll just do it until I get to my guidelines (which I had to re-draw) and then I'll switch to sanding". Well, I reached my guidelines and the eyes weren't quite even so I figured it wouldn't hurt to just use the knife a little more to even them out. Then I could sand.

This is what I ended up with. On the one hand, I did manage to open the eyes. On the other hand... the right eye is an abomination. The left it actually just about what I want so at least there is that. I will go in with the epoxy and try to fix the right eye and then attempt to carve in some eyelids. After that, a lot will depend on if I can get the face up right.

Another problem with the right eye is that due to the poor angling of the dremel, eyes don't sit quite right in the socket. Some more work will probably have to be done to remedy that. They do work well in the left though! How I wish Orkas was a pirate right about now so I could give him an eye patch and be done with it!

a dremel bit arrives!

It is here! I am now equipped to destroy a perfectly good sleeping head!

Here it is next to a 12mm eye. I think it will work just fine for what I am planning.!

arrrrrghhhhh

I was messing around with Elaria's wig last night and decided I wanted to try to re-style just one tiny part of it, and I thought maybe it was small enough to do it on an ultra low setting with the flat iron (because on occasion that works out okay) but it made the ends all frizzy, so I had to break out the boiling water. And I decided to just dip the one part to get rid of the frizz because pouring it over it wasn't working....

And then half the wig fell in the water and so the whole front part is awful now and I am having such a hard time trying to fix it and it's horrible and frustrating and I'm tempted to just get her a new wig because it was a dumb cheap one anyway... but uuugh. Just so annoyed at the whole situation.

eye mods

So, I think I mentioned last time that I was getting an Elfdoll Vivien head to attempt to replace Orkas' current head because it just wasn't quite doing it for me.

It arrived today and it's a sleeping one because I pretty much was willing to take whatever I could get my hands on. I guess if I was more patient I could wait until everyone gets theirs from the discontinuation sale and see if anyone is selling them but then that's kind of a crap shoot because if I don't get in on it then I could be out of luck.

I read somewhere ages ago that the eyewells weren't fully formed on the reminisce heads but I didn't know how to properly phrase the question to the seller and the pictures they provided made it look like the eyewells were properly existent. (Just so we're clear, they didn't try to mislead me at all. They were very helpful and took pictures for me and answered all my questions. I just didn't fully specify my intent when asking about the eyewells.)

So anyway, the head arrived and it does have some degree of eyewells but they don't reach all the way to the eyes, making it impossible to just perform a normal eye opening mod. I will have to bevel or carve the area to make them suitable for eyes.

I seriously considered just leaving it as-is and trying to get an open eyed version of the head as well and just using both and having this one be sleepy Orkas? Of course this seemed like a large financial investment for a head I'm not 100% sure will even work for Orkas. I WANT it to work for him. And if I could be guaranteed that it would I might go that route but I would probably just prefer one head over the other or get them both bodies. It would be dumb and expensive.

As you can see in the above picture, I decided against this plan. I started by marking the general shape I wanted, then I used a bead reamer to make a hold in the eye above the lower lid (because I want to leave that alone) and then I used some wood carving tools to start carving the area a bit.

I got both eyes carved in a little bit. I didn't go all the way up to my guidelines because my plan is to carve proper eyewells before I do that. I think the area in front is carved deep enough that I'll be able to tell when the eyewells are deep enough and be able to continue on my way. I misplaced the eye beveling tool I got ages ago when attempting to sculpt a head from scratch so I had to purchase a new one. Luckily I was able to find a dremel bit in what I think should be the right size for like a buck. Now to not-so-patiently await its arrival. If, in the interim, I find something else that might work I will not have to feel too guilty since said dremel bit was very cheap.

What I do feel guilty about is ruining a perfectly good sleeping head when they are potentially being discontinued. But I imagine I'll get over it if this works out okay.

contemplating some things and random photos

I've been giving a lot of thought to my collection and what I want to keep around and what I want in the future. I have a lot of dolls on my wishlist, but only a few of them are actual dolls I plan to get. The rest are pretty much just "if I win the lottery I am getting all of these".

As always happens when I either get a new doll I love or finally get someone set up the way I want them to be, I sort of re-evaluate what it is I'm doing and why I have certain dolls. There are some I'm just not happy with as-is. There are some I almost feel obligated to keep for either sentimental reasons or because I really want to have their character 'shelled'.

The first thing that really jumped out at me was Orkas. His head works but it's not perfect. I mean. It technically has everything I want but it doesn't elicit the response I want it to.It could be that he needs more mod work or a new face up or something, but I decided to go ahead and get an Elfdoll Vivien head because that was what I initially was considering before I decided to mod the head to have a similar expression sort of.

Another recurring problem doll is Avignon. She definitely needs a new face up. And a proper wig. I thought about trying to make the current one work by retconning the story she's from but that's just not working for me because it goes against my mental image of her. So I need to find something in a style that at least works a little bit.  Stupidly, my argument against selling her is that she has custom made clothing. Of course, the other issue is actually getting her to sell. I tried once and no one was interested after something like four months of thread bumping.

Shinozaki probably just needs a new face up. So I'm not too worried there.

I'll probably finally break down and get Andael a longer wig if I can. I just always pictured him with like chin length hair and his barely reaches his eyebrows in the front.

Defliel needs a new face up and I think I'll be fine with him.

And I think if I can get Orkas fixed I won't have any problems with Eskilys or Id. But I've always posed and photographed the three of them together a lot so it's hard to enjoy the other two as much when Orkas isn't working.

I'm still on the fence about my Souldoll Chiron head. Right now it's airbrushed grey and on my Impldoll Triton body. It's so smirky in person. I'm not sure if that works for what I want to do and then I was waffling on potentially using him for Malesar or for the Psiioniic. And really I just have no idea what I want to do with him but I'm not sure if I want to sell him or not.

I have a Dollstown Seola7 head that's been sitting in my doll clothing drawer for ages now. I had almost forgotten about it ever since Statik stole the Thaasa body he was on. I wish the head was smaller so I could get an MSD body for it or something, but it's as large as my SDs (I originally had the larger Seola head but it was just too big). I just don't know if I'll ever get another body for him and he always felt so out of place with everyone else but I got the head out for potential sales photos and he's so cute... ARRGH. >_O

I'm relatively happy with everything else. If I do sell my Seola7 head I think I will use one of my Unoa face plates to remake his character in a smaller size. Once I can actually buy a body that will hybrid properly with them that is.

I kind of like that idea actually. One of the reasons I've been less than motivated to get another body is because I'm not sure what I'd do with them if I did. I'm not as heavily into Air Gear as I was at the time so making them into Akito/Agito again feels like a big expense. And Statik was the second character I used my L-bi head for and he's grown up into a Zaoll boy now, so that's also not an option. So having a specific character is actually good. I'll give it more thought before deciding to sell my Seola head.

Oh yeah. And I got a picture of the Rabi head that came with the body I got for baby Sollux.

baby Sollux gets a body

I drew this picture a while back of Sollux and Eridan (two characters from Homestuck, for those who are wondering) when they were little, and my best friend said we should get doll versions of them as little kids. So I set out to find good molds for them and we both chose ones we liked.

And then we stopped RPing homestuck and sort of stopped having this burning need to dollify them, but not before I acquired the head I wanted for Sollux. For the past ... almost year(?) it has sat in the head cabinet without a body because I needed to get one in grey skin and it just didn't feel like a priority anymore but I figured one day I would come back to it.

Well that day came last week. Someone was selling a grey Fallindoll Rabi on Ebay and I decided to get it to see if I could hybrid it with my Soom Lami head.

Yesterday, the body arrived and the rabbit head it came with was actually surprisingly adorable so I might hold onto it for something else. The neck was a lot thicker than the little Soom guys' necks are, so I had to widen the opening with wood carving tools. It fits pretty well now. Not perfect but not bad.

Then I set about airbrushing the head grey. It took like 10 coats or something to cover up all the pink, but I think it matches the body well now. I let the paint dry overnight so that it wouldn't impede face up attempts. It still kind of did because it dried thicker or more splotchy in some spots so I wasn't working with a very even surface, but I didn't feel like it needed too much detail (and if I change my mind later I can go back and try to fix it with acrylic paints or something).

The body is a little more shiny than I am used to, but it poses really well and seems quite sturdy. Also, he has little rabbit hands and feet, but I can live with that. Might one day replace them with hands from a company that actually does grey skin but that's not a huge priority and would probably cost me almost as much as the whole body did. XD This was kind of an exercise in extreme frugality.

But without further ado, here he is. His eyes aren't the right color in real life but I photoshopped them to look the way they're supposed to eventually. I was potentially going to use a different wig for him, but this was an old one that one of my unoa boys used and I just ended up trimming it to the right length.

He will also need proper clothes but he dresses pretty simply so I don't see that being a huge issue. Just need a black t-shirt and some dark grey pants.

Id's new wig

A basquillion years ago, I drew the only picture of Id I've ever drawn, and I gave him this sort of bowl cut type deal or something. I don't know. I didn't put much thought into it, but for some reason I have adhered to it fairly strictly for years.

Today I finally decided that I wasn't entirely pleased with this arrangement, so I started grabbing other wigs in the orange-red range out of the closet and trying them on Id's head. I didn't really worry about them being the right size since I'm fairly confident in my ability to mangle a wig.

One of Orkas' old wigs looked pretty good on him so I decided to take it in some to fit Id's head. Just about the instant I got started, the aforementioned confidence disappeared. Orkas has always had fur wigs so it wasn't anything super challenging, but I was still a little worried I'd get the shape wrong and ruin everything.

It's a bit wonky at the top but otherwise works well.

Now if only I could figure out how to work eye positioning in dolls his size. It probably doesn't help that I opened his eyes myself and they aren't quite even.

back from A-kon

I mentioned a while back that I put Aura on my Popodoll 68cm body and was much more pleased with that match than when he was on the Angelsdoll body I had him on before. Well, I gave it more time and decided that despite the fact that I have at least once in the past drawn him looking a little more muscular, this didn't really mesh with my mental image of him. It was more based on influence from in-game images of Blood Elves.

Or rather... I didn't decide this. I was browsing DoA and saw a thread asking people what they thought about the more muscular trend with dolls these days, and for the most part that doesn't bug me at all, but there are definitely certain characters I wish I could get less muscular bodies for. For example, I always felt that even the relatively slender Domuya bodies were too well-defined for Lyric. If I was sure it would not make him bobble-headed, I would get him a Doll Chateau body, but I'm a little concerned the 60cm body would be too small for his Soom head. More research may be in order.

But I'm getting off topic. Aura, Andael, Statik, Esyrlon, and Doppelganger also have more slender builds (of the non-muscular variety). Doppel works just fine as the 60cm Dollmore body is tiny and works perfectly for him. I'm content with the Domuya flexi-perennial body I have for Esyrlon. It's a little more well-defined than I imagine him in my head, but the overall size is very good. Statik has a modded Thaasa body which leaves him with almost no muscle mass, so I'm happy there.

Andael and Aura have proved more problematic. Neither of them is supposed to be more slender-emaciated like Doll Chateau's bodies and both of their heads are too big for some of the other options out there. I still haven't figured out what to do with Andael, so for now he has to deal with improper body types, but I got an idea a while back for Aura.

I wasn't sure if it would work or if it was too stupid, so I never really mentioned it. But I saw some pictures of the Dollstown 18yr girl bodies and thought the overall shape looked really good. So I did some research for a while and tried to see how it would compare to other dolls in that height range (trying to keep his height relatively close to Cailath's and they're both supposed to be in the 70cm-ish area)

Anyway, I dug up almost every spare doll part I had lying around (as well as some things like lego sets that I hadn't opened) and managed to scrounge up enough money to buy one second hand. It's freshskin so it doesn't really match aura's head, but then I'm not sure what would since Har is an odd sort of pinkish color? I might eventually dye it to match better but for now since you can really only see the very tips of his fingers (need to get him bigger hands at some point) it's not a big deal.

The body arrived RIGHT before I left for A-kon. I was kind of hoping to get the mods done in time to bring him with me, but I didn't have enough time so I just really roughly sanded down the chest and had to call it good enough for the time being.

I did a little more work on it today since I don't have to go back to work until Tuesday. It's still not quite in a state where it's worth showing off, but I tested his clothes on it. I kind of hated it at first since they were made for a body with wider shoulders, so I sat around lamenting the waste of money and decided to try to find someone else the body might work for. I considered giving it to Avelarion and had his robe and head on and everything, and then for some reason I decided to try Aura's head on it again.

I think I like it better this time? I can't decide if the clothing combo looks good or completely ridiculous.

 The first one kind of helps show how slender it makes him? And then of course my camera didn't want to focus for a straight on shot except for the one time I was screwing around holding the camera at an angle. But there he is from the front. I don't feel like he looks exceptionally bobble-headed so that is good. As I mentioned, I'm really waffling on whether the red on white is good or bad. I'll probably re-make his base layer robe with another brocade of some sort if I decide the white isn't working for me. I do like the idea of a pattern on it. Also, Avelarion's robe is far better constructed than Aura's was.

Hopefully this will also give me some motivation to update Avelarion's outfit. Aura's gloves need re-designing I think. And I may go back in and line his hood to help hide how badly brocades fray. Possibly assault it with fray-check?  It was meant to be a prototype. I didn't expect to actually like it as much as I do. I would re-make it but it turned out completely different from the pattern I drafted, thanks to my failure at sewing. But I ended up liking the messed up design better than what I had planned so I'd have to figure out how to make the same mistake again on purpose. XD

Anyway... I'm really happy with it aside from the clothing fitting difficulties. If money was not an issue, I'd buy like three more of these bodies to do the same mod to (and maybe even some to not mod and actually use as girls). It definitely has a lot of the issues mentioned in the Dollstown 18yr thread like the difficulty sitting up un-aided, but it's so elegant looking that I just really don't care.

Got distracted and it randomly occurred to me that the Spiritdoll Elegance body might work well for Andael. Will have to look into some head size comparisons between that and Migidoll and possibly save up for that next. That is of course assuming that Batchix and Donn Kinney don't steal all of my money this summer with their impending doll releases... Maybe I should shoot to start saving for a new body for Andael this winter. XD

And in closing, here is my favorite shot of Aura from my mini shoot today. I love when his hair is being crazy and unruly.

I know I've already written like an entire novel for this entry, but one more thing occurred to me. Iyrilaeth's new wig (which I should get some pics of real quick) --okay back-- has blonde and white like Aura's does. Anyway, I think this is kind of a cool coincidence because it's sort of my headcanon that in my story's universe, those two are related somehow. Aura only has one kid, Elaria, and having Iyrilaeth be older than them would ruin the timeline, but I never planned out Cailath's children so it's possible Iyrilaeth could be descended from his line. Just random thoughts. XD

And in closing (for real this time) here is Iyrilaeth's hair all cut and stuff.