dye project and face up test

I was browsing pictures on tumblr in the bjd tag and saw someone with a tan IOS Infernale head (I didn't even know he came in tan but he looked great!). Anyway I realized that I regretted getting him in WS (the main reason I did was because the hands I'd been saving for him for YEARS were in Soom's CW)

So I decided I was going to make him more in the NS or tan range. This presented an interesting challenge since I've never dyed a WS doll before (well not a full doll at least and not a natural skin color). The first run he came out very purpley and I had to go out and get more dye in tan and yellow to try to balance him out. The body is honestly pretty uneven but I'm hoping that with some creative blushing I can make the parts a little more cohesive, and the next time I get it in my head to do something like this I'll know to err on the side of more yellows.

Also did more body switching and Avelarion ended up on one that was too pink for him so I used my light yellow and tan mix to bring his body into a more mid range peachy tone to match his older head better. Normally I don't really care about resin match as long as whites are with whites and peachy tones are together, etc. but I figured as long as it was there I might as well.

Don't have any pictures of that. I figured I have other pictures of dye attempts up on other entries and boiling water and slippery resin pieces are already a potential disaster waiting to happen without adding a camera to the mix.

I did get this one before shot of Istthraen's head and body disassembled though:

This is before round 1 of dyeing. There are no pictures of the purple monstrosity. The dye also mixed really unevenly the first time so he had all these dark 'veins' and he legitimately looked like someone who'd had their circulation cut off.

I keep getting distracted. Not sure if I mentioned yet that I decided to give both of them new face ups as well. I guess that only makes sense with Istthraen because I had to wipe him in order to dye him.

I ran into a tutorial by Bluoxyde that mentioned that it's a good idea to use a mixture of warm and cool colors because the contrast helps them stand out more, so I decided to attempt to apply that principle to my next face up attempt. I was going to start with Avelarion but I got a bit ahead of myself and accidentally started before his sealant had dried, so I had to wipe him again and start over. I decided to do Istthraen while I waited on that.

It's less dramatic than the last one I gave him but I'm actually really pleased with it. Was hard to photograph though. I gave it a try but it's late and there's no sun and all the lights in my house are so yellow.

I was lazy and just didn't even bother wiping the tongues from his first face up. I feel like they work fine though. The eyebrows are uneven now that I see them in photos but he covers half his face with hair anyway so I'm not that bothered by it.

Avelarion will probably have to wait until tomorrow to get a face up.

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.

rit dye tanning

Using funds from selling some things, I managed to acquire a body for my floating Phonolus head. As I didn't want the original body he came with, having head not-so-great things about its posing capabilities, I decided to go for the Idealian body instead. So far as I know, that doesn't even come in Tawny (which is the color my Phonolus is) so I decided to just get whatever color I could and dye it to match.

For only my second attempt at dyeing a doll, I'm relatively pleased with the results. I was too lazy to go get natural lighting shots, but I tried to get the color at least somewhat accurate. I used Rit Tan and Pearl Grey because I'd heard somewhere that the grey comes out somewhat tan. I have no idea if this is true since I didn't try dipping the pieces in just the grey, but the end result was a pretty warm tan color which isn't a perfect match for the head but I feel like it's pretty close. The arms are a bit more of a dull/ashy kind of tan. I guess I hadn't completely mixed the colors yet when I did those, but they're not off enough from the body to bother me either.

Phonolus here will be playing the part of my Malesar, who is supposed to have more ashen-toned skin all over, but I'm thinking I'll try to accomplish that look with blushing instead since dyeing a doll grey is nigh impossible from what I hear and I'm fairly certain I'll never be able to get my hands on a Monzo body (and I'm not sure I'd want to since, as I mentioned before, haven't heard great things about Mega Gem posing).

The Idealian body poses really well so far. Much better than my EID. I was expecting it to be similarly difficult to deal with and was going to just put up with it out of love for the Phonolus head, but I've been quite pleasantly surprised.