Custom eyes + Vaith

 Finally got around to redoing Doppelganger's eyes for the 5th? 6th? time. I have no idea what happened this time, but somehow the glittery bits moved around when I went to UV cure the eyes and they ended up mostly covering the pupils... I left them to dry for TWO DAYS. 

Oh well. We're just gonna call it 'good enough' for now. The color is good. The size is good. Who needs pupils? 

In other news, after I think 4ish years, I finally got around to giving my Twigling Elbe head a face up. I'd always planned to make this head into Vaith. I'm not entirely sure if this plan is working yet.

I feel like the overall structure is very much like how I imagine his face looking, but I may have gone a bit too wacky experimental with the face up. I don't know. I have confused feelings about this. I attempted to color match to the body but my efforts were foiled by the excessive amount of stuff I did to the face. Luckily Vaith is fully clothed like a thousand percent of the time, so when I eventually make him an outfit, that won't be much of an issue. 

Aaaand I gave Ezsphrein new eyes. I had gotten him custom eyes before but then when I switched heaads they didn't fit right anymore, so I had him in eyes that fit but were completely wrong and then I completely forgot about it. 

So here he is in some new black sclera eyes I made. I could have taken this picture outdoors and gotten a maybe halfway decent shot, but if I go out the dogs will want to go out (as seen in the first picture of Doppelganger) and then herding them back indoors while holding dolls can be a bit of a pain. 

At some point I should consider getting him a higher quality wig. This one doesn't entirely fit his head. I got it in MSD size like ... years and years and years ago, for my Latidoll Chaim (who was at the time portraying Esphrein). And his head was a lot shorter, so it fit well. Now that he is portrayed by a Souldoll Chiron, it fits but not well. I kind of have to choose between having it reach the right length in the back or the front, so I usually opt for like a middle ground so his hairline recedes on both sides. The style also doesn't work as well this way, so ... at some point. I should really upgrade. A lot of my older wigs are really frizzy and no longer very smooth looking either. 

I should make a list of people who need new wigs so I can start looking into that before I find too many new dolls to acquire. 

New wigs needed: 

1. Orkas
2. Eskilys
3. Ezsphrein
4. Anna
5. Aura (all sizes)  

I think that's it. Should add to the projects page. 

new wig for Avignon

I had been thinking about getting Avignon a new wig and really the only thing stopping me was my inability to find the right color. But after a zillion years of browsing the marketplace on DoA, I managed to find a wig in the right color!

I thought it was going to be too big but it's actually exactly the right size for her tiny Souldoll noggin! No need to mod and potentially destroy it! Yay!

It's so fluffy XD It took me a while to even begin to make it manageable. It was just going everywhere and I had no idea what I was doing, but eventually I googled something to do with floofy hair and managed to figure out something.

I got new eyes for him because I was hoping to replace the really really bright ones he has now but the dome is too low and they didn't fit right. Oh well. They're nice eyes so I'm sure someone else will use them.

I slightly changed where I part Orkas' hair. For some reason I am more happy with him this way. I have no idea why it made any difference at all but it did...

Still on the fence about that lower lip but I'm going to give it more time before I make any decisions about it. In person it's stopped bothering me as much but in photos it feels very large.

I am not working on Sunday and I want to attempt to make Shino and Alek some jackets then. Or at the very least make SOMEONE some clothes. This is a thing I need to do. The number of people in need of clothes is decreasing but one day that number is going to hit zero. Only new arrivals will be clothes-less. That is the goal!

EDIT:  After an  un-successful attempt at giving Ezsphrein a new face up yesterday, I sort of got it in my head that my Latidoll Chaim (who has been my Ezsphrein for years now. I think longer than anyone else) looks too young for the character I want him to be. I've kind of always resisted replacing him because of how much trouble I went to to get Chaim, but the more I thought about it the more I really didn't think he fit the role.

So I thought for fun I'd just throw this spare Souldoll Chiron head I have on the body I had Chaim on. The Chiron head was airbrushed grey to go with my Impldoll Triton body but I wiped it so I could take pictures for a potential trade on DoA and then my trade partner ended up being interested in a different head which kind of worked out since once I had Chiron all cleaned up I was reminded of why I liked the sculpt to begin with.

So I tried the head on the body and tried on the official Ezsphrein wig and I immediately liked the combination so I went to go give the head a face up. It's pretty messy in places but I'm happy with it overall.

Fun story, the whole reason I 'updgraded' Defliel from a Customhouse Chamomile into a Souldoll Killian was because his head was too big compared to Ezsphrein's. This started a sort of domino effect where over the course of a few years I ended up replacing pretty much all of my heads so that everyone was at least reasonably in the same size range and didn't look too terribly weird together.

So I guess it's sort of come full circle now.

I was initially considering attempting to sell my Chaim head but the more I think about it, the more I think I will just hold onto it and one day when I am overflowing with funds I will get him a body along with my Customhouse Chamomile head (which I have held onto for ages because it was my first SD) and they can sit around and be old school together and sit on the porch and tell these young'uns how hard it was for them in the good old days. Wearing poorly made sock clothing. Having smudgy face ups sealed with gloss sealer because I didn't know there were different types. All that good stuff.

Ezsphrein's updated face

I was going to just be lazy and leave the old face up on. And then I tried to just touch it up and see if it could be salvaged. I was going to just leave that, but I left him sitting on my bed and since Selly comes in to say hi most days after work that kind of turned out to be my motivator. Because it was between redoing the face up so she wouldn't see the horror and hiding him somewhere she wouldn't see him. And I decided if it was bad enough that I would hide him then it was bad enough that I should get it done rather than put it off for another day.

So I wiped him clean and mixed up a bunch of thinned out liquitex matte medium to put in a small jar so that I can just shove a few drops in the airbrush whenever I need to seal a face in the future. (Another wonderful thing about the airbrush for sealing? Even if I accidentally spray it on so thick the face looks wet, it doesn't smear the face up like my other sealants do)

For attempt #2 I just scrapped the whole black ashy look and went for a more subtle thing with greys and browns. I"m a lot more happy with this attempt.

All the natural lighting was gone by this point, so this is taken in my room. No matter how hard I try to make him look angry, Ezsphrein always looks so cute to me. This isn't entirely a bad thing though. It's part of what drew me to him initially.

5 years of yellowing and he's still too white for what's supposed to match 'volks white'. XD He's not the paper white he used to be, but he's still quite pale. I find doing face ups on white skinned dolls really difficult. With normal skin I use a lot of browns and reds, but that's usually too harsh to use on white. Anyway... I'll leave the picture up on the last entry just so I can be reminded of my failure. XD

I think I might be in love with my airbrush

So today I decided Ezsphrein's face needed a redo. It's been ages.

I was going to be lazy and just use the good ol' fashioned testor's dullcote, but it was about to rain and it was humid out and it didn't want to stick right. And when I finally did get it to coat the head, I was having a hard time blending. Now, this problem isn't new. I've always had trouble with blending when using ... pretty much any spray sealant. But apparently after only two face ups using my air brush for either the sealant layer or a paint layer to cover mods, I'm spoiled.

So I dragged out the airbrush and mixed my liquitex matte medium with water (I found that a 2:1 ratio was working pretty well for me. 2 drops liquitex to one drop water, that is). It set quickly and gave me enough tooth for ease of blending, but this time not so much that fine details were difficult. (eyebrows were super easy this time)

Alas,  I had this last minute great idea to incorporate some darker greys since Scileraen's face up is so heavy on blacks and such. (in my mind when fire dragons take humanoid form, they tend to have what looks like ash around their eyes). Anyway.. said last minute idea didn't work out so well and undid my contouring work when I positioned it incorrectly. I didn't fully realize this until his hair was on and then I was like "oh.. shit." So it kind of works like reverse contouring, making his nose look wider than it actually is. Not what I was going for. I plan to redo it. I guess it wouldn't be a bad idea to go ahead and get that done.

Quick picture of my improperly done work. But see? He has eyebrows. And I feel like the colors blend pretty smoothly. Yeah anyway... so the airbrush + liquitex matte mediium is probably officially replacing Testor's as my go-to sealant (unless there's some hidden drawback to this that I'm unaware of). It also had no trouble at all with the humidity! Yet another bonus.

Torso modification: Ezsphrein (Lati Chaim)

Originally posted: December 3, 2010, 18:05

This modification project has been a long time coming. I got Ezsphrein in November of 2006. That means he's been with me over 4 years now... wow. Sorry, took a moment to sit and ponder that. Anyway, at the time I was inexperienced and had no expectations. While he continues to live up to my expectations in many ways, I quickly found that there were bodies out there that did not want to make me tear my hair out in frustration. So today, after being inspired by looking at modification threads on DoA, I decided to attempt to fix what I considered to be Ezsphrein's one major flaw.


Ezsphrein's (Lati Chaim) torso. Anyone who has ever worked with a one piece torso should know why this is a source of frustration to me. Some people really like the look of uninterrupted torso--no joints to ruin the nude photos sessions. Despite Ezsphrein's penchant for gay porn, he wanders around clothed. And even if he didn't, this whole leaning back when he sits thing had to go.


I've marked off the spots I'm planning to cut/mod. The above picture shows a better example of what I did to the lower torso. Really minor stuff, so we'll mostly ignore that. But the upper torso needed a joint, in my opinion. And I've seen quite a few of these under the pecs/breast/whatever joints and wanted to try one out.


Here is the tool I used. It's the blade from a coping saw wrapped with tape on one end. I ended up cutting off the other end where it attaches so nothing would come between my mini saw and my mod work.

 
I have begun to slice open the torso from the back. Because I wanted to cut at an upward angle on the front of the chest, I didn't think it would be viable to start there.


and more cutting. Progress is being made, slowly but surely.


After nearly three hours of sawing, the torso is finally in two pieces.



side view of the 'damage'.


After this I pulled out the dremel to hollow out the upper torso piece some. This is it after a fair bit of dremeling.

 
This one is mainly for reference so you can see how thick the resin was. I was covered in the stuff after dremeling out that much.


I sanded/dremeled down the lower torso some so it would fit a bit better in the upper torso's curve. I'm planning to go back in with epoxy and do some additive work on top of that but I was quite tired after all the work today.


Here it is from the front.

 
And here is Ezsphrein, able to sit up without leaning back so far I worry he's going to fall over unless I put something behind him.