3d modeling [new doll projects]

I've been on and off working on trying to make a custom head in zbrush. 

I got it in my head that I wanted dolls for my FFXIV version of Aura, Aurelien, who is at this point pretty much his own character who just happens to have a very similar name to Auralion. I shipped him with Varis, so I wanted a Varis as well. 

As Garleans are just OUTRAGEOUSLY tall, I decided on a 75cm body for Varis. I've commissioned a custom head for Varis from an artist I found on Etsy. I gave her his in game model, some reference pics, and the measurements I needed. And she added details and made things appropriate for a bjd body. 

I'm pretty stoked about it! But it'll be a while before the body I've chosen is here, so this will be more of a long term project. 

I'm not sure why I didn't go the same route with Aure. I guess because I didn't have any solid references in 3d and I wasn't confident that I could really get across what I needed to just with my drawings. Most of the facial structure info on him is tucked away in my head. 

So I downloaded Zbrush Core Mini (their free, very limited version of Zbrush) and set to work. 

This was what I came up with in there. I couldn't do certain things like add some nice spheres to help me plot out the eye shape properly, so I decided to get a more proper version when possible. Sold some things and used the proceeds to get the full version of Zbrush Core. (Wasn't quite ready to shell out for full Zbrush just yet) 

So I spent more time on the head, added some proper eye spheres to work around, and this is roughly where I'm at now: 

I need to redo the ears, and I've been putting that off because it's proving to be rather challenging. I've figured out a reasonably good method in blender, but not in Zbrush. I also need to give him teeth so he can do the sexy rabbit dentures face. 

In order to get him the right height compared to Varis, he can probably be around 50cm at max. I've considered just saying 'screw it' and making him larger just to make my life easier in terms of finding a body and not having to worry about him looking wildly out of proportion with everyone else, but I don't know. It's a bit difficult since I don't have a body the right size to test him out on. And I'm not sure my 3d printer will do a good enough job of capturing the details I need. 

A small part of me is also contemplating attempting to sculpt a body for him as well, since finding something that works perfectly for him does not seem possible. I want something lean and very androgynous. A lot of 50cm bodies are either very masculine or very feminine from what I've seen. the body I'm most leaning toward, Dream Valley's 50cm body, is pretty good in that it's not overly masculine. It also appears to have a reasonably good butt (very important). I'm just not sure how the head would work with it proportionally without having it in hand.

I have a new plan for how I might want to fix up the head for printing though. I may see about acquiring a body before I spend too much time on that so I don't have to waste too many prints if I can avoid it. We shall see. 

I'm also planning to attempt to redo regular Auralion's face up today. I wiped it the other day and used windsor and newton brush cleaner for the first time. SO MUCH EASIER than alcohol and a magic eraser. 

I mocked up what I might want his face to look like so that I'll have a reference and I'm not just making things up as I go (which is what I normally do, with very mixed results). 

Here is kind of what I am thinking. But with more gradient on the upper lip so it doesn't look so solid. The mockup looks kind of dumb, but I tested putting on hair and I think it should look pretty okay? Hopefully. Can always try again if it does not.

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.

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.

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).

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 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.

minor update

I ended up cutting Iyrilaeth's hair after telling myself that I would just buy another of the wig if I hated myself for cutting it. But I don't, and it's perfect for him now! I've been meaning to get pictures but I've been distracted by other things and feeling mildly under the weather.

Also did a bit of face up practice. I think I may need to calm down on the reddish lines along the cheeks and across the nose. XD I think it's really cute but perhaps not appropriate for every character ever.

I should also give Iyrilaeth a proper face up (or at least touch up the one he has) since he looks almost like a blank head with eyebrows next to everyone else.

I hate face plates...

I decided today's project would be redoing Lyric's face up, and then I decided while I was at it I would redo Andael's since last time my attempts at airbrushing resulted in him looking rather sunburnt.

Lyric behaved for the most part. I had some minor difficulties but nothing I'm super concerned about.

Andael, however, is a Migidoll Noel and he uses the face plate system and is impossible to deal with. As you might recall, last time I attempted to redo his face i dropped his head on concrete and shattered one of his ears and chipped his nose. I was able to repair the ear and decided the small chip in the nose didn't bother me that much so I left it alone. Well, this time I dropped him again and chipped the area above his right eye.

I don't know how I'm supposed to hold a face plate when doing a face up. If anyone has any advice that would be great... I'm not super happy with his face up (which I went ahead and attempted anyway because I wasn't in the mood to mix up epoxy and fill another hole in his face (because he got one in his chin completely randomly. I never dropped him or injured his chin. It just was suddenly there when I was wiping his face one time)) but I'll leave it for now because I just don't have the patience to attempt it again.

Lyric looks a bit more angry than I'd intended, but then he has every right to be and I suppose it makes sense he'd express it a bit. He also looks very dead but that's also appropriate for his character.

The dark spot on Andael's eyebrow is where the chip is. I haven't finished the eyebrows yet because I didn't feel like mixing up paint and attempting to draw fine lines.

In other news, I got a free wig with a purchase on ebay recently. The plan was to cut it shorter to be proper hair for Iyrilaeth, because while I did really like the one he was using as a temporary, it just wasn't very in character.

Anyway, this wig is long and curly at the ends and Iyrilaeth is supposed to have about chin length hair, but I am finding that I actually rather like it on him as-is. I am not sure if that's just because I like the wig as-is or if I actually like it on him.

Ignore his ridiculous ensemble. I haven't finished making his clothes yet so in the mean time he's just wearing an assortment of stuff. His face up needs improving since it was just hastily thrown together after his mouth mods, but after the luck I've had today I'm going to leave it alone for a while.

I'm going to give it some time and see how I feel about the wig later. The color is perfect and if it was shorter the style would be perfect for the character. I'm just finding it hard to bring myself to destroy it.

Doppelganger

I was debating on who to work on next, because while it might make sense to just start in on working on things like Cailath's wig or his clothes next, I need breaks from my projects so I don't get burnt out on them.

I was considering what to do and contemplating various dolls I just don't spend enough time with when I glanced at Doppelganger. I've never given him a proper face up. I mean.. he had a great one when he arrived by someone much more talented than me, but it just wasn't right for his character and I sort of modified it to work with him.

----afsdlkjwrjkewljrlwekj. As I typed that sentence I realized I forgot his scar. Dangit... I'll have to add that later.

Anyway. I decided to redo him because... I don't know why. I just decided I should. And while I was at it I decided to smooth out his elf ear mods and blush them to match his body better.

I took care of the ears yesterday but then I just didn't feel up to doing a face up because I was exhausted so I put that off for today.

It's a lot like the old one but with less perfect eyebrows and eyeliner, BUT better eye shadow (because that was one of my additions to the old face up) and a cuter nose. (I've developed a bit of a thing for blushing noses a bit pinkish/red at the tip... I used to think this was such a ridiculous practice. What has happened to me?)

 I should have gotten a better shot of the ears without his hair in the way but oh well. As you can see they don't match perfectly. I used to be so good at mixing paints to match other colors but lately I've been having a lot of trouble. I'm not entirely displeased though since my ears are also more red than my face so it doesn't feel entirely absurd.

And here is his as-yet-scarless face. The next time you see him (so long as I'm not a lazy butt) that will be a thing that exists.

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.

I'm sure you're all quite sick of this by now

Even though I liked my last attempt better than the first (sort of), I still wasn't happy with Avelarion and since he's one of my favorite characters I decided I just could not ignore the issue and pretend things were okay. I just didn't enjoy looking at him and I kept trying to come up with reasons why but in the end it was actually the yellows.

His face was too yellow and it just kept making me think it looked unhealthy so this time I decided I was going to use mostly reds and pinks with a little bit of blue and yellow and do way less contour blushing.

Here is a picture of just the head outside before i got around to gloss and such. Mainly here because I couldn't get a decent detail shot indoors. I need to set up an area with good, controlled lighting.

 This time I am finally ACTUALLY happy with it instead of just trying to convince myself I am. I want to try to rig up some other way of attaching his crest, in fact, because I will not be able to remove it without ruining his face up if I just hot glue it on like I normally do.

Also at some point I really need to finish smoothing out his hands and airbrushing them to match him. And I need to move past prototype stage on his ears.

happy mistakes(?)

Right after my natural lighting shot of Avelarion's new face up last time, I managed to overdo it on the hot glue and ruin half of one his eyebrows. This forced me to wipe the head I wasn't sure I liked anyway and redo it.

Today after work I set out to fix his face and attempt to do something I'd be happier with this time.

I limited my colors to only four to try to avoid the muddying the face suffered from last time. Sadly that still happened somewhat thanks to the sealant, but overall I'm less displeased than before. I think more dramatic face ups just aren't my comfort zone.

face up: Avelarion

I attempted Avelarion's face up today. I wanted to do something more exciting and dramatic than his previous one. Sadly that is not something I have a lot of practice with and just about every time I attempt a more dramatic face up I end up hating it. I've tried a number of times on Esyrlon and it never works out.

I got through the first layer of blushing and was pretty sure it wasn't going to work out but I decided to keep going anyway. I regret that decision. I'm not great with cameras so I can't pick up all the details but they're not really worth seeing.

It was much more readily apparent in natural lighting so perhaps if I don't decide to wipe it by tomorrow I can attempt to get pictures of that. But no promises. I'm going to leave it for now to see if it grows on me, but I definitely don't love it like I did Istthraen's.

I think a lot of the issue is how much I defined his lips. I'm usually pretty vague with that and I'm not sure what I was thinking when I did that.

I'm kind of okay with it if I hold his hair down so it lays closer to the sides of his head. He's this odd combination of more pretty and more severe than he used to be and I'm not sure how I feel about it. It doesn't help that he has weird eyes that usually look black with light centers. He looks pretty pleasant in all the pictures I took but in person he looks kinda scary. I guess I'll see how I feel after a few days or if I can even make it that long.

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.

change of plans (body mods and face up practice)

Everything was settled. I was planning to work on Batu's clothes today since I wasn't working.

Then last night I ended up looking at this Impldoll body I have and the proportions have always felt a bit off to me. It could just be the fact that it's more stylized so it doesn't look like it actually has hip bones. I don't know.

Anyway, somehow when I got home I ended up deciding to mod the body's torso shorter before I did anything else.

I decided to be slightly more 'scientific'(??) about it than usual since I wasn't entirely happy with how my last torso shortening turned out. So I marked off a few spots 1cm apart and then took a picture.

The body is too small for the head but I'm not really in a position to buy another one at the moment so it's just gonna have to do. Anyway I then took the picture into photoshop and put the upper part on a separate layer from the lower part and started to experiment with where I thought it looked best. Based on that, I was going to cut the torso 2cm above my chosen line and then round it out.

I ended up needing half markings because my favorite position was between two of my numbers. So I marked in half centimeters after the photoshop bit and figured out where I needed to cut. Then it was off to the great outdoors to saw away at things and bury myself in resin dust. The respirator kept everything out of my lungs but protective eye wear is a little less good at that since resin dust can sneak in through the ventilation holes.

I washed off all the pieces to get rid of all the dust and set them out to dry in the bathroom. I seldom bother to actually smooth out things like this because they're not going to be visible under any reasonable circumstance. Now that I know the joint functions, it would be something I would consider, but I wasn't keen on going to that much trouble if I might have to just dremel it some more in a few minutes.

I tested it with the upper body before restringing just to be sure it fit but sometimes joints seem fine and then you string the body and they're completely non-functional.

Here is the finished product. Not exactly like the mock up but pretty close and I am happier with it than before. I was going to attempt to make her into a character from my main story so she'd fit in better with everyone else, but I have had it in my head since I first got her that I wanted to make her into another character of mine, Selenor, whose name is based on my mis-hearing of the name Celaeno as a child, and who is also (not-so-coincidentally) a harpy.

Then I was going to really quickly give Andael and Statik new face ups and somehow that turned into airbrushing practice. Andael's face was coming along fairly well, and then I turned around and accidentally knocked his head off the table and it landed in a pile of charcoal and cement. Fun.

One of his elf ear mods came off (they're really crummy hastily applied ones anyway so it wasn't a huge loss and I just super glued it back on) and he got a small chip in his nose, but otherwise the only damage was to his face up. Often, when I like how something is coming along and it gets ruined, my first instinct is to try to salvage it rather than just start over even if I know that won't work.

But I tried to anyway and his face ended up way too dark as a result. I was about to start practicing on Statik but then Selly got home and we went to go see Captain America and I lose the light so I decided to finish him up with pastels since that was my plan in the beginning anyway. There are plenty of others who need new face ups who can be test subjects and Andael will need a redo at some point because he's far too dark for his body now.

But here they are:

Statik looks insanely pale next to Andael but I'm happier with his new look than I was with my older attempt at doing his face. I miss Andael's freckles. He wasn't even supposed to have them before. I just re-did the eyebrows from when his head was originally intended to be Aleksandr, but I like them so much I might just make them canon. But that will have to wait until I redo his face and make it less crazy over-colored. I actually don't mind the color but it just looks too out of place next to his body.

Tomorrow work is closed for Easter so I am hoping to actually get some clothing work done. Batu is theoretically first priority but I have given up on making myself any promises because sometimes inspiration just drags me off in another direction. I also have some ideas for clothes for my potential Selenor that I am tentatively excited about.

And of course Deidara needs something resembling proper clothes (thought I am fairly certain I still have his super simple flashback outfit lying around in the clothing drawer something) and my Istthraen also needs clothes. I'm really bad at designing skimpy clothes for guys though so that is proving challenging.

progression of modification: Deidara

For those who haven't followed me since I used to post these updates on doll projects on LJ, a looong time ago back when I was first getting into bjds, I was really heavy into Naruto and my favorite characters were Sasori and Deidara (I still wear a ring on my left thumb because that's the finger Sasori wore his on).

Anyway, I decided I needed them in doll form. This was something I had to have, and it felt like this oh-so-appropriate combination of their two methods of creating art, what with things being hand sculpted with clay initially and then cast as crazy puppet-esque dealies. (minus the explosions but.. sorry Dei, I'm in Sasori's camp there)

Rambling. Sorry. So I got molds for them and I did all these heavy mods to Sasori's body to make it look right for him and it's still one of the mod projects I'm the most proud of. But as the years have gone by and the direction of my collection has changed, I've been less inclined to do anything with them because their style just no longer appealed to me as much as it once did.

I mentioned last time (I think) that in an effort to reconnect with Dei, I attempted some mods on him that didn't turn out so well. And recently I was inspired to try to fix him up.

We'll start with a couple before pics to show what I was working with. He is a DiL Rydel and I'm fairly certain they were an offshoot of DiM that doesn't exist anymore.

The first is an old picture I took. The face up was still mostly default but I added eyeliner. This was back before we'd actually seen Deidara's left eye, so I was kind of making up stuff and decided to go with some crazy target eyes from Soom for that one. The second picture is from someone's sales thread since I don't have many good pictures.

The first order of business was to reduce the size of the eyes to something more reasonable. I was having trouble getting the other eye to match up properly so I decided to just sculpt his scope right onto his face and be done with it.

I had originally planned to mod the mouth back into a more neutral expression but then I got it in my head that maybe the grin could work after all so I added more epoxy and went in that direction.

 After sanding things (relatively) smooth I decided to coat everything with my airbrush and test out a face up to see how things were coming along. Of course, I found all sorts of little scratches and uneven spots after airbrushing was done. Mostly around the mouth and corners of the scope. The eye was pretty smooth.

I put on Dei's old wig just so the head would be less naked for pictures. From certain angles I like the mouth and from others I don't. Not sure yet what I'll do about that but I'll sleep on it. I didn't bother to paint the scope since this is a trial run anyway and that would have taken a lot more time and energy.  It feels slightly off from the other eye, probably because I sculpted it with his original eye size in mind and didn't take into account where his eye actually would be if it had been modded as well. Silly me. Not sure it bothers me enough to fix and it'll be covered with hair most of the time anyway.

face up: Atlas(?)

For about... forever now, I've wanted a Luts SSDF Cane. I was never super motivated to get any of their other sculpts even though I thought some of them were pretty neat, but for years now I have had Cane on my wishlist. The problem with the wishlist is that things that end up on it often get perpetually moved to the back burner. Especially if they aren't limited or discontinued.

About a zillion other impulse purchases or trades have made their way into the collection since I decided I wanted this guy and every time I had the money or saw one up for sale on the MP, I found some reason not to buy it. The face up didn't appeal to me. I'd have to pay shipping from a foreign country. I had something else I wanted that was more important. Etc.

Pretty dumb excuses for the most part since I almost always wipe and redo face ups and buying things from overseas is just a given in this hobby.

Anyway, after seeing a few companies discontinue some of their basic sculpts, I decided it was about time I went ahead and got Cane for myself on the off chance that Luts exploded one day and left me with no option to.

I had been warned his head was big but I just really wasn't prepared after collecting mostly smaller-headed dolls for the past few years. At one point my roommate had and Abadon head from Luts and we both found it to be a bit on the large side so I really should have expected it, but I didn't.

This was a while back and I didn't have the energy or motivation to give him a new face up and see if that helped me overcome the size issue, so after about a week of letting the head sit on my desk, it ended up in the head closet because I couldn't stand to look at it anymore.

I seriously debated just reselling it and probably would have if it seemed like it might move quickly on the marketplace. But the last two Canes I saw for sale stayed up there for months and months before finally selling, and I already have one head that refuses to sell so I just left him alone.

Too much back story. Moving on. My airbrush was being particularly well behaved yesterday (I only really use it for sealant and color matching because I have thus far been too impatient to practice using it to actually do parts of a face up for more than two seconds in a row) so I decided I needed to get at least one other face up done today.

I looked around for someone to redo and was having trouble deciding. I considered just redoing the face on my mod project (a Panda Workshop Bene for those who were curious) but then I remembered I had this Cane head sitting around in my head closet. So I took him out to the porch and set to work.

Before he had eyes and a wig, I was certain the head was going to look too severe for the character I had in mind. Once I had him properly put together on the spare body, I felt like the face up made him look entirely too childish and innocent.

Atlas is supposed to be Eskilys' younger half brother so obviously the next step was to sit him down next to Esky to see if they looked at least a little bit similar.

(some photos, the above in particular, really don't merit any kind of identifying marking because they are clearly not going to be enticing anyone to visit my blog if they stumble across it, but it has kind of become habit to hit my logo shortcut in photoshop)

Anyway, I feel like it works. They don't have to look super similar  since they're only half siblings. Not like Aura and Cailath who are supposed to be twins and failing at looking like it.

I'm quite happy with him now. Not entirely sure he looks the way Atlas does in my head, but if he doesn't work for Atlas I'm sure I can come up with something else.

arrival of IOS Infernale and face up attempt

IOS shipped my Infernale exactly when they said they would. I was very impressed. He arrived over the weekend while I was out of town for A-kon and my mail carrier was kind enough to call me on my cell phone and get my permission to leave the package with the apartment office so that I could pick it up as soon as I returned. (This saved me a trip to the post office. I was very happy!)

I got home Sunday night but was able to get him from the apartment office on Monday morning before work. For the last couple days he's been sitting around without a face up because I was intimidated.

My last two attempts at face ups came out... less than stellar, to put it politely. I'm very easily discouraged when I fail at something so it can take a while to push past that. Adding to my anxiety was the fact that Infernale has an open mouth with two interchangeable tongue pieces and I struggle with doing face ups on dolls with the tiniest bit of teeth showing.

After a bit of arguing with myself, I decided to gather up my airbrush and pastels and assortment of brushes and head out to the balcony to get to work. It is absurdly hot outside today so I was quite uncomfortable, but luckily I was in my project zone so I didn't notice until I was all done.

I didn't really get any in progress pics, because I didn't want to get too attached while there was still the possibility of screwing it up terribly, but here are some pictures of the face once it was pretty much finished.

I think I overdid it a bit on the red under the eyes and on the eyeshadow. I really struggle with face ups on WS dolls.

Here are the tongue pieces post-blushing. These were a pain to do because they're so small and they wanted to fly off the table when I tried to seal them. And then the pastels didn't want to stick to them so I had to airbrush them and they kept getting stuck to my fingers and falling and collecting dust. I'm going to have to break out the tweezers if I redo these guys.

And here are some shots of the completed head with the two different tongue pieces. It was already a tight fit, but the layer of gloss on the tongues made it even harder to get them in and out. I'm sure there is some chipping of the paint in their future.  I was, however, relatively pleased with the color.

And here we have a shot of him on a body which may or may not be his permanent one. The hands I've been saving since 2008 just in case I ever decided to shell his character. They came with Soom's Vega - Last Song and they've been sitting in a closet for about five years now.

Not 100% certain about this wig, but the one I was planning to use didn't look quite right once he had a face up. (really liked it before that though). Will see how it goes though.