torso mod cont.: Customhouse body

Originally posted: April 11, 2009, 17:26

Today I broke out the dremel and attacked the lower torso piece, trying to make it nice and curvy so the upper joint can move around in it. The experimental temporary joint is cooking up as we speak. Or.. type.

Here I am covered in resin dust, holding up my modded lower torso (which you cannot see very well due to the lighting...)

The dremel sent the resin dust flying at about a million miles per hour so even wearing protective masks and eye wear didn't completely shield me from the rabid dust storm that ensued. As a result, I feel a tad woozy from resin dust inhalation.

Another cool thing about dremels as opposed to chisels and regular sandpaper-- for some reason the sanding attachments will go through resin like it's the slightly harder stick butter, but doesn't leave a scratch when it comes in contact with my skin. At one point I slipped and sent the dremel flying into one of my fingers. It didn't hurt but I was almost certain that in the next few seconds I would start to bleed profusely. However, while my fingernail was good and scratched, the skin was completely unharmed.

----a few minutes later----

As the cooking process has just finished, I will give the upper torso some time to cool down and then I'll test how well it functions.

The color doesn't match but as this is more of a test run, that's okay. It seems to line up with the lower part reasonably well.

Getting in the basic shape of the swivel joint/added mobility in upper leg joint.

Basic shape of both joints fleshed out. Added some ledges so it can lock into place and made a hole for string to go through. You can see the skin is lighter where my thumb ring normally is in these pictures.

Picture of how it locks into position. (After this picture I edited the lower half of the joint some so it would provide a more smooth transition into the leg rather than having this odd bump.

Leg joints are cooking now...

Ear mods: Kael'thas (Soom Vega)

Originally posted: May 13, 2009, 21:34

Kael's ears are still in-progress but I thinned them out a lot today. I always think people are nuts when they say they spend hours sanding, but I was trying to calculate how much time I'd spent on this while I was working and I realized I have put in several hours of sanding so far and am not yet done.

Ear mod: Scileraen (Limhwa Mano)

Originally posted: May 6, 2009, 02:06
I've been on a bit of a creative high lately so between projects that need to be done for school, I try to find time to do things like hack apart bjd limbs and add joints or repaint figures.
Well, one project I'd been meaning to work on for a while was Scileraen's ears. I usually draw him with dragony ears (being part dragon and all) and I had an extra pair of 'fin' ears lying around that I decided I was not going to use with the person they originally came with. So I set about attaching them to him in a rather permanent fashion.
A bit of paint later, he had properly red ears that (I think) work well with him! Re-did his face and dyed/styled his hair while I was at it!

figure mod cont., torso mod: Customhouse body

Originally posted: April 9, 2009, 15:38

 I wanted to do something. In a perfect world, that something would require the use of a hacksaw. So I grabbed one of my bjd bodies that has virtually no posing capabilities short of sitting, standing, and bending the elbows, and decided I wanted to add swivel joints (and possibly one of those double joint dealies) to the upper legs and wanted to convert the torso from two pieces to three pieces.

The body in question is one of the old Customhouse bodies. I've actually considered selling it to get money for a more flexible replacement, but it was the body that came with my first larger bjd so it's been with me for a while and served me well. About five bazillion heads have sat on this body at one point or another and I figured 1) that it was about time it stopped being 'the spare' and 2) it wouldn't be the end of the world if I messed up.

So I began hacking along the line I had drawn with my new mini hacksaw.


And very very slowly worked my way around the body. The resin was thick as hell. Not that I'm complaining--it's very sturdy that way.

An exhausting eternity later, I got it into two separate pieces. By this time I was excessively tired and wanted that nap I was so opposed to earlier, but I still had two legs to cut so I grabbed the large hacksaw and went to work.

The legs were much thinner and this is absolutely wonderful for what I plan to do! I modded a swivel joint into Volks SD13 legs once and the resin was so thick I had to widen the hole so I could fit anything in there and still be able to re-string it.
A swivel joint alone would almost be too easy with all that extra space in these, however. I shall give the double jointy dealy that allows the legs to be pulled up toward the chest some very serious consideration.
Lastly, now is nap time. Or at least sitting still and doing mindless things for a while time.
Edit: Having somehow skipped nap time, I ended up doing more sanding on future Kael and added a layer of red paint. Sadly, I realized after this was done that I might actually want to add onto that area since It was only raised in the front since that was the only part showing on the Sephiroth figure.

In other sad news, the legs and arms seem to be cast in black and not just painted that way, so this could be challenging to work with. It would most certainly be easier to just do Tempest Keep Kael since his robes have sleeves, but there are pros and cons to doing either one.

figure mod cont., custom ear add-ons, and torso joint mods

Originally posted: April 8, 2009, 16:48


Here I am in my new goggles and face mask, getting ready to go out and work with things that I don't want in my eyes or mouth.

As sawing off pieces of things takes so little time, in my overzealousness I forgot to get before pics. So I'm holding up the piece I took off. This was from the center of the middle joint in a three-piece torso. Prevents the upper part from moving too far forward or back, but it limits posing ability. As I consider myself experienced enough to not be bothered by potentially floppy joints, I usually will err on the side of excess flexibility and just put a little more work into getting them to hold a pose.


A couple views of what I did. Still really rough but already much more functional. A few minutes of sanding will make that smooth again if I'm so inclined.


Next on my list of things to do was continue my modification of the Sephiroth figure. While browsing a forum on doing Pinky:St. mods last night, I discovered that nail polish remover will take off the existing paint on figures. So I headed out to the dollar store and acquired some and went to work on the back and lower torso.
I plan to keep that raised area on the lower torso because I am being entirely too amibitious and want to make him have removable pieces that would allow him to switch between Tempest Keep Kael and Magister's Terrace Kael, and once I've sanded the sephiroth-esque details off that part it would work fine for part of Kael's outfit in Terrace.

A few more paint coats were added and then I put the front and back of the head together again. I'll probably use some sort of weak glue on it once I know for sure I'm happy with everything, just to make sure his hair doesn't spontaneously fall off. Though maybe I'll leave it since if I want to do Terrace Kael I might need to make a different front piece that could be switched out.

And lastly, did more work on the ear add-ons I made (for bjds, not humans). I decided to use the method that Soom seems to use with their bjds and make the ears sort of fit around the head's default ears. I have, on several occasions, used epoxy to add ears onto heads, but for something this large I wanted to make it detachable for transportation purposes.
They're really rough in some parts because the molds I made to cast them in weren't quite perfect because I was being lazy and didn't want to wait 12 hours for a multi-part silicon mold to harden. Little bit of sanding should get everything nice and smooth though. I also possibly want to work on thinning out some parts to make them less bulky.
I also want to finally finish sanding and painting Sasori's 'heart'. However, I'm not sure if I want to use the color scheme from the anime for two reasons: 1) the anime deviated from some of his colors as shown in the manga. 2) they didn't seem like the sorts of colors that would go with something that was clearly one of the few organic pieces left of him.
I'm going to give it some more thought and spend some time staring at both manga and anime pictures before I make any final decisions. If anyone has any opinions or arguments for or against that particular coloration (or if some magical colored manga picture of it has surfaced that I was unaware of) feel free to say something.
Edit: Sasori's temporary paint job. Because I live for instant gratification.

Sasori's stomach coil

Originally posted: March 2, 2008, 11:40


Here you can actually see it since he's leaning back on his arm. This picture comes complete with body parts all over in the background :D (as I was restringing several people at the time)

Torso modification: Ezsphrein (Lati Chaim)

Originally posted: December 3, 2010, 18:05

This modification project has been a long time coming. I got Ezsphrein in November of 2006. That means he's been with me over 4 years now... wow. Sorry, took a moment to sit and ponder that. Anyway, at the time I was inexperienced and had no expectations. While he continues to live up to my expectations in many ways, I quickly found that there were bodies out there that did not want to make me tear my hair out in frustration. So today, after being inspired by looking at modification threads on DoA, I decided to attempt to fix what I considered to be Ezsphrein's one major flaw.


Ezsphrein's (Lati Chaim) torso. Anyone who has ever worked with a one piece torso should know why this is a source of frustration to me. Some people really like the look of uninterrupted torso--no joints to ruin the nude photos sessions. Despite Ezsphrein's penchant for gay porn, he wanders around clothed. And even if he didn't, this whole leaning back when he sits thing had to go.


I've marked off the spots I'm planning to cut/mod. The above picture shows a better example of what I did to the lower torso. Really minor stuff, so we'll mostly ignore that. But the upper torso needed a joint, in my opinion. And I've seen quite a few of these under the pecs/breast/whatever joints and wanted to try one out.


Here is the tool I used. It's the blade from a coping saw wrapped with tape on one end. I ended up cutting off the other end where it attaches so nothing would come between my mini saw and my mod work.

 
I have begun to slice open the torso from the back. Because I wanted to cut at an upward angle on the front of the chest, I didn't think it would be viable to start there.


and more cutting. Progress is being made, slowly but surely.


After nearly three hours of sawing, the torso is finally in two pieces.



side view of the 'damage'.


After this I pulled out the dremel to hollow out the upper torso piece some. This is it after a fair bit of dremeling.

 
This one is mainly for reference so you can see how thick the resin was. I was covered in the stuff after dremeling out that much.


I sanded/dremeled down the lower torso some so it would fit a bit better in the upper torso's curve. I'm planning to go back in with epoxy and do some additive work on top of that but I was quite tired after all the work today.


Here it is from the front.

 
And here is Ezsphrein, able to sit up without leaning back so far I worry he's going to fall over unless I put something behind him.

figure modification: Sephiroth to Kael'thas

Originally posted:  April 7, 2009, 18:51

Yesterday, Selly and I went to Home Depot and acquired a wall shelf so that I could begin unpacking my figures. As I went through them, I noticed that I had several figures I owned only because they looked cool or posed well and not because I actually wanted one of that character.

It was at about this point that I ran across a Sephiroth figure I've had for quite a while now. Being the obsessive person that I am, I noticed that his hairstyle is similar to Kael's.

While Sephiroth was indeed one of my favorite characters from FF7 back in the day, the major reason I owned a figure of him was because it looked cool and had fifty bazillion points of articulation. With this in mind, I began to ponder doing something I'd been wanting to for a long time.

As some of you may already know, I have a bit of an obsession with customizing or modifying things that I own to better suit my needs or my aesthetic tastes. This is most noticeably expressed in my work with BJDs, but I also frequently modify my clothing, electronics, and music.

Figure modification is something I've seen before and wanted to get into. I've just never found something I particularly wanted to modify (though I have spent over a year casually looking for something to do this with).

On the shallow basis of similar hair, I decided to make my Sephiroth figure into a Kael'thas figure.



One of the great things about some figures made in recent history is that they've started doing this neat thing where individual parts of the figure are not always cast together. This makes my job a lot easier, as I was able to remove his coat and shoulders without much effort.





Mello has, for now, absconded with the coat. The Shoulders are lying on one of my bookshelves with a rehabilitating Orochimaru.



While a lot of what was not removable could be easily repainted or covered up, the crossing straps across the chest needed to be dealt with. I got out my handy wood cutting tool kit and began chiseling away.



After a couple minutes, I'd eliminated most of the black.



I spent a few more minutes chiseling away anything that stuck out too much and then whipped out my supply of sandpaper. Starting at 150 grit and ending in 2500, I was able to smooth out the chest so that most evidence of the straps was obliterated.



<img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/andarton/pic/000q8xxy">



Somewhere during the sanding process I decided the hair was getting in the way, so I removed the head. Luckily, it snaps on and off relatively easily. This made my job of re-painting the hair and eyes infinitely easier.

I'm not sure yet if I'll continue this before school gets out for the summer. This part was incredibly easy, but doing clothing could get tricky and distract me from getting projects done.

experiments with casting: Shinozaki

Originally posted: March 26, 2009, 16:58

Made silicon molds to attempt to cast a head I sculpted. Here is the result:

Shinozaki. Attempt #3. Now with less air bubbles and missing facial features.
Well, he's still missing part of his chin, but that was an issue with the container holding my molds.

<sub><b>Sidenote</b>: Name stolen from a map of the bullet train or subway routes in Japan. I forget which but I have a copy of the map somewhere. Shinozaki is a minor character in a story I've been working on for ages, but he's somehow one of my favorites.

test post: Sasori's modifications

Originally posted: December 30, 2007, 15:58

Today I brought out the hacksaw and did some work on Sasori's modifications so he doesn't just sit around with pencil marks all over him all the time. Resin is incredibly sturdy stuff. I had worried for a while that after I made a huge hole in his stomach that he might not be as stable, but after the incredible difficulty I had getting it cut out, I'm pretty sure he's not in any danger of spontaneously falling apart on me. XD

The most easily seen thing is the huge hole in his stomach! _{You can see his strings!} :D However, I also did cuts in his arms and neck. They're not functional swivel joints just yet, but I think at some point I will make them work that way. Not that I NEED them to because he already has pretty good range of motion in those areas, but still..

You can see the cuts in the upper and lower arms better here. He still has pencil marks on other areas that will need to be cut or modified in some way. I have to make a separate ball joint for the shoulders and (depending on how much my engineering skills have improved by then) some way for the right side of the chest to open and shut.

I did more sanding on the 'heart' thingy today so our next order of business is painting it. I may go ahead and do that soon rather than wait for everything to be finished..

Making the hole in his stomach was really hard. Hacksaws just don't want to go in certain directions. I realize I probably could've used a dremel, but that sends resin dust flying EVERYWHERE and I wasn't in the mood to make a huge mess, so I did things the painful and hard way. I took out spare hacksaw blades (which are flexible when not attached to a hacksaw) and just held them with my hands. Miraculously, I did NOT end up with hands that looked like they could've belonged to Kakuzu.. but it was a little unpleasant feeling at times.

I'm currently working on the mechanics of his spool of wiry stabby stuff in his stomach. I want to make it function but that might be a difficult task. XDD

Anyway so I just wanted to show pictures of my progress today! It makes me very happy.