eyelids

Exciting title is exciting.

I kid, of course.

I'm so tired today I can't seem to form a coherent thought, much less string two together without stumbling over my words and second guessing what I just said.

But I managed to make myself go ahead and try to clean up Cailath's eyelids some. After which I spent a few minutes attempting to brainstorm ways to salvage his face up before I decided that it just wasn't a good idea and it was highly unlikely that it would blend well at all. So I went ahead and wiped him and re-did his face.

And then I attempted to get some photos of him an d everything was so bright and somehow his eyes still look black and I don't even know. XD I wasn't sure about the new face up at first but after about five minutes it really grew on me. I let the sealant dry longer this time so I didn't have as many weird spots and wasn't forced to give him an excess of facial scars (but I did still add in a couple).

Cailath's new wig

I had this whole list of things I wanted to work on today and I ended up doing silly grown up stuff like cleaning instead.

But I did manage to find time to make Cailath a more character-appropriate wig. I might go in and work on it a bit more tomorrow because it's not quite as long in the front as I wanted. It's also a little more layered and fluffy but I just have too much fun with that...

I tried to get pictures of him by himself but he didn't want to cooperate until I shoved Aura in the picture with him, and then he only cooperated marginally better.

He does not photograph as well as I feel like he should. Obviously he has a lot to compete with but I quite like him irl and I don't feel like he looks as good in photos. But at least you can sort of get an idea of what his wig looks like now.

Tomorrow I hope to actually get around to properly finishing his eyelids (which right now are hastily carved in and painted over because I didn't feel up to redoing his face up at the time) but I will probably get distracted by some other project instead because that's kind of what I do.

Unrelated, but his hair looks more like 'cuddly anime protagonist' than 'assassin' but I guess that doesn't really matter since his hair (and the rest of his face) are covered when he's doing that sort of thing. If I ever get hyper ambitious I'll actually make him something resembling his hood and mask dealy. For now I will probably just focus on making him something passable and also modding his ears similar to Aura's.

I should also consider doing some body switches or dyeing his. Or possibly not using a color that doesn't match next time I airbrush his head to make his mods less obvious. But I don't imagine him being paler than Aura so I'll probably just stick with airbrushing that way and do something about the body. 

mind games with myself

Every time I work on a project, I sort of have a routine I go through. It goes something like this:

-reach a point where I think things are okay
-take pictures for reference
-realize there's a problem
-decide to ignore the problem because I just want to be done
-ignore the problem for a few hours/day/or longer
-decide I am just too unhappy to allow the problem to continue to exist
-finally break down and try to fix the problem

Usually this results in going back to step 1 and repeating this entire process multiple times.

Anyway, after some serious contemplating and some helpful comments I finally found my motivation to mod Cailath's head more. So I broke out the epoxy and worked on his chin, and then decided I might as well do the eyes while I was working on that.

Right now I am waiting for the epoxy to cure but I think this will work out better when it does! (hopefully. I'm often quite optimistic right after doing something and it's not until later that I realize where I went wrong)

And a few hours and some sanding later, we have face up results:

I gave him some facial scars cuz I imagine in his line of work he would have some. Also there were some spots where the blushing was coming out darker for no particular reason and I just didn't feel like starting over from scratch, so it seemed like a good idea to just add extra scars to cover them. lol

twins

I took a bunch of blank in-progress shots of Cailath's head during the modding process, but they're all kinda blurry and gross looking.

So here are some crummy face up shots:

I feel like he looks a lot more similar to Aura now, aside from the nose and chin. The cheek and jaw area is allowed to be different because Cailath is a rogue and a lot more active in different ways than Aura. So that's fine. I guess if I break down and mod his chin and nose more I might also change his eye shape a bit  But for now I am happier with him than I was.

Mod project: Cailath, continued

Apologies in advance for the horrible photos in this one. I couldn't get the camera to focus well.

I woke up this morning feeling sick and feared that all of my plans for today were ruined. So I went back to sleep and didn't bother to set an alarm, and when I woke up again I was feeling a lot better but still not 100%. I've tried to take it easy so I didn't end up doing as much as I'd originally planned, but I did do some sanding work on my project head and then gave it a quick face up to see if things were working out the way I wanted.

 Sadly, I felt like they really didn't look enough alike and of course crushing disappointment started to set in.

However, while I felt that the head wasn't working well as Cailath, I was relatively pleased with it overall and decided I should consider other looks for him. (in the above picture he was borrowing Kael's hair since I did not get to mess around with attempting to make him a wig today like I'd planned to initially)

I threw one of my red wigs on him for funsies. I'm keen on redheads so I had difficulty telling if I actually liked this on him or if I just was biased because it was red.

And then I threw a shorter blonde wig on him and have been letting him sit around on the computer desk like that. In looking at the pictures, I think part of the problem is perhaps the shape of his chin and jawline. And of course there is the issue of the way his lower face (in particular around the lips) protrudes by comparison. It was much more intense when I first got the head but still very noticeable (to me) when compared to Aura.

The nose shape also might be part of it.

I am less displeased with things overall as I give it time but I'm not sure I have the patience required to make this work for what I'd intended. I will see how I feel after sleeping on it.

modification project: Cailath

Last night I was screwing around and put Auralion's head on Loren's body on a whim. He may not end up getting it back. Aura was kind of on a temp body (which was a modified Angelsdoll v2, and I didn't much care for it before mods and then I kind of botched the mod job and cared for it even less but had ruined the resale value at that point and have been too lazy to try to modify it to the point where it's reasonably decent looking again.)

Anyway, I much preferred the Popodoll 68cm body I stole from Loren. It felt like a more appropriate size, being a little more slender and less muscular.

_{(Loren's body had been sitting around in black pants for 90 years and had various stains on it so Aura got a bath)}

This got me wanting to do more stuff with Aura again and then I was feeling bad that he doesn't really have anyone to hang out with since most of the rest of my dolls are characters from my story and he's from WoW.

So I decided to actually buckle down and try to work on Cailath for more than five minutes at a time.

Brought out the various grits of sandpaper and my pointy sanding tool (and later on I also got out some dremel bits and used them sans dremel)

I took some side by side pics shortly after I began sanding to get a feel for how much further I had to go and how things were coming along.


Ideally, I would have to take in the entire lower face a bit, but that would be a LOT of work and require a lot of additive sculpting to fix so they will probably have to settle for looking like fraternal twins.

Here is another picture after more sanding. It doesn't look that different since the outside kind of washes out the white and also I didn't want to work with really low grit sandpaper and overdo anything. I then took the head inside for some additive work on the lips.

I ran out of time before work so this was as far as I got. I will need to do a bit more sanding on the nose and mouth and possibly the chin. I was going to work on the eyes a bit but the resin there is very thin so I don't think much can be done. I'll just have to try to use creative blushing to give the illusion that that area is similarly shaped. I will probably leave the eyes more open than Aura's because Cailath is less of a snooty prick.