headgear

Damon has been bugging me about posting pictures of Batu's in-progress headgear, so even though I'm not entirely happy with it, here are some pics.

I probably should have done a mock up in cheaper fabrics first, but oh well.. live and learn. At least it was only doll-sized so I still have plenty left. The main issue is that it doesn't drape very well. If I do this again I will probably use lightweight fabrics with patterns printed on instead of actually sewn into them.

I had NO idea how to construct this thing and Phobs' most recent comic with them seems to have it working differently than I thought it did, but that was posted on DA yesterday and I'd already started work on this the day before. XD

body modifications continued

I had this idea that included moving the entire shoulder joint on the Angelsdoll body down a bit. But then I decided that was a bit extreme. So I decided instead to just sand down the shoulders a bit so that they slope more, because it doesn't bother me on the naked body, but when clothed it looks like the body is eternally shrugging its shoulders.

I still haven't bothered to fix the abs so they don't look like they just spontaneously cut off there, but the shoulders now slope more. I've included a picture of how they looked before for reference. I also fixed the joint on the left arm so that it doesn't have to be out at an angle all the time (the smaller 'before' picture is how the arm was when completely at rest).

Beside the body, you can see Batu's head drying off after being airbrushed. It's taking quite a while due to all the humidity so I'm going to just give it a few hours under the fan in my room. I have to leave for a family gathering anyway so I can finish giving him a new face when I get back.

Last night I took a bead reamer to his lips to give them more depth. I'm not sure if it will be at all apparent in photos, but I'm much happier with them in person.

brief really late night (early morning) update

I have been itching to start work on Batu's clothes, but he's not on the right size body and I don't want to make things so they don't fit properly when/if he gets a shorter one (which will hopefully be acquired with funds received from sales of my two spare bodies).

I decided that one thing I can make is his headgear stuffs. Somehow, I ended up making his sash dealy instead. I'm not really sure how that happened. I was laying out fabrics next to each other to see what went well next to what and making arrows to my clothing sketches with what fabrics I wanted to use where, and then suddenly instead of working on head things I'm making a sash and.. I don't even know.

I was pretty much eyeballing it the whole time because it was almost 2am when I started and I don't have enough room in my room to lay out fabric that long, but I feel like it came out reasonably well given the circumstances. I am mostly using this as my reference, but with bits of other pictures from the comics and sketchdumps.

Anyway, here's what I have come up with. (just the red and gold thing. the white thing is not part of the outfit)

Also, did a massive photo shoot the other day, so my section for dolls now has pictures of (almost) all of my bjds! Not much in the way of info yet, but just getting pictures was a start.

rings and fabric hunting (a.k.a. dolls as fanart: part 3)

I've been searching through my collection of fabrics for things that might work okay for Batu. I've found a few things that should probably work at least relatively well.

Since he's not yet on the body I'm sure he's going to stay on, I'm not sure if I want to make him clothes yet. I don't want them to end up way too long. But I did make him a billion rings after going through every picture I could find of him and writing down when I saw rings and on which hand. I did give him a left thumb ring even though I only saw one on the right but I ended up with more rings while I waited on some to try. (had to super glue on the gem dealies and the red ones for some reason took WAY longer to dry than any other color)

Edit: got my hands mixed up. I had documented a left thumb ring but not a right. So my mistake was probably for the best.

Also I had no idea of what color they're supposed to be. I liked the idea of reds, but as mentioned above, they weren't really cooperative. And it's hard to find craft jewel things in the right size that aren't stupidly expensive.

dolls as fanart: part 2

As mentioned last time: Batu belongs to Phobs. 

Worked more on sanding and did a bit more additive work. I was pretty happy with things until my airbrush decided to be a jerk about functioning and I ended up with a color that didn't match anything. And then my face up attempts weren't as successful as I had hoped for.

But progress pictures will be posted anyway...

 After some sanding and additive work (left) and after more sanding and airbrushing (right).

 And just a couple shots of the semi-finished head. I can't quite place what it is that I'm less happy about this time, but then I was also unhappy with it last time and it took me a day or two to stop feeling that way. So I'll give it some time.

Think I possibly made the chin too pointy and just didn't do the eyebrows in a way that I'm happy with. If I didn't have to airbrush the whole thing every time I wanted to fix anything it would be a lot easier to mess with it. But he is a lot smoother than before, so there is that at least.

Another possibility is that I'm not happy with the mouth. I feel like it's not expressive enough. I wish I was better at sculpting expressive mouths.

Also, I need to invest in an eye beveler so that I can get his eyes to sit properly in his head and not have to worry about them looking wonky if looked at from any angle aside from straight on.

dolls as fanart

I'm not sure where this falls as far as appropriateness(?) so before I begin this post I would like to point out a few things. First of all, I make no claims upon the character in question or the style that I attempted to imitate. What I've attempted to do is modify an old head that I had already butchered to some degree into Phobs' Batu. While Batu is an actual historical figure, the representation I am using belongs to the aforementioned Phobs, so all credit goes to him/her and I am terribly sorry if this is in any way inappropriate.

I don't have any shots of the head in its original blank state because I wasn't sure if this was going to work at all and didn't really think about it before I started modding.

Here is a link to a picture of the default Dollmore Uri Rich head, which is what I chose to work with.

 This is from day 2 of sculpting when Selly suggested that progress pics would be nice. On day 1 I attempted to imitate one of Batu's many super cute smiles, but I was having very little luck since I'm not a terribly experienced sculptor (this being only my third attempt at something like this). So I just went with a more neutral expression as seen here. (Technically Sartaq, Batu's son, if I remember correctly but I figured some degree of family resemblance was present and it was the best straight on shot I could find that wasn't a smile.) See below. This was my mouth reference.

 After some sanding, I decided to airbrush and face up the thing to see how it was coming along. There are still a lot of uneven spots that I need to sand out, but it was really hard to see where they were until airbrushing. It's ungodly hot out so I decided not to wipe him and get back to work on sanding. That can wait until tomorrow or something.

And here are a couple shots of the head chilling on a body. From further away, it's harder to see where the flaws are so I can get a better idea of whether it's working as a whole. I shoved a random fur wig and spare clothes on him and destroyed an old pair of acrylic eyes so that only the pupil is visible, because I didn't have any eyes that weren't way too big to fit in the new, smaller eye sockets (at least none that weren't already in use)

He reminds me more of the illegitimate spawn of K-doll Kill-U and Elysium Hugo this way, but I'm going to say that that's still an improvement over a head I was probably never going to use again.