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.

mini projects

I got on a bit of a selling things kick and ended up doing a few trades and fun stuff like that.

The first thing I got in a partial trade was a Leon Kennedy Minimee head. Ever since seeing Enzyme's on DoA, I've kind of wanted one.

Anyway, the one I got had been modded and the eyes were opened more. The above picture is how it looked when it arrived. I forgot to take my own pictures so that's one of the sales pictures. I decided I would just mod the eyes into a more serviceable shape. The default eyes for the sculpt looked almost closed to me so I sort of just chose a shape to sculpt them into.

Here's the head after a round of epoxying. I haven't sanded them at all yet so they're pretty uneven. But I did get some eyes for him.

I got a really good (in my opinion) deal on a Resinsoul immature bust, which I put on Elaria's body since I really didn't intend for hers to be as big as the default one that came with her.  NSFW picture of the new bust on her body.

The fit isn't perfect so I will have to do some modding, but for now I feel like it looks fine with clothes on. Behold my glorious photoshop skills trying to hide the mess that is my house.!

a busy day

As mentioned in my last post, I decided to sell some things because I needed IOS Infernale. There is an 80-85% chance he will be my Istthraen, a character I have wanted in doll form for years.

Anyway, with one of my sales I was asked if I could do another face up on the head for them. I was a little nervous about that since I've only ever done face ups for myself and Selly.

I did sort of a 'mock up' version yesterday, laying down the general colors and blushing to give the person an idea of what I was getting from their request, and after getting the go ahead I started on the real version today. Luckily, they were online and I was able to get feedback relatively quickly after sending them new pictures!

Between messages, I started work on a new robe for Auralion. His old one was just cotton and I figured he'd want something a little more ostentatious than that. I had this sort of idea that I might want to do the robe in black but I wasn't 100% sure that would look okay, so I made both versions.

I also made his pseudo-tabard thingy but it came out way too wide and kinda wonky so I'll have to revise that later. I'm not sure if the black would work okay if the thing didn't cover most of the lower half, but for now I'm pretty sure I like the red better.

 Here is the face up I spent most of the day on and off working on. Some of the blushing detail is lost because indoor lighting tends to do that. But it shows the basics of it reasonably well.

Now I just need to figure out what I can use as a face protector for shipping since I'm not sure I have any around.

selling things to afford other things

My title is the most descriptive thing in the history of descriptive things that are descriptive.

Oh yeah.!

I fell off the face of the bjd hobby for a bit (as I am prone to doing on a semi-regular basis). Usually it's a few months on, a few months off. It's a cycle.

Anyway, I was drawn back in by the completion of IOS' Infernale. 

I only want his head but I was worried I wouldn't be able to afford it. But it ended up being the push I needed to finally sell some things I'd been not entirely happy with for a while, so now I can afford him. All is well.

I am excited!

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.

sweater attempts

I got pretty sick last weekend which kinda put Aura's outfit on hold. And, as so often happens, once I lose momentum it's hard to get it back. So today when I got inspired to try to work on some sort of project it was between redoing Orkas' face and making fitting clothes for Aleksandr.

Alek ended up winning in the end when I ran across a tutorial for making sweaters on DoA.

This is not the best sweater ever made and if I had it to do again I'd probably go with something with a tighter knit, but I really wanted this color and only had two pairs of socks lying around in this color. One would have resulted in a folded over turtleneck top part (which I liked) but would have made it impossible to avoid some sort of brand name or logo (which I didn't like).

I'd say it's not the greatest sweater I've ever made, but it actually is because I suck at sweaters. I think it will look passable once I make some sort of jacket for him to wear over it.

outfit progress (now with 'gloves')

Today I painstakingly crafted the glove dealies for this outfit. They're pretty simple, but it was a pain to get them right. The first attempt was fine with just the crushed panne velvet, but the brocade ruined the stretch so it didn't work anymore. If I had been thinking clearly, I would not have done this all in one piece and would have used snaps or velcro to fasten it in the back or something.

Anyway, after multiple attempts, I got these to work. I ended up having to hand sew most of them because I'm not good enough with the sewing machine to be accurate on such a small scale.

I'm relatively pleased with the results, however. Eventually I plan to remake the base robe in red silk and then add a semi-tabard dealy down the front and back so that the lower half of the robe doesn't look stupid boring by comparison.

It absolutely did not occur to me to even look at my sketch plans until after I posted this picture. I added the little parts around the wrist as an afterthought when I felt the gloves looked too plain. I was wondering why I didn't account for that. Then I realized that I DID. I just forgot. 

in progress clothing

after I got home from work today I got busy making outfits for Aura. I completely screwed up on the hood/cowl deal. I don't even know how it ended up the way it did but it comes to a point in the front and it was supposed to just be straight across. I don't know what I was thinking. So it looked weird and I added another layer under it and I liked it better. I still need to do the semi-tabard dealy and the gloves but I think I actually like this version of the top part better than my sketch or the modified version in my head.

I could not shoot this from an angle that didn't make it look stupid, so here's the best I managed.