eye mods: Id

I was thinking last time I took photos of him, that I needed to bring Id's eyes in a bit because I'd opened them a bit too much for eyes to sit properly in them.

But I kind of put this off since it didn't seem like a very fun project and doing face ups on heads that small is scary.

Then yesterday I was ... doing something. I completely forget what. And I saw a picture of one of the little 1/6 guys on the Crobidoll website and he had these little teeth and I thought they were adorable and I decided that I wanted to not only bring in Id's eyes but also mod his mouth open a bit so he could have cute teeth too. XD

So I got out the epoxy and made his eyes a bit smaller. And, as always, I overestimated how much I'd need and mixed up too much, so I also gave him little elf ears while I was at it.

None of the pre-faceup pics turned out okay because it was night time and I forgot to turn the brightness back up on my camera. But here is one after the face up so you can see his ears. I should have sanded them more but I was impatient to see if his eye mods would be obvious once he had a face up so I just went for it before sanding more.

And here he is from the front. The eyes aren't even, which is something I also was planning tow ork on before giving him a face up, but again... wanted to be sure I was on the right track before devoting more time to it. But everything seems to blend in pretty much seamlessly around the eyes so I'm very happy about that and will go back in and work on evening them out when I'm feeling less lazy.

The worst part was doing the teeth, honestly. I'm terrible with using brushes on face ups as it is, but I'm even worse when I'm wearing glasses (and I can't wear my contacts for at least a few more days..) My eyes just have no idea how to make sense of something that precise when I'm wearing glasses. I'm sure with enough practice I'd get it down but it's very frustrating since I'm not used to it.

I can live with the asymmetry for now though. It's less obvious in person I think.

And some bonus shots of Shino after having his collar brushed so it looks less matted. He's sort of currently my favorite and has been sitting at my computer desk for the past week or so.

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.

trying something different

Today I did more experimenting with the airbrush. I wanted to mess with it on doll heads to try to get a feel for the amount of pressure and distance I needed to get color to show up without making spidery lines. I'm still sort of learning where I need to hold my hand to get color to show up in the right area.

I decided to try to give Id a face up by airbrush, since I wasn't happy with his old one. But I'm not yet good enough at telling where I'm spraying so it was going everywhere. However, I discovered yesterday with Kael that an airbrushed layer makes blushing with pastels a lot easier because it gives it extra tooth. So I got out my liquitex matte medium and put that in the airbrush and used that to do Id's first layer of sealant. It gave the head such a nice degree of tooth that I was able to do the entire face up in one layer. Didn't seal again until I was all done.

The only drawback was that it was a bit too toothy for making eyebrow lines. Wouldn't be a problem if I was better at using paint for eyebrows, but since I use colored pencils it was a bit challenging. Perhaps next time I'll thin down the liquitex a bit.

Anyway, new faceup is less obnoxious than the last one was. I'm having enough difficulty adapting to doing more subtle face ups (that don't include really dark bags under the eyes or eyeshadow, etc) but it's even harder to adapt to doing children.

The nice thing about using the airbrush for this is that it doesn't smell awful like spray sealants and like two drops of liquitex matte medium will cover a whole head. (Id has a small head but I went over it like three times with those two drops)

Anyway... onward to pictures!

ramble about body switching and Id's mods (Volks SwD Piccolo)

Originally posted: March 1, 2012, 18:14
Where to begin...
Well it probably all started when I decided Defliel's original head didn't mesh well with Ezsphrein's. After that I began this move toward getting less stylized heads for most of my bjds. And you all know this already so I don't really need to go on about that, but I will say that I was left with one head in need of replacing. And that was Matthew's. And I really liked his head but it just didn't fit with anyone else he would be likely to hang out with so I was hoping to replace it at some point.
Anyway, that's difficult when one isn't exactly rolling on dough. There's a trade involved with a head I've been trying to sell for like ... forever now. And a lot of forum browsing for a head with a similar expression and such.
Anyway, Matthew got a new head today. Which I think is going to work out well. The expression and eye shape are almost identical to his previous head (which is stupdendous) and it's from Souldoll so it's about 1/10 the size. Okay not really. But it's a lot smaller. But it was in white skin. And Matthew's body is not white skin. Such minor details don't really deter me for some reason.
I decided that the head I was using for Iyrilaeth (which has never been mentioned here) wasn't really working for me. It wasn't quite perfect and I felt like I was settling for it just because I had it in hand and wanted something new and exciting. So I took that off the body it was occupying and tried Matthew's new head on there, and that was not working because that body is 70cm and a little too broad in the shoulders for the new head. So I stole Esyrlon's body and tried him on there and that was a much better fit, but Esyrlon is supposed to be slender and small and he wasn't really working that image on a 70cm body either.
So that left me in a bit of a pickle. I wanted something that worked well for Matthew, but I have a limited selection of white skin bodies. After a series of aggravated heavy sighs and staring around the room helplessly, I finally noticed Ezsphrein, who also has the whole white skin thing going on.
I popped his head on the 70cm body, and was a little iffy at first. But once he had his hair and clothes back on I rather liked it. I think he seems happy with the height increase, and now his clothes aren't way too big on him (because they were intended for a 70cm body but I liked them too much and they were too good a deal so I got them even though they didn't fit perfectly). Anyway, that allowed me to put Esyrlon back on his original body and put Matthew on Ezsphrein's old body. Which I think is a good fit.
I modded his lips a little and gave him a quick face up. And then trimmed his hair down some because it was too long for his significantly smaller head. I also modded his lips some but I think I'll work on that more another time. They're still not exactly where I want them to be, but they'll do for now. The lower lip was a bit too full and the upper lip sticks out a bit too much. He also needs smaller eyes (like the ones that go in the sockets) but I'll worry about that when I have more funds.
This all actually worked out great in the end though as now I can sell Iyrilaeth's head and Matthew's old body.
This entry seems kinda naked without a couple pictures and I have talked a lot about heads and such.. let me go get a picture of Matthew's new head so we can do a before and after.

Before (left) and After (right). 

Also, after um.. 9 zillion years I finished my mods on Id's head. I don't think I posted about this. I know I didn't post pictures. He was a sleeping head when I got him and I decided I wanted him to have open eyes, but I kind of stopped partway through and decided that was good enough. I was really new to modding and didn't know exactly where I was planning to go with it.
But armed with a definite vision, I decided to finish the job. It involved carving in eyelids and obviously cutting out the rest of the eye shape. And reshaping the eyewells because they were meant to hold eyes in a completely different position, if at all.
Here is a picture of Id now: