a list of things to do

Been trying to sell some stuff on DoA that I just don't do anything with anymore. I've somehow accumulated a mess of bodies and heads that aren't seeing any use and that I have no plans for...

Anyway, I'm a sucker for trades so when someone offered me a trade for an old Domuya Flexi-body I couldn't say no. I got some jointed hands and a Little Monica head out of the deal. The hands were mainly what I wanted, but they offered the head to avoid adding any extra funds on their part and I accepted. The head is actually really cute in person. I'm not entirely sure what I'll do with it, but for now it's on a spare body looking pretty cute.

The jointed hands are in a light tan color so my best options for usage were Orkas and Shinozaki. Orkas wears gloves so it felt like a waste, but they fit well on Shino and the color is actually a decent enough match to the tan I dyed him.

It's dark out today so my natural lighting shots actually came out worse than my indoor lighting ones. Lame.

Anyway... I wanted to make a list for myself of things to do.

SO!

Firstly, I need to update my doll list with some new pictures for some people and some first time pictures for others who aren't listed there. I removed some who are no longer with me already.

-Id needs a new photo. He is currently being portrayed by a Dollsbe Raspberry.
-Defliel needs a new photo. He has gotten a new face up since the last one. 
-Statik needs a new photo. He has had mods done and gotten a new face up since the last one.
-Loren needs a new photo and some proper clothes. Has had a complete mold switch since last one.
-all the tinies need profile photos (Aura, Cail, Theo, Liss, Vaith)
-Ezreal needs a profile photo.
-my as-yet-unnamed Unoa Xyle needs a profile photo and new face up.
-my as-yet-unnamed Batchix Dark Elf needs a profile photo and pants.
-my as-yet-unnamed Bishonenhouse Vince/Steve hybrid needs a face up, clothes, and profile photo.
-my Elfdoll Tasha (tentatively named Ellana) needs a profile photo and pants.
-my Cerisedolls Lyse (tentatively named Clarice) needs a profile photo that isn't naked.
-my as-yet-unnamed Soom Amber needs clothing and a profile photo.

And as I mentioned in a previous post, I really need to get around to giving people names and characters.

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.

And now for some completely un-helpful photos!

As promised, I was productive today. And as promised, I worked on coat making. Weird, considering I never stick to what I say I'm going to do. Or, almost never..

But today I did what I said I'd do.

I have no in progress pics of the construction because it actually started at around 3am before I'd gone to sleep yet. I was pretty excited about working on this project and wasn't having much luck relaxing for sleep because I kept planning out how I wanted it to work in my head.

Late night/early morning brain got the better of me and I didn't take drape into account when selecting my fabric, so I ended up with something a little more thin and floppy than I wanted. The collar is pretty much what I had in mind though.

I didn't have any spare black fur but I did have this jacket I bought ages ago on DoA. I was really new and had no idea what I was doing and bought it based on the description. The thread didn't have a photo and for some reason it never occurred to me that I could ask for one. So I got it and immediately realized I had made a huge mistake and would never ever use it and it has sat in a drawer ever since.

But it finally came in handy and I cut it up for the collar fur on this jacket/coat/thing.

Here are two pictures that completely fail to capture any detail. Pretty much just "Shino's face" and "fuzzy collar". Black on black may have been a poor choice in retrospect but again.. me at 3am. Not the best critical thinking skills.

My planning also didn't get to the point of planning out the rest of the ensemble. In my head just putting the coat over what he was already wearing (a black button up shirt and some black cargo pants tucked into boots) seemed like a fine idea. In practice, this isn't quite as stylish a combo as I had hoped. In part because the coat looks kind of like a fur collared bathrobe.

I was much more displeased with this whole ordeal earlier in the day when I was redirecting dissatisfaction with other areas of my life onto this project. However, I went ahead and dealt with the issue after many hours of resisting doing what I knew had to be done, and I feel a lot better now.

Relocating Shino's eyebrows

I was just about to go ahead and wipe Shinozaki because his face up just wasn't working for me. In fact, I was so frustrated I was starting to look around for potential replacements. I haven't liked the last three or so face ups that I've given him and in the past year I've barely been able to look at him because he just wasn't making me happy at all.

Before doing something completely crazy, I decided to redo his face and possibly mod him further if that didn't work (because I wasn't really 100% happy with the mods I did to him originally but I had dumb plans for the head based on one person's owner pics. I would say I need to stop doing that but Shino was a nice happy accident.)

Anyway. I decided to try relocating his eyebrows further down before doing anything else because I was relatively happy with the rest of the face up. So I did that and made them look a little more angry and suddenly I was so much happier with him!!

I also tried a different wig on him. He has three different fiber wigs (that's two more than anyone else) and what do I do? I put him in a spare fur wig I made. It was too short but I kind of liked the look so at first I was going to just make him a whole new one out of yarn the way I did Auralion's, but then I told myself that that was a silly idea since Cailath is still sitting around in a temp wig and should be next up for a proper custom one. So I just gave Shino some small yarn extensions.

Perhaps once Cailath gets a proper wig I'll go ahead and make Shino one. I do love crazy hair that sticks out every which way. Tomorrow I should work on Cailath's. And also finish his eyelids so they look proper. Which might mean redoing his face up. We'll see.

I also kind of want to work on a few clothing projects. Iyrilaeth still needs something resembling a proper outfit. And at some point I do want to give Shinozaki and Alek some sort of fancier clothes. A couple reasonably stylish jackets might do the trick since I am not unhappy with what they wear. I just find it a little too dull. So that's my potential list of projects to choose from tomorrow.

face up: Shinozaki

Orkas's new head is growing on me. Of course, after I manage to order the open eyed version. I guess I'll just have to see how things go.

The humidity here has been awful. It's been raining on and off for over a week now. Horrible weather for face ups. But of course this is the time that I finally feel motivated to do them. Go figure.

Today's victim was Shinozaki. He didn't have the worst face up out of the bunch, but it was one I just wasn't happy with at all despite there being nothing really wrong with it.

His eyebrows aren't done yet. I'm really unsteady with paintbrushes so I tend to just use colored pencils for that sort of thing, and with the humidity being like it is, it takes a while for the sealant to dry enough that I can add lines to them without scratching it off.

So those will exist later. For now, this is what he looks like:

I think I put the eyebrows too high up. I have this tendency to do that because I want to put them along the brow bone. I guess technically eyebrows start beneath that point but it's really hard to remember that every time I'm trying to shade them in.

He looks a lot more pleasant than he probably should. But I guess this could pass for his neutral face. It was stupid windy out so his hair wouldn't cooperate either.

In case you didn't believe me about the wind. Photographic evidence.

Overall, I like it better than I liked his old face up. It's a bit dirty in spots because dust magically settles after I have carefully checked for it before spraying... sometimes I can get the little dust bunnies out but sometimes when I try to it just scratches off the face up and ruins everything. So I'm just going to live with it. It's not horribly visible indoors.

silly things

Today I finally broke down and got new Testor's Dullcote. I was just ignoring the issue for a bit because the airbrush was doing fine, but airbrushed sealant scratches off easier and after finally getting Shino a look I'm okay with I didn't want it to scratch off. So I grabbed a handy dandy 40% off coupon and headed to Michael's!

I came home and gave him and Statik a layer of Testor's sealing and re-glossed lips and eyelids. And then I decided to modify a coat for winter! I have a red wool coat (I like red) but it was too small on me before, but now it fits and I wanted to be able to wear it this winter. Was a bit plain though. No embellishments or anything. So I added some goldish sleeve... things. Um... see the picture. I also replaced all the buttons. That you can't really see in the picture.. because my batteries were dying and the camera didn't want to get a clear shot for some reason.

(The subtitle says it's a modification/customization blog focusing primarily on bjds. Not exclusively.)
Now you can see what I meant about the sleeve thingy. It didn't have anything there. Just a plain sleeve ending. I cut out some spare fabric from the inside of the coat where it wouldn't be missed to make the little red ... doodad that holds the gold strap in place. 

And I got a few new pictures of Shino. Not in natural lighting, but I feel like they came out better than yesterday's picture.

 Too bright. But you can see his face up okay.

And too dark. But.. I liked the composition. Sorta. XD I don't even know. I fail at getting an in-between setting on my camera.

bonding issues

So after dyeing Shino and redoing his face (twice) I just wasn't feeling the same attachment to him as I did before. Last night I decided to chill with him for a while to see if I couldn't either figure out what was wrong or sort of re-attach.

Anyway, it was just making me more and more frustrated and I just didn't want to be anywhere near him and I couldn't figure it out. Finally, I realized I just wasn't liking the eyebrows on his face up because I didn't feel like they meshed with his overall expression. So I removed his head immediately and set it aside to make sure I wouldn't forget to redo it today.

After a long day of family gatherings and job applications I set to work on redoing his face.

Here we have a 'lovely' photo of him in my room shortly after the face up was completed. (You can see a brush and a pencil sticking out of my chopped up peroxide bottle full of rice that acts as my brush and pencil holder for face up time!)

I'd promise natural lighting photos tomorrow but I almost always break that promise so I'll just say that I'll try to get better pics at some point. But so far I like the eyebrows better.

I also made Loki some pants. While they end up looking like capris when he sits (because I didn't want to make them overly long and mess up the way his future boots would fit) I feel like they are the most well-constructed pair of pants I've made in doll size. (Which isn't so much a glowing review of their craftsmanship as it is a decidedly UN-glowing review of my normal pants-making capabilities).

No pics of those but there will be pictures as I progress into the other parts of his outfit.

EDIT: There was a request for pants pics...

Aeri's new dress and pictures of Esky and Shino

Selly and I agreed that the shiny fabric at the bottom of Aeri's dress wasn't really meshing with the rest of the ensemble since it was so white up top, so I removed the lower part of the skirt and have tried another design that Selly liked.

I feel like perhaps the top part's ruffles go too far down for this to mesh perfectly, but I will see what Selly thinks.

Some pictures of Aeri that show off the bottom of the dress.

And just a random shot of her from the shoot that I liked.

Also was screwing around with watermark-esque things in photoshop just for fun and to throw them on images to be obnoxious and so that in the extremely unlikely even that someone finds the images floating around the net, people can figure out where they came from. /shrug

 Few random shots of Esky in natural, slightly overpowering, lighting.

And a few pictures of Shino after I gave his face the same magic erasering that I gave Esky's. So now they both have minimal spots with weird discoloration and I can stand to look at them in places with decent lighting.

For Shino's pictures I switched the camera into manual so that I could stop it from taking in so much light and washing him out. I probably should have re-shot Esky after figuring out a good setting, but I didn't. Because I'm dumb.

face ups after dyeing: a learning experience

Today I came home from an outing and gave Shino and Esky face ups. Sadly, this only highlighted the uneven areas in the dye job and they now look like they've been in an action movie with lots of explosions (which, of course, neither of them would look at).

Next time I do this I will use the airbrush to even out the color first, but for now I am too tired to worry about that. And if I ignore the color inconsistencies I'm pretty happy with them overall. Esky looks a bit more yellow than tan in some lights (possibly because the lighting in my room is super yellow anyway) but he and Shino look much more like the way I imagine them in my head.

 A shot of Esky (the best one I was able to get, sadly. And it's hard to tell he's any darker than he was before).

 And a couple shots of Shino. I tried natural lighting for both of them, but the weird coloration was showing up too well out there. It might not have photographed as well, but it bugged me so I took them back to my room where I don't notice it as much.

Crappiest photos ever, but I do not care at this moment.And in the future if anyone gets dyed, I will not be using straight up tan. Perhaps at some point I will re-dye Esky so he's less yellowy, but again... too lazy at this moment. I'll give it more time to see if it grows on me.

going crazy with dye

I decided it was finally time to mod Esky's nose today. I didn't do it initially because when he first arrived I just wanted to give him a face up and make sure he would work right for Esky (because on several occasions I've gone straight to work on modding, only to later realize that the mold wouldn't work for the character anyway).

So since he's worked well as Esky for a few months now, I went ahead and changed the shape of his nose and chin a bit and ended up having to wipe his face up.

When I dyed Malesar, the only thing keeping me from just throwing Esky and Shino in the pot right after him (because I was having so much fun with dyeing) was that they both had face ups and I was feeling too lazy to wipe them.

But since I had to wipe Esky's anyway today, I figured I'd just go ahead and dye him. And then I figured I might as well wipe Shino's face as well and get him done right after.

I started with just straight up Rit dye in tan for Esky.

Here you can see his head and some body parts that have already been dyed next to his torso which has not yet been dyed.

After Esky was all done, I added a bit of royal blue and dark brown to the mix to change up the color some, because I didn't want them to be the same color.

Here you can see half of Shino's limbs are dyed and half aren't. j

And here's the two of them next to each other, color corrected to the best of my ability at this late hour. I decided to restring Esky tighter and with thicker elastic, and that proved a bit exhausting (especially given that I was already pretty tired after working on this for three hours).

Anyway, tomorrow they will both get new face ups and be all complete and properly colored!

There are some random spots on Esky that came out oddly, but they mostly won't be visible when he's clothed. Shino's color came out incredibly even, in my opinion. It's almost eerie. It looks like he was cast that way. Perhaps that means I'm just getting better at this dyeing business (neither of them has mismatched arms to body like Malesar) so it's too bad I don't think anyone else needs a dye job. XD

Side note: after doing these two, I'm incredibly surprised that I got Malesar's body to match his head as well as I did, considering I had no idea what I was doing and it was my first attempt. Neither Esky nor Shino came anywhere close to matching my Phonolus head. Must be some color that was in the Pearl Grey that helped that work out. Not that I'm complaining! I'm glad Malesar matches and all my tan dudes are unique shades.

forcing inspiration

Originally posted: March 23, 2012, 01:31
When inspiration isn't there, it's hard to force it or find a way to make things work. Sometimes I can jumpstart the inspiration by doing something that feels more like something that 'needs' to be done than like a creative endeavor.
Today I started out with fixing Shino's wig.

On the left we have Volks' Amakusa Shiro Tokisada, whose outfit and wig I acquired for Shinozaki. However, the whole curling in ends didn't do much for me so I took a flat iron to it. It mostly got rid of the curling but it did make the ends really frizzy. After ages of being lazy about this, I took boiling water to it to get rid of the frizz. (sidenote: the bangs never behaved like that for me. When I got the wig it wanted to part to the side the way I have it styled. But with more curling, something akin to the way everyone in my elementary school styled their bangs with a round brush)
After taking the wig off for styling, I noticed that Shino's eyebrows were rubbing off and decided to redo his faceup. All was going well until a sudden wave of extreme humidity swept in out of nowhere and caused my spray sealant to misbehave, messing up all my hard work. By this point I wasn't feeling up to starting over so I did what I could to make it tolerable until I feel like trying over again.

Probably the only clear shot I've gotten of Shinozaki in... ever. I'm really fond of him but he just doesn't always cooperate for photoshoots. A lot of that was his rather poorly designed neck hole. He was unable to move his head up and down but I fixed that today and now he has a lovely range of motion in his head and I feel like it just brings him to life.
Shino is probably one of the best 'happy accidents' to happen to me since getting into BJDs. With pretty much every other mold, I hand-picked it for a character or just loved it to death and had to find a way to make it work. But Soom's Chrom never appealed to me. Some owner pics made him look really good, but not the kind of good where I'd think "I want one." But then I was looking for a new head for Lyric and was getting desperate and saw a particularly sad looking Chrom and thought "you know. This could work."
Of course, in person it was all wrong for Lyric. He looked far too Asian and, while he can pull off sad, it's not the Lyric kind of sad. He ended up in the floating head cabinet for months. And then one day I decided it was time to clean him up and take sale pictures and as I was getting him out of the cabinet and heading to the bathroom in search of alcohol to wipe his face off with, I realized what I wanted to do with him.
Reminiscing tangents aside, I did do one other mini-project today. That was to make Esyrlon and Theorin rings:

They're the same style, but Esyrlon's is silver and Theorin's is gold. (Theorin really needs more character-appropriate clothing so he doesn't look so out of place next to Esyrlon). I got the idea because I was trying to think of a new way to do Eyrlon's stole/scarf deal because the gold chain deal wasn't really meshing with his ensemble. I decided I wanted to stick with more silvers and was considering other sorts of adornments people have worn throughout history when it occurred to me that I tend to neglect rings, despite the fact that those are some of the most common jewelry that people wear.
So I decided Esyrlon needed at least one. And then I got the idea to give Theorin a matching one. Kind of like wedding bands or something. (Which would make sense seeing as they are married. Or the Elvish equivalent of married.) If I had some sort of fancy metal cutting stuff I'd probably have made them thinner. They're made from discounted earrings.
Made a couple extras for fun. (tried to do matching ones for Elaria and Malesar too but Elaria's fingers are SO tiny.. it didn't work out). Off to sleep now. Goodnight!