face up: Avelarion

I attempted Avelarion's face up today. I wanted to do something more exciting and dramatic than his previous one. Sadly that is not something I have a lot of practice with and just about every time I attempt a more dramatic face up I end up hating it. I've tried a number of times on Esyrlon and it never works out.

I got through the first layer of blushing and was pretty sure it wasn't going to work out but I decided to keep going anyway. I regret that decision. I'm not great with cameras so I can't pick up all the details but they're not really worth seeing.

It was much more readily apparent in natural lighting so perhaps if I don't decide to wipe it by tomorrow I can attempt to get pictures of that. But no promises. I'm going to leave it for now to see if it grows on me, but I definitely don't love it like I did Istthraen's.

I think a lot of the issue is how much I defined his lips. I'm usually pretty vague with that and I'm not sure what I was thinking when I did that.

I'm kind of okay with it if I hold his hair down so it lays closer to the sides of his head. He's this odd combination of more pretty and more severe than he used to be and I'm not sure how I feel about it. It doesn't help that he has weird eyes that usually look black with light centers. He looks pretty pleasant in all the pictures I took but in person he looks kinda scary. I guess I'll see how I feel after a few days or if I can even make it that long.

dye project and face up test

I was browsing pictures on tumblr in the bjd tag and saw someone with a tan IOS Infernale head (I didn't even know he came in tan but he looked great!). Anyway I realized that I regretted getting him in WS (the main reason I did was because the hands I'd been saving for him for YEARS were in Soom's CW)

So I decided I was going to make him more in the NS or tan range. This presented an interesting challenge since I've never dyed a WS doll before (well not a full doll at least and not a natural skin color). The first run he came out very purpley and I had to go out and get more dye in tan and yellow to try to balance him out. The body is honestly pretty uneven but I'm hoping that with some creative blushing I can make the parts a little more cohesive, and the next time I get it in my head to do something like this I'll know to err on the side of more yellows.

Also did more body switching and Avelarion ended up on one that was too pink for him so I used my light yellow and tan mix to bring his body into a more mid range peachy tone to match his older head better. Normally I don't really care about resin match as long as whites are with whites and peachy tones are together, etc. but I figured as long as it was there I might as well.

Don't have any pictures of that. I figured I have other pictures of dye attempts up on other entries and boiling water and slippery resin pieces are already a potential disaster waiting to happen without adding a camera to the mix.

I did get this one before shot of Istthraen's head and body disassembled though:

This is before round 1 of dyeing. There are no pictures of the purple monstrosity. The dye also mixed really unevenly the first time so he had all these dark 'veins' and he legitimately looked like someone who'd had their circulation cut off.

I keep getting distracted. Not sure if I mentioned yet that I decided to give both of them new face ups as well. I guess that only makes sense with Istthraen because I had to wipe him in order to dye him.

I ran into a tutorial by Bluoxyde that mentioned that it's a good idea to use a mixture of warm and cool colors because the contrast helps them stand out more, so I decided to attempt to apply that principle to my next face up attempt. I was going to start with Avelarion but I got a bit ahead of myself and accidentally started before his sealant had dried, so I had to wipe him again and start over. I decided to do Istthraen while I waited on that.

It's less dramatic than the last one I gave him but I'm actually really pleased with it. Was hard to photograph though. I gave it a try but it's late and there's no sun and all the lights in my house are so yellow.

I was lazy and just didn't even bother wiping the tongues from his first face up. I feel like they work fine though. The eyebrows are uneven now that I see them in photos but he covers half his face with hair anyway so I'm not that bothered by it.

Avelarion will probably have to wait until tomorrow to get a face up.

arrivals and photos

Mirodoll was having this great sale on their stuff and I was perusing the site and contemplating buying a body just because they were so affordable, but I finally managed to talk myself out of it because I didn't really need one.

However, I did go ahead and order a small bust and some shoes.

Some of you may recall that at one point I replaced the bust part on Elaria with a Resinsoul one because I didn't envision her character with the enormous bazongas the Glamor Eve body was endowed with.

So the package arrived today and I tested the fit with the body. I was just assuming I'd need to mod it to make it fit but it looked great to me right out of the packaging so I just went ahead and redid her stringing with the new bust part.

The neck isn't a perfect fit and the arms were swallowed whole by the sockets, but hot glue sueding fixed the arm issue and at some point I can go and sand down the neck some but for now it doesn't bug me too much and I have so many other things I want to work on anyway.

I feel like her figure looks far more natural now than with the last attempt at giving her a smaller chest. I am very happy.

The shoes were for Avignon, so now she has a full proper ensemble. She doesn't have high heel feet so it took some effort to get these on right and she didn't really want to stand up. I could probably switch her feet with Selenor's since they're both WS but for now this is fine.

And lastly, here are a couple of full shots of Selenor's outfit with the new sleeve endings.

further additions: Selenor

I added feathery stuff to the ends of the sleeves and tacked on the tail feather type dealy to her back. I considered having it attached by a small chain like the part in the front, but the 'feathers' are far too puffy and there was a definite possibility of it hovering about 90 feet away from her body because of them, so I decided to just glue it down. I really don't see her changing clothes that often so it shouldn't be a big issue. 

I'm quite tempted to re-design Avelarion's clothes now. Or at least make him a secondary outfit that would mesh better with hers. I can definitely see him wearing what he has now as like "around the house" wear but I imagine he probably would have a more fancy getup for when he was doing official kinds of things. 

outfit progress: Selenor

It shouldn't be terribly surprising to anyone that I didn't end up working on clothes for Batu. I thought about it, but I was far more excited about Selenor's potential outfit (which I have been saving materials for for months now) so I worked on that instead.

The head may not stick for her character (mainly because I feel it's too large for the body) but the body is pretty much stuck in that role now because the clothes are specifically made to fit it.

Anyway my idea started with a concept that involved pseudo wings being attached to her arms so I decided to make an outfit piece to attach those to.

I've seen a lot of tutorials lately that use this method of wrapping an area in plastic and then covering that with tape. Then you cut it off and get it to lay flat so you can use that to make your pattern. So I started with that.

Here is the piece after being cut away from her body.

I laid it out and drew a pattern based on it.

And then I arranged it on a piece of fabric. If I ever have to do this again I will not be using a stretch knit. It seemed like such a good idea in theory but it made the fit a little less than ideal.

Unfortunately, I got far too invested in working to take any more in progress pictures after that point. I had things pretty much planned out in my head until I found some of the old jewelry I had stockpiled from back when I was designing clothes for Aeri and Esyrlon. I experimented with this one piece that ended up becoming the chestplate and that completely altered my plans. For the better, I think.

Here is a picture of the outfit as it looks right now. I still need to add some plumage in the back and on the head and near the wrists but I am taking a break for now.

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.

project needs

After all the head/body switches I did recently, I wound up with no head on my modded Angelsdoll v2 body and for a little while I was thinking to myself "I guess I'll just have to get a new head at some point for it."

Then yesterday I was reorganizing the head closet and it hit me. I have so many floating heads. Why are none of them on that body? Why am I considering acquiring a new head??

So I spent a bit debating who would be the lucky winner of their own body when it occurred to me that the body was Batu's before and should be again now that it was unoccupied. So he got his body back and I decided I should actually finish making his outfit rather than continue dressing him in various pieces that are lying around. (Sorry, Sasori. I'll get around to fancying you up to match Deidara soon. Hopefully.)

So, project needs:
-black fabric lining
-fray block or light weight interfacing

For some reason I thought the list would be longer than that. Oh well. Just kind of a reminder to myself to pick that up on my lunch break or something. I really thought I'd have some already because I have a fairly extensive fabric stash but none of my blacks fabrics were suitable for my project.

Random fun discovery though: I still have leftover moleskin fabric from when I made Akatsuki coats years and years ago, so I can use that for making them for Sasori and Deidara and they can match my people sized coats.

No pictures unfortunately as there is nothing particularly exciting to report yet.

Still haven't redone Andael's face even though the epoxy to repair his chin has long since set and been sanded smooth. Need to do that as well. Too many projects.

PoM: Deidara, part 2 + arms for Moment

I put my hand over part of Dei's mouth last night and decided the problem was that his smile was too wide on the right side, so I set to work rearranging that some and then set the head aside for the epoxy to cure.

In the mean time, an exciting package arrived !

I've been wanting to do something with my Dollzone Moment for ages now, but he really couldn't do much aside from just stand in place because of how heavy and unwieldy his petal arms were. I put up a wtb thread looking for regular arms for him, hoping to get something that would let me replace the lower half of his arms so that he would have a wider range of positions open to him.

I found someone willing to sell pretty quickly and today the arms arrived.

After a bit of work and some hot glue sueding, he can now stand un-aided and sit down without arm parts sticking out for a mile. I'm not sure yet if I'll hold onto the petal parts I'm not using just on the off chance I want to put them on from time to time or if this new arrangement will be his new permanent state. I'm leaning toward the latter because in his current state he strikes a good balance between fancy parts and functionality (in my opinion).

I'm really not used to dealing with dolls in the 40cm range so when I first opened the arms I was convinced they were far too small for him. They work well though. The color is slightly off but it doesn't bother me. And now I feel like I can design some sort of outfit for him and figure out what I want to do about a face up and other fancy leaf/petal stuff.

I also took a few photos of other dolls who only had temporary pictures up on the page listing all of them. And then I got back to work on Deidara. I re-did his face up and actually painted his scope dealy this time.

Then I spent hours making him a wig even though I realized about five minutes into it that it probably wouldn't work as well as I wanted. It might have worked out okay if I hadn't messed up on the style. I kind of went into auto pilot and started doing it the way I'd done his first wig back when I had no idea what I was doing and didn't realize what I was doing wrong until the very end. Oh well. Learning experience. Next time I want to use different yarn too. I much preferred working with the stuff I used for Auralion's wig and it was a lot faster too.

New mouth pics with (mostly) painted scope. It still needs some small details added but it's functional for now.

There's a picture with the wig I spent far too long working on. It's not awful but it just didn't work out the way I wanted. I might not necessarily go 100% with his canon hair style since his ears are too far back for it to look right I think. We will see how it goes I guess.

progression of modification: Deidara

For those who haven't followed me since I used to post these updates on doll projects on LJ, a looong time ago back when I was first getting into bjds, I was really heavy into Naruto and my favorite characters were Sasori and Deidara (I still wear a ring on my left thumb because that's the finger Sasori wore his on).

Anyway, I decided I needed them in doll form. This was something I had to have, and it felt like this oh-so-appropriate combination of their two methods of creating art, what with things being hand sculpted with clay initially and then cast as crazy puppet-esque dealies. (minus the explosions but.. sorry Dei, I'm in Sasori's camp there)

Rambling. Sorry. So I got molds for them and I did all these heavy mods to Sasori's body to make it look right for him and it's still one of the mod projects I'm the most proud of. But as the years have gone by and the direction of my collection has changed, I've been less inclined to do anything with them because their style just no longer appealed to me as much as it once did.

I mentioned last time (I think) that in an effort to reconnect with Dei, I attempted some mods on him that didn't turn out so well. And recently I was inspired to try to fix him up.

We'll start with a couple before pics to show what I was working with. He is a DiL Rydel and I'm fairly certain they were an offshoot of DiM that doesn't exist anymore.

The first is an old picture I took. The face up was still mostly default but I added eyeliner. This was back before we'd actually seen Deidara's left eye, so I was kind of making up stuff and decided to go with some crazy target eyes from Soom for that one. The second picture is from someone's sales thread since I don't have many good pictures.

The first order of business was to reduce the size of the eyes to something more reasonable. I was having trouble getting the other eye to match up properly so I decided to just sculpt his scope right onto his face and be done with it.

I had originally planned to mod the mouth back into a more neutral expression but then I got it in my head that maybe the grin could work after all so I added more epoxy and went in that direction.

 After sanding things (relatively) smooth I decided to coat everything with my airbrush and test out a face up to see how things were coming along. Of course, I found all sorts of little scratches and uneven spots after airbrushing was done. Mostly around the mouth and corners of the scope. The eye was pretty smooth.

I put on Dei's old wig just so the head would be less naked for pictures. From certain angles I like the mouth and from others I don't. Not sure yet what I'll do about that but I'll sleep on it. I didn't bother to paint the scope since this is a trial run anyway and that would have taken a lot more time and energy.  It feels slightly off from the other eye, probably because I sculpted it with his original eye size in mind and didn't take into account where his eye actually would be if it had been modded as well. Silly me. Not sure it bothers me enough to fix and it'll be covered with hair most of the time anyway.

failure (and fixes)

So I've had this head lying around forever that I've been trying to sell and having no luck with. When I went to bump the thread yesterday the pictures had broken links and I was finally like "screw it. This thing isn't going to sell. I'm just going to turn it into a mod project."

So I marked the thread for graveyarding and grabbed my epoxy and set to work.

Here is the head in its original state for those who are curious:

I was really fond of the sculpting pics of this as it was coming along, but the finished product just didn't do anything for me.

Today I went outside to go sand things smooth and test out a face up and decided I'd go ahead and redo the faces on Andael and potential Kael.

Things started badly when during wiping Andael's face up, his chin spontaneously got this jagged hole in it. I'm guessing there was an air bubble below the surface or something. Anyway, that ruined my plans for doing his face since I then had to break out the epoxy again and fill in the hole in his chin. So he's been sitting around waiting on epoxy to cure ever since.

That left Kael and mod project head.

Here is the head in the early stages of modding last night. I decided to make the eyes smaller and get rid of the smirk since I don't trust my sculpting skills when it comes to pulling off expressions like that.

I don't have any spare WS bodies around at the moment so I went ahead and airbrushed the head a more peachy color. I didn't even get the paint thick enough to fully cover the mods but it still took forever to dry so I started on Kael's head.

As I have mentioned, I'm attempting to use an Arvid head for this project, but it's one of those things where I think I'm trying to force myself to love the head because I have wanted one for so long. In person I feel like he's too smiley and his nose is way too thin. I still feel like he looks fine in other people's photos but he just really doesn't do much for me in person. But I keep trying to make it work. And so I was working on doing his face and I got done with the blushing and was starting to lightly mark where I wanted his eyebrows when I decided I just really hated what I'd done so far and gave up.

So I didn't actually end up accomplishing anything because Andael decided to get injured and I just don't think I care for the Arvid mold in person, and by the time my mod project had dried it was dark out.

Here it is as it looks now. I want to work on the mouth more. It looks a bit odd in photos. I don't really notice it so much in person though. Not sure what else I want to do though. I sanded the cheeks a tiny but but I wasn't sure how far I wanted to go with that. I don't really have a specific idea of what I want to do so I guess it might help to decide on that before I go any further.

Might try and give him a face up just to see if it will work at some point later this evening.

EDIT:  
  After chatting a while with Selly, I decided to get busy on something I've been meaning to do for ages. A long time ago I started a mod project on Deidara's head to make him more smirky and I ended up hating it so I left the head in a drawer and pretty much never wanted to look at it again.

I figured I'd try to fix the damage I'd done, among other things. I used the cheap epoxy because I didn't want to waste a ton of the good stuff in case this turned out horribly (the cheap stuff being the five dollar tubes of plumbing epoxy they sell at hardware stores). After I got about as far as I could with the epoxy, I worked a bit on his mouth (might attempt that smirk thing again) and then set the head aside to let the epoxy finish curing.

I then set about a massive body switching party. I recently got an absurdly good deal on an old style Souldoll double body. The newer version looks arguably fancier but after handling the Zenith body and not liking its posing capabilities, I'm not over eager to try out the newer version since it looks like the engineering is similar.

Anyway, I let the body sit around headless for a few days while I decided who was going to get it. I'd originally intended to give it to Andael but then I ended up deciding to give it to Orkas because with the body he was using, his arms were too long for his clothes.

I liked Orkas on the Souldoll body so I decided to keep that, but then there was the issue of who to give his previous body to (which was a Domuya Perennial body). I initially gave it to Alek because he was using an ancient single-jointed Fantasy Doll body, but the minute I put him on it something felt off. He was too tall and lanky and my first thought was "this body makes him look too elvish."

I really didn't want to put him back on the FDoll body because I made the happy discovery that it works pretty well with my Drazen head (who has never been able to get a body because the head is super small. Pretty sure he'd wear the same size wig as an Unoa but he's supposed to be SD size).

Anyway, so I was trying to figure out who might work for another switch and then it occurred to me that Defliel might work. I was instantly pleased with that combination and it makes his clothes fit much better because he's been wearing clothes for a 70cm doll forever now and the Domuya Perennial body has the longest arms of any 60-65cm doll I've ever handled. So his clothes pretty much fit perfectly now and he looks much more regal, which is more appropriate for his character.

Alek then ended up on Defliel's old body (a Domuya flexi-body I have had for forever now). I initially wasn't keen on the match, but after his putting his clothes on I decided I liked it.

After all of that I feel much better about my accomplishments in the doll area for the day. Tomorrow I will probably attempt to give Andael a face up since his epoxy should have had more than enough time to cure. Might attempt one on Drazen too since he has a body (though if Dei's mods work out well he'll likely lose it again until I can afford another one for him since it was Dei's body originally and the only reason he lost it was because I was really unhappy with his mods).

wig making

I've been meaning to make Auralion a new wig for a while now but have been very intimidated by the prospect since he has a rather specific hairstyle.

I read a lot of tutorials and watched a lot of videos and finally decided on a method I thought would work well. Then I proceeded to get sidetracked and after buying the materials I put the project on the back burner and ignored it for a solid two weeks.

Well then I started work on my mod project for Aura's twin brother, Cailath, and while I didn't think the head turned out similar enough to be successful in that regard, I did grow rather attached and wanted to make a proper wig for the as-yet-nameless head.

So I went out and bought a children's wig from the party store so that I could deconstruct it and sort of play around with wig making.

After watching a few more tutorials I decided that for the sake of practicing (since I don't know what style I want to go for yet for him) it would be easiest if I didn't have to sew, so strapped a plastic bag over his head and hot glued down some lace in the shape I wanted for a wig cap. I then cut away the plastic bag and started to hot glue down wefts of hair. The entire process was extremely quick and easy and looked surprisingly decent (in my opinion) considering the materials used.

Anyway, after this was done I decided I really wanted to make more wigs just for fun so I looked at yet more tutorials and decided I wanted to attempt to fix Aura's wig after all. But I initially decided I would be lazy and just try to make a clip on ponytail for his wig.

So I gave that a try and was less than pleased with the results. If I did it again I think I could do it better but I didn't have the right color to work with anyway and I had used all the longest wefts from the wig I bought to make the attempted ponytail and it seemed like more trouble than it was worth to try to detach them.

I still wanted to fix Aura's wig, however, so I decided to try my original plan. This was to use yarn to make the wefts myself and then brush out and straighten the yarn before attaching it to the wig cap. Since I had also planned for this to just be a prototype, I went with the same plastic bag, hot glue, and lace method. Then I brushed out tons and tons of yarn wefts and used a flat iron on the lowest setting to straighten them.

The yarn that I thought matched Aura's original wig well ended up almost white so I attempted to mix in a brighter yellow I had. The result made it look more like he has streaked hair and I almost scrapped the project after gluing down the first strands, but I decided it would be good practice to see if I could finish and get the style right. Since I was working with really thick yarn, his hair ended up thick enough to make the ponytail without any fancy additions, clip ons, or two part wigs.

I was going to just leave it be after finishing the ponytail but I ended up cutting and styling it and I think I might actually keep it as his official wig.  It ended up looking much better than I'd expected. It's kind of a lot to adjust to because he's looked so prim and proper with his neatly parted long straight hair for ages and now he has all these layers and spikes. It's much more accurate for his character but it's a big change after all these months of dealing with the temp wig.

I couldn't decide on one picture because I wanted to show various angles of it. There are a few things I'd change if I did it again but for now I'm fairly pleased!

face up: Atlas(?)

For about... forever now, I've wanted a Luts SSDF Cane. I was never super motivated to get any of their other sculpts even though I thought some of them were pretty neat, but for years now I have had Cane on my wishlist. The problem with the wishlist is that things that end up on it often get perpetually moved to the back burner. Especially if they aren't limited or discontinued.

About a zillion other impulse purchases or trades have made their way into the collection since I decided I wanted this guy and every time I had the money or saw one up for sale on the MP, I found some reason not to buy it. The face up didn't appeal to me. I'd have to pay shipping from a foreign country. I had something else I wanted that was more important. Etc.

Pretty dumb excuses for the most part since I almost always wipe and redo face ups and buying things from overseas is just a given in this hobby.

Anyway, after seeing a few companies discontinue some of their basic sculpts, I decided it was about time I went ahead and got Cane for myself on the off chance that Luts exploded one day and left me with no option to.

I had been warned his head was big but I just really wasn't prepared after collecting mostly smaller-headed dolls for the past few years. At one point my roommate had and Abadon head from Luts and we both found it to be a bit on the large side so I really should have expected it, but I didn't.

This was a while back and I didn't have the energy or motivation to give him a new face up and see if that helped me overcome the size issue, so after about a week of letting the head sit on my desk, it ended up in the head closet because I couldn't stand to look at it anymore.

I seriously debated just reselling it and probably would have if it seemed like it might move quickly on the marketplace. But the last two Canes I saw for sale stayed up there for months and months before finally selling, and I already have one head that refuses to sell so I just left him alone.

Too much back story. Moving on. My airbrush was being particularly well behaved yesterday (I only really use it for sealant and color matching because I have thus far been too impatient to practice using it to actually do parts of a face up for more than two seconds in a row) so I decided I needed to get at least one other face up done today.

I looked around for someone to redo and was having trouble deciding. I considered just redoing the face on my mod project (a Panda Workshop Bene for those who were curious) but then I remembered I had this Cane head sitting around in my head closet. So I took him out to the porch and set to work.

Before he had eyes and a wig, I was certain the head was going to look too severe for the character I had in mind. Once I had him properly put together on the spare body, I felt like the face up made him look entirely too childish and innocent.

Atlas is supposed to be Eskilys' younger half brother so obviously the next step was to sit him down next to Esky to see if they looked at least a little bit similar.

(some photos, the above in particular, really don't merit any kind of identifying marking because they are clearly not going to be enticing anyone to visit my blog if they stumble across it, but it has kind of become habit to hit my logo shortcut in photoshop)

Anyway, I feel like it works. They don't have to look super similar  since they're only half siblings. Not like Aura and Cailath who are supposed to be twins and failing at looking like it.

I'm quite happy with him now. Not entirely sure he looks the way Atlas does in my head, but if he doesn't work for Atlas I'm sure I can come up with something else.