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).