Arrivals!

My package I mentioned before finally arrived! So now I can talk about what it is without worrying about inflicting further bad luck on its arrival!

I traded with someone on DoA for an Impldoll Charles. I was primarily interested in the body for my L-bi head but after seeing the Charles head in person I may end up doing something with it after all.

The body is so small though.! I was not expecting it to be quite so slim. I'd read that Impldoll's MSD bodies were slender but it's hard to tell from pictures.

I made him a wig out of a spare fur swatch I had lying around since baby Sollux stole the black fur wig I was using for one of my Unoa boys and the other two wigs were either not as functional as I remembered or too unruly from spending time in the wig box.

This is an extremely horrendous picture that exists primarily to show that he has a wig and a body now. And a random assortment of clothes I had in the right(ish) size.

The wig is extremely fluffy, which I'm not sure about. I like the color though! I haven't really decided for sure what to do with him. I'd intended to make him my new Nazoe after I sold the head I was using for the previous one but then I thought he made a cute blonde and I'm sort of tempted to make him into a younger version of Auralion.

Will give it more time before I do anything crazy. I also need to redo his face up (because aside from the eyebrows it's still the way it came to me from Yahoo!Japan yeeeaaaars ago) and blush it to match the body.

The other arrival was some appropriately sized purple eyes for Orkas. I would like to eventually get some with smaller irises but these work for now. Unfortunately(?) I like this head much better with these eyes.

My camera was being a jerk so it didn't want to pick up the color of the eyes. I had to adjust them in photoshop so that they didn't just look black/grey.

I went through a phase a couple days ago where I was severely tempted to use this head for Atlas , which would have forced me to go off in search of a new Orkas. Not something I'm eager to do because this has been my ideal Orkas head for a loong time now. Previous Orkas was modded to look more similar to this head so I'd really just be back at square one if this didn't work out.

head comparison and face up

EDIT: I may have gone ahead and gotten eyes in the right size anyway as well as a new wig. The current one is a little too coarse to sit the way I want it to and hopefully this new one will be closer to the right color. I do like redhead Orkas but he's supposed to be a little more strawberry blonde.

We are now fully committed to operation "attempting to recoup your losses is futile."

So here is the modded reminisce Vivien head (left) next to the default open eyed one (right). I don't have anything even remotely close to the right color in the right size for this head so I'm having a hard time deciding what I think.

It has helped me decide what to change if I continue working on the modded head instead of using this one.

The larger eyes make the head look larger as a whole, so now I"m not entirely sure if it works okay on the body I was using.

I am debating on whether or not to buy eyes in the right size first or work more on the modded head to see if I can't make myself definitively happy with it. If I don't keep the open eyed head then the eyes will not really be useful for anything else, so I guess it can't hurt to work more on the modded head first.

I need to close the eyes a little bit more at the top to give the impression of glaring and the right eye needs a little carved out on the lower lid in the outer corner area. This time I will also likely blush it to match the body.

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.

wig fixing and a picture of Orkas

I finally managed to get Elaria's wig into a tolerable state of existence. No photos yet because it's still drying after the boiling water treatment I gave it. I managed to pour boiling water straight onto my hand multiple times and give them lesser burns a few other times. And one could definitely make the argument that it wasn't worth it since I will likely replace this wig anyway since I don't hate it now but I don't love it either.

It's possible once it dries I'll like it better. I guess we'll see.

In other news, I've become very attached to my Vivien head/potential Orkas. I'm just not sure it's right for him.. but I really really want it to be. I'm going to try getting the right eyes (purple without the really bright centers) and see if that helps. If not, I will probably attempt a different wig possible. And if all else fails I will attempt to make the actual open eyed version of the head work.

It's also possible he just looks too healthy for Orkas. Between the homme skin and the more rounded features, he's just not capturing crazed telepath as well as I want him to. His eyes are uneven so maybe when/if I get around to fixing that I'll redo his face up with more blues and blush in the hollows of his cheeks more and see if that helps. Possibly increase the bags under his eyes too. Or something. I really don't know.

Could just be that since his last face was so intensely frowny, anything will seem pleasant by comparison. I can't really put my finger on what I didn't like about his previous head. I just have difficulties with making Iplehouse dolls work in person. Alek is probably the only exception to that. Though I do miss my Akando from time to time...

It might also be the lower lip... bit more full than I imagine Orkas' would be. But for some reason I'm terrified of modding the head further? Even though I already did crazy things to open the eyes??? I'm not actually sure what is stopping me. I'm generally not afraid of modding (Cailath's head was limited to 10 I think and I modded it beyond recognition because I'm a bad person...) but for some reason with a head I've wanted for so long, it just feels like I shouldn't. That whole obligation to make it work bit I guess. I don't know.

attempted photoshoot

I've been hanging out in the tumblr bjd community more because I tend to be very timid about posting on DoA. I'm still very timid about posting on tumblr... but anyway. I saw a few people doing this "how has your photography improved?" meme and thought it might be kind of neat to try to recreate an oooold photo to do a comparison.

I'm inclined to say that the most drastic improvement is in my ability to do face ups and style wigs. XD My photography is still 90% fumbling around attempting to make a point and click camera that is marginally better than a phone camera work. I saw an interesting photo tutorial on tumblr about using redirected flash to take decent pictures in poorly lit areas but it comes out very yellowy every time and my camera only has a few different settings for white balance, none of which really help.

I did attempt to do a proper photoshoot that way because I went ahead and drew in Orkas' scar last night and I think it helps. Attempted to also get proper photos of Avignon and Shinozaki and ended up deciding I hate Shino's new face up.

Avignon and Aura got some reasonably nice (if very 80s textbook) photos out of the deal. I have a fetish for garlands and may have put like 5 of them in as a backdrop for these photos.

face ups: Orkas and Avignon

EDIT: I could just about punch myself in the face. I went to go check the Elfdoll website and they'd put a normal skin Vivien head up for sale. I guess someone must have cancelled or not paid or something. If I had just been patient I could have saved myself all of this trouble! 

I went ahead and bought it anyway. Seeing the head in person may help me figure out if I've done the eye mods correctly since it's hard to figure out based on photos.

I'm still not 100% sure this head will work the way I want it to or even that I like it enough to use for someone else if it doesn't work for Orkas... but here's a progress update anyway.

Last night I finished sanding epoxy and prepping the head for its first face up. I had this really stupid idea that I should wait until after the face up and see if I liked it before carving in eyelids. I don't even begin to know what I was thinking. Under what circumstances would not having eyelids be beneficial? I don't know.

So I gave it a face up. Hated it. My best friend pointed out that the eyelid area (where they SHOULD have been) needed some color or he needed eyelashes or something. So I wiped the head and left it alone for the night. Then today I went and carved in eyelids and decided to do attempt #2.

I can't decide if I just hate this thing because I did the mods poorly. Or because the wig just isn't doing it for me (I tried on a couple other wigs and liked it a lot better...). Or if it's the eyes I constructed for it (I say constructed because I didn't make the irises. I just assembled a base for them). The eyes are very bright. But they were what I had around that would work because regular 12mm eyes had irises that took up almost the whole eye socket.

He's a bit cross eyed here. It's hard to position his eyes properly due to the uneven eye sockets. I still haven't figured out how to fix that without potentially damaging something. I have since fixed the eyes a bit and can stand to look at him a little more. I don't like what I did with the colors on his face up. But it's better than last night. Last night was just embarrassing.

I went ahead and re-did Avignon's face up because I really want to like her and I've just struggled so much with managing to make her look like her character and look good at the same time. I tried on the first wig I bought for her after redoing her face up and didn't immediately hate it so that's something.

I am considering getting her a mohair wig or something because I just can't find a fiber wig that I'm happy with for her. It's just really hard to find the right color in any kind of wig though. I want something sort of like what she's wearing here but with slightly more red undertones. It kind of photographs like the color I want but in real life it's a more dull brown.

It's been a rather frustrating last few days on the doll front. Still haven't managed to fix Elaria's hair. I'm not sure this wig is even worth the trouble.

Mods going as expected

Which is to say, I want to punch myself in the mouth repeatedly and throw the head into oncoming traffic.

I got the dremel bit all properly attached to my dremel and drilled some holes through the area of the eyes I'd already carved out so that I could tell when I was getting close and (hopefully) not destroy the eyelids.

I started in on making the eyewells deeper, and very quickly realized I had to go a lot further than I'd thought. This is one of those cases where my ignorance made me brave enough (or stupid enough) to attempt something that I never would have if I had any idea of what I was getting into.

I kept at it very timidly until I got to about this point and figured I should stop using the dremel and do it by hand. That ended up being a very slow process and I wasn't really getting anywhere, so I figured it couldn't hurt to do just a little bit more dremel work.

Spoiler alert: this is where things start to go horribly wrong.

I was going along slowly, being very careful not to just obliterate the eyelids and leave a 12mm hole in the head, when suddenly the lower lids just start moving. My immediate thought was that I'd gone too far and they were just going to fall out, but I quickly realized that the heat of the dremel was just making them soft. So I immediately stopped, held the eyelid in place for a few seconds while it cooled, and all seemed okay. So I moved on to the next eye and did the same thing. Only on that eye, I had come in at a slightly different angle, so instead of just making the eyelid soft, one of them actually cracked.

It's not actually terribly easy to see in the photo but the right eye has a crack near the tear duct. I have glued it together but I think I will also reinforce behind it with epoxy putty.

With the eyewells deep enough for proper eye opening, I figured I'd go ahead and get started on that. I know from experience that I should not attempt to do eye openings with just an x-acto knife. I know this. I was telling myself not to do that even as I was doing it. But I couldn't stop myself. I kept thinking "it'll be so much quicker and I'll just do it until I get to my guidelines (which I had to re-draw) and then I'll switch to sanding". Well, I reached my guidelines and the eyes weren't quite even so I figured it wouldn't hurt to just use the knife a little more to even them out. Then I could sand.

This is what I ended up with. On the one hand, I did manage to open the eyes. On the other hand... the right eye is an abomination. The left it actually just about what I want so at least there is that. I will go in with the epoxy and try to fix the right eye and then attempt to carve in some eyelids. After that, a lot will depend on if I can get the face up right.

Another problem with the right eye is that due to the poor angling of the dremel, eyes don't sit quite right in the socket. Some more work will probably have to be done to remedy that. They do work well in the left though! How I wish Orkas was a pirate right about now so I could give him an eye patch and be done with it!

eye mods

So, I think I mentioned last time that I was getting an Elfdoll Vivien head to attempt to replace Orkas' current head because it just wasn't quite doing it for me.

It arrived today and it's a sleeping one because I pretty much was willing to take whatever I could get my hands on. I guess if I was more patient I could wait until everyone gets theirs from the discontinuation sale and see if anyone is selling them but then that's kind of a crap shoot because if I don't get in on it then I could be out of luck.

I read somewhere ages ago that the eyewells weren't fully formed on the reminisce heads but I didn't know how to properly phrase the question to the seller and the pictures they provided made it look like the eyewells were properly existent. (Just so we're clear, they didn't try to mislead me at all. They were very helpful and took pictures for me and answered all my questions. I just didn't fully specify my intent when asking about the eyewells.)

So anyway, the head arrived and it does have some degree of eyewells but they don't reach all the way to the eyes, making it impossible to just perform a normal eye opening mod. I will have to bevel or carve the area to make them suitable for eyes.

I seriously considered just leaving it as-is and trying to get an open eyed version of the head as well and just using both and having this one be sleepy Orkas? Of course this seemed like a large financial investment for a head I'm not 100% sure will even work for Orkas. I WANT it to work for him. And if I could be guaranteed that it would I might go that route but I would probably just prefer one head over the other or get them both bodies. It would be dumb and expensive.

As you can see in the above picture, I decided against this plan. I started by marking the general shape I wanted, then I used a bead reamer to make a hold in the eye above the lower lid (because I want to leave that alone) and then I used some wood carving tools to start carving the area a bit.

I got both eyes carved in a little bit. I didn't go all the way up to my guidelines because my plan is to carve proper eyewells before I do that. I think the area in front is carved deep enough that I'll be able to tell when the eyewells are deep enough and be able to continue on my way. I misplaced the eye beveling tool I got ages ago when attempting to sculpt a head from scratch so I had to purchase a new one. Luckily I was able to find a dremel bit in what I think should be the right size for like a buck. Now to not-so-patiently await its arrival. If, in the interim, I find something else that might work I will not have to feel too guilty since said dremel bit was very cheap.

What I do feel guilty about is ruining a perfectly good sleeping head when they are potentially being discontinued. But I imagine I'll get over it if this works out okay.

I love trades

Circumstances being what they are, money is kinda tight at the moment. This has meant that, despite selling a few things in the past month, I haven't been able to afford a new body for Orkas. His previous one sold on layaway and I've sold one head and another full doll but between Christmas and having to save up for other things, he ended up stuck on an old Customhouse body that was just barely functional. (it's pretty much falling apart)

Anyway, I managed to get a trade offer from someone offering a flexi-perennial body in NS for one of my sale items. Hard to really say what that body is worth since Domuya doesn't exist anymore and I tend to see them going for really cheap on the MP, but I felt like it was a good deal. I've always liked Domuya's bodies and was sad to see them go. Anyway, I made the trade gladly and today the body arrived.

Old Orkas had a modded flexi-perennial body in tan to go with his Elfdoll head in homme skin and now new Orkas has one in normal skin. I'm not sure I'll bother with doing the mods again--at least not for a while--but I'm really happy with him now. I was really unsure of whether I liked the mods I'd done to his head before, but having a more appropriate body makes all the difference in the world. I'm glad I waited and tested his head on a new body before springing for an Elfdoll Vivien head as a replacement (because I was sorely tempted to do that).

Will need some new NS hands at some point since it was the LE elf archer version of the body, so the hands were not compatible with Orkas' gloves (an essential part of his character) so right now he is using my Impldoll Triton's grey skin hands since they aren't visible under the gloves anyway.

 

The picture doesn't really show how the new body affects things but I wanted to add one anyway. It's probably not something that I would even know how to capture in photographs accurately, but to me the difference is pretty big even when he's just sitting there. 

more mods and some face ups

I modded Orkas' head more after my post last night. I was looking at Elfdoll Vivien (a strong contender to take over the role if this head doesn't get its act together and work for me) and decided I would attempt to instill some of that sort of expression into the head I currently own because if it works out it will save me time and money.

Anyway....

Oh god that second one is orangey. Should have color corrected that but I so seldom feel the need to with the new camera that I didn't think about it. Oh well. Anyway... I still feel like he comes across a bit smirky or something when the camera is looking down on him. Also not sure I accomplished frowny squinty so much as just "the sun is in my eyes" squinty. But ... I chalk that up to my novice level of sculpting skills. I feel like it looks a bit better in person. He looks a bit young for his character now (I'm not sure why having smaller eyes makes him appear younger to me but... I have no idea how my brain works when it comes to 'shelling' characters.)

Here is a s hot of Iyrilaeth. His new face is very minimalist so far because I was quite frustrated after dealing with Orkas. I'm relatively pleased with his new, more neutral expression. I feel like ideally I should have built up the epoxy a bit more so there wasn't still an indent where his old mouth corners used to be. I'm too lazy to fix that right now though and it's functional on a basic level. This shot makes his nose look huge.

mouth mods

ended up deciding I did want to redo Orkas' face up. But then I decided one side of his mouth looked potentially more smiley than the other. During a discussion with Selly about why I needed to fix this, I realized that, whether or not I liked the Cyril sculpt as is, I needed to mod it if I wanted it to properly fit Iyrilaeth's character.

So after spending 90 years trying to tint epoxy and still failing spectacularly, I altered both of their mouths in an attempt to make them less smiley.

I decided to do Iyrilaeth's at the last second so his face up is only partly wiped because I was hurrying to make sure the epoxy wouldn't get too hard to be easily worked. I don't like how large Orkas' eyes are by comparison. Tempted to close them a bit or something. We'll see.

mod work

A long time ago, there was a failed attempt to find an alternative to getting two Nabarro Hars to play the parts of Auralion and Cailath, my Rogue and Priest twins from WoW. Given that the head was limited to 50 and finding one, let alone two, was proving to be rather impossible, I got this brilliant idea to acquire two Iplehouse Jessica heads as a substitute.

This was entirely based on one person's awesome pictures of their Iplehouse Jessica boy. And the fact that the nose reminded me of the kinds of noses Nabarro gives their sculpts.

Sadly, in person, these heads just didn't work out that well. I ended up modding one and turning it into my Aleksandr (who has been posted about here before). The other was tied up in a potential trade for months (because I originally intended to sell the spare) but then that fell through and I decided I would just turn the spare into Layne since I waffled on having the first one be him anyway and he and Alek are supposed to look a lot alike.

A few hours later I had something I was relatively pleased with. I started with the same mod I did on Alek, which was reducing the cheeks around the sides of the mouth to reduce the smirky look. ANd then I took in the rest of the cheeks more to define the cheekbones better and I altered the brow bones some and added an indent in the middle to make it appear more frowny. Could've just done that with blushing but I was just kinda in the zone and not thinking.

So anyway.. I decided to go ahead and jump into face ups at this point because I was fairly happy with it.

The result: zombie Orkas. He just didn't want to wear any of the wigs that were more appropriate for Layne and I don't have the right hair for him lying around. I happened to put on Orkas' wig and I felt like it worked the best out of anything I'd tried.

I'll probably keep him as Orkas and just add the scar and stuff. And make him look less like a zombie later. I was never 100% happy with Orkas, because I mainly got the first one because the head was cheap and I really wanted an Orkas. And I had no idea what I was doing at the time.

Right now, since Orkas' old head was Elfdoll Homme skin on a light tan Domuya body, his current incarnation is borrowing the spare spare. Which is an ancient Customhouse body that I modded a bunch. This will have to do until I can afford something that matches.

natural light photos and attempts at eyelash application

So I promised some natural lighting photos of Orkas' face. (I'm sure you all were holding me to that and awaiting them anxiously too).

Well it's rather cloudy out and I had to actually go outside on the porch for these because not enough light wanted to come in through the window. So this means the photos aren't from a consistent angle because I was trying to hold a doll and hold the camera.

In other words, these are ridiculously bad, un-artistic photos.

But at least now we can actually see that Orkas has eyebrows and isn't just completely blank. I really fail at this whole 'natural' thing. Not my forte. I much prefer dark and dramatic, or at least like gaunt and worn out.

While I was out there I decided to get pictures of another sort of project I'm trying to work on. My first attempt at applying eyelashes. I never give them to my guys because I have a near-impossible time making them look like men when they have eyelashes. I realize that real men pull this off all the time, but real mean look a bit more rugged than dolls most of the time. There are a couple of my dudes who I have considered giving eyelashes to (Avelarion mostly) but we'll burn that bridge when we come to it.

Anna was my test subject. She's my only other girl aside from Elaria who is not currently being sold and Elaria already has lashes. She came with them.

Anyway... this is not my forte. I spent ages trying to get them in last night, let the glue dry overnight, tried to put eyes in and the eyelashes immediately started to fall out. So I looked up tutorials and they pretty much did exactly what I did so that was no help. So I just kind of put more layers of glue over them and on the inside and am hoping that will help them stay. If not I think I'll just swear off the use of eyelashes forever...

These are actually meant to go on people so they're obscenely long on Anna. But I didn't want to go to the trouble of ordering doll-size eyelashes for an experimental procedure that might not turn out okay.

Three coats of glue later, they still won't stay put.  I officially hate doll eyelashes. And these photos may very well be the last time anyone hears from these.

face up practice: Orkas (Elfdoll K)

I've had Orkas (right) in the same blonde wig since I got him. It was always intended to be a temporary, but somehow over four years later it was still in use. I got so used to it that I almost forgot Orkas wasn't actually blonde.

But a while back in my quest for the right wig for Loren, I acquired an orange-ish wig that I wasn't doing anything with. Orkas' hair is supposed to be in the light orange-ish range, so today I decided to give that to him and style it appropriately.

After that it occurred to me that I haven't re-done his face up in ages and since I'm trying to get around to re-doing everybody eventually I figured I would do him. I experimented with a more subdued, natural look and while I'm relatively okay with the results, it is hard to photograph in this lighting. I'll probably try to get natural lighting photos tomorrow.

Orkas with new face up and wig: