EID sitting fix

I was browsing threads on DoA and ran into one on modding an Iplehouse EID body so that it can sit up without leaning against something. I've been meaning to do something about this for ages, but other things keep coming up and I end up putting it off.

But not today! I un-strung Theorin and took his torso and legs out onto the patio and set to work with my dremel!

First I made the notch on the legs go down further. The green marks show about how far down it used to go since I don't have before and after pics. I was in too much of a hurry. I briefly thought about carving in a notch in the legs in the front (seen here as ugly scratch-like things) but I'll sand and smooth that out later. Luckily the realskin color goes all the way through so it wont' be discolored.

Then I took in the area in the front part of the hip joint so that the body could lean further forward. I also carved a notch into the upper torso joint to help the torso lock into position when he's leaning forward, but it ended up not being necessary and he can sit just fine without having to use it. 

Here he is, sitting completely un-supported! He still leans back slightly, but it's not near as bad as before and I'm very relieved to not have to lean him against walls anymore!

new stuff

I got a few new things over the past couple weeks. First off was my Dollzone Moment, which was made possible by a loan from Selly (and in return I will be paying for her fancy new camera!) Win win situation there.

I'm not very good with MSDs and recently decided my last one was going to be up-sized to a small SD. Moment is at the moment the one exception to my SDs-only rule.

The next arrival was my Angelsdoll Baku, who is my re-shelling of Eskilys. He was one of my oldest bjds and one of the only ones I hadn't 'upgraded' since getting him. I feel like he looks much more like his character now (and he even fit the wig I had for his old head!) Now I just need to make him new goggles since the old ones don't fit.

And lastly, I upgraded Statik to small SD size. I got a really cheap, damaged Zaoll Luv head (complete with headback!) off of DoA. The head was originally a sleeping head, but the last owner had opened the eyes some. There also appear to be some sanding or scratch marks on the nose.

I further modded the eyes to try to give them a similar shape to my L-bi so that it might look something like a more grown up L-bi. I need to go in and add eyelids at some point, but I wasn't feeling up to the task today.

Last night I made him a new wig. The old one actually fit, but it was too short. It looks too puffy where the part is in the photo, but in person it smooths down nicer. I just tend to not notice ridiculous things like that until after I look at the pictures on the computer.

Ezsphrein's updated face

I was going to just be lazy and leave the old face up on. And then I tried to just touch it up and see if it could be salvaged. I was going to just leave that, but I left him sitting on my bed and since Selly comes in to say hi most days after work that kind of turned out to be my motivator. Because it was between redoing the face up so she wouldn't see the horror and hiding him somewhere she wouldn't see him. And I decided if it was bad enough that I would hide him then it was bad enough that I should get it done rather than put it off for another day.

So I wiped him clean and mixed up a bunch of thinned out liquitex matte medium to put in a small jar so that I can just shove a few drops in the airbrush whenever I need to seal a face in the future. (Another wonderful thing about the airbrush for sealing? Even if I accidentally spray it on so thick the face looks wet, it doesn't smear the face up like my other sealants do)

For attempt #2 I just scrapped the whole black ashy look and went for a more subtle thing with greys and browns. I"m a lot more happy with this attempt.

All the natural lighting was gone by this point, so this is taken in my room. No matter how hard I try to make him look angry, Ezsphrein always looks so cute to me. This isn't entirely a bad thing though. It's part of what drew me to him initially.

5 years of yellowing and he's still too white for what's supposed to match 'volks white'. XD He's not the paper white he used to be, but he's still quite pale. I find doing face ups on white skinned dolls really difficult. With normal skin I use a lot of browns and reds, but that's usually too harsh to use on white. Anyway... I'll leave the picture up on the last entry just so I can be reminded of my failure. XD

I think I might be in love with my airbrush

So today I decided Ezsphrein's face needed a redo. It's been ages.

I was going to be lazy and just use the good ol' fashioned testor's dullcote, but it was about to rain and it was humid out and it didn't want to stick right. And when I finally did get it to coat the head, I was having a hard time blending. Now, this problem isn't new. I've always had trouble with blending when using ... pretty much any spray sealant. But apparently after only two face ups using my air brush for either the sealant layer or a paint layer to cover mods, I'm spoiled.

So I dragged out the airbrush and mixed my liquitex matte medium with water (I found that a 2:1 ratio was working pretty well for me. 2 drops liquitex to one drop water, that is). It set quickly and gave me enough tooth for ease of blending, but this time not so much that fine details were difficult. (eyebrows were super easy this time)

Alas,  I had this last minute great idea to incorporate some darker greys since Scileraen's face up is so heavy on blacks and such. (in my mind when fire dragons take humanoid form, they tend to have what looks like ash around their eyes). Anyway.. said last minute idea didn't work out so well and undid my contouring work when I positioned it incorrectly. I didn't fully realize this until his hair was on and then I was like "oh.. shit." So it kind of works like reverse contouring, making his nose look wider than it actually is. Not what I was going for. I plan to redo it. I guess it wouldn't be a bad idea to go ahead and get that done.

Quick picture of my improperly done work. But see? He has eyebrows. And I feel like the colors blend pretty smoothly. Yeah anyway... so the airbrush + liquitex matte mediium is probably officially replacing Testor's as my go-to sealant (unless there's some hidden drawback to this that I'm unaware of). It also had no trouble at all with the humidity! Yet another bonus.

trying something different

Today I did more experimenting with the airbrush. I wanted to mess with it on doll heads to try to get a feel for the amount of pressure and distance I needed to get color to show up without making spidery lines. I'm still sort of learning where I need to hold my hand to get color to show up in the right area.

I decided to try to give Id a face up by airbrush, since I wasn't happy with his old one. But I'm not yet good enough at telling where I'm spraying so it was going everywhere. However, I discovered yesterday with Kael that an airbrushed layer makes blushing with pastels a lot easier because it gives it extra tooth. So I got out my liquitex matte medium and put that in the airbrush and used that to do Id's first layer of sealant. It gave the head such a nice degree of tooth that I was able to do the entire face up in one layer. Didn't seal again until I was all done.

The only drawback was that it was a bit too toothy for making eyebrow lines. Wouldn't be a problem if I was better at using paint for eyebrows, but since I use colored pencils it was a bit challenging. Perhaps next time I'll thin down the liquitex a bit.

Anyway, new faceup is less obnoxious than the last one was. I'm having enough difficulty adapting to doing more subtle face ups (that don't include really dark bags under the eyes or eyeshadow, etc) but it's even harder to adapt to doing children.

The nice thing about using the airbrush for this is that it doesn't smell awful like spray sealants and like two drops of liquitex matte medium will cover a whole head. (Id has a small head but I went over it like three times with those two drops)

Anyway... onward to pictures!

first use of my airbrush

It's been over a year since I got it, but the thing is damned intimidating. And I must say that I'm a bit glad I was intimidated. If I'd just gone in and tried to use it without waiting until I was in a calm and patient mood, I probably would've chucked it off the balcony. There was a very specific consistency I had to get paint to in order for it to work, and figuring out which way to pull the lever and how much pressure to apply to get anything to happen was a bit of a pain initially.

Either nothing would come out or everything would come out at once. And then once I was comfortable enough using it on scrap paper and an old chair, I tried it on Kael's head and it just sent the paint radiating out in spindly patterns every which way. It took me a while to realize that I had to hold it pretty far back to avoid that.

I don't yet feel comfortable enough with it to attempt a full face up, but I did manage to blush my mods to Kael's face to match the rest of his head, so now he does not have extremely visible white marks around his mouth! And that's what matters.

If you look really closely you can still see where they are, but it's a vast improvement over being able to see them from across the room!

After this was done I gave him a new face up. This time I didn't have model viewer up so I could stare at the in-game model for Kael. I know this sculpt can pull off Kael, so I didn't really feel obligated to stick to it exactly.

I think I might have gone a bit too far in the 'subtle' direction again. Doesn't show up very well in photos. Oh well. This is what practice was invented for.

 

 In my room.

 Natural lighting.

And for funsies heavily photoshopped shot.

natural light photos and attempts at eyelash application

So I promised some natural lighting photos of Orkas' face. (I'm sure you all were holding me to that and awaiting them anxiously too).

Well it's rather cloudy out and I had to actually go outside on the porch for these because not enough light wanted to come in through the window. So this means the photos aren't from a consistent angle because I was trying to hold a doll and hold the camera.

In other words, these are ridiculously bad, un-artistic photos.

But at least now we can actually see that Orkas has eyebrows and isn't just completely blank. I really fail at this whole 'natural' thing. Not my forte. I much prefer dark and dramatic, or at least like gaunt and worn out.

While I was out there I decided to get pictures of another sort of project I'm trying to work on. My first attempt at applying eyelashes. I never give them to my guys because I have a near-impossible time making them look like men when they have eyelashes. I realize that real men pull this off all the time, but real mean look a bit more rugged than dolls most of the time. There are a couple of my dudes who I have considered giving eyelashes to (Avelarion mostly) but we'll burn that bridge when we come to it.

Anna was my test subject. She's my only other girl aside from Elaria who is not currently being sold and Elaria already has lashes. She came with them.

Anyway... this is not my forte. I spent ages trying to get them in last night, let the glue dry overnight, tried to put eyes in and the eyelashes immediately started to fall out. So I looked up tutorials and they pretty much did exactly what I did so that was no help. So I just kind of put more layers of glue over them and on the inside and am hoping that will help them stay. If not I think I'll just swear off the use of eyelashes forever...

These are actually meant to go on people so they're obscenely long on Anna. But I didn't want to go to the trouble of ordering doll-size eyelashes for an experimental procedure that might not turn out okay.

Three coats of glue later, they still won't stay put.  I officially hate doll eyelashes. And these photos may very well be the last time anyone hears from these.

face up practice: Orkas (Elfdoll K)

I've had Orkas (right) in the same blonde wig since I got him. It was always intended to be a temporary, but somehow over four years later it was still in use. I got so used to it that I almost forgot Orkas wasn't actually blonde.

But a while back in my quest for the right wig for Loren, I acquired an orange-ish wig that I wasn't doing anything with. Orkas' hair is supposed to be in the light orange-ish range, so today I decided to give that to him and style it appropriately.

After that it occurred to me that I haven't re-done his face up in ages and since I'm trying to get around to re-doing everybody eventually I figured I would do him. I experimented with a more subdued, natural look and while I'm relatively okay with the results, it is hard to photograph in this lighting. I'll probably try to get natural lighting photos tomorrow.

Orkas with new face up and wig:

sculpted eyebrows and other mods

When Impldoll released Triton I was pretty excited because I've been trying to find a doll for a minor character of mine who is a water dragon. I originally tried getting a Vega Last Song for him but it didn't work out.

Basically, the representation isn't supposed to be 100% accurate to the character, but I want something that is similar and gets across the right feel. Technically Aeisthran is blue too but I didn't realize Impl would do blue if asked so I just went for grey because I've always wanted a grey skin doll anyway.

But anyway, I didn't do much with him for ages, but then a couple days ago I decided I wanted to make his eyes smaller and sculpt him eyebrows. He has a gill-beard so it seemed weird that he'd have hair eyebrows.

I tried them first in Premo but they fell off during cooking. Then I tried to cast those in resin so I could just glue them on his face, but my mold release didn't work and the silicon just stuck to itself and ate them. So I got some epoxy putty and just used that. Probably should have done that in the first place but it was late and I didn't want to wait until the next day to try them.

I threw on some paint and such so the white eyebrows wouldn't be so jarring. Everything's pretty messy (there was an experiment with a sort of drippy/watery texture going on with the upper half of the head) but I wanted there to at least be something before I took pictures.

I don't know what sort of wig I want for him. I considered just leaving him bald but if I go that route I'll probably mod like weird tentacles or something onto his head to make his head look less naked. Right now he's in a wig I made a while back because he's supposed to have white or grey hair and this is my only spare white wig.

structural modification

I had planned to put off actually modding Scileraen until tomorrow during the day. But then I wasn't particularly tired and was in such a good mood I decided to just go for it! To hell with caution!

Since the porch light would disturb Selly, I gathered my wood carving tools from my printmaking class, got one of my functional respirators, and grabbed my packets of sandpaper. Then I locked myself in the bathroom with a bucket of water so that I could keep resin dust under control.

I wrapped my left hand in an oven mitt and a towel because whenever I use carving tools I inevitably cut my hands pretty badly. Luckily, this time things went smoothly and the process was injury-free!

I drew lines for where I wanted the hollows of the cheeks to be and really roughly carved in the basic shape. Then I pulled out my 300 grit sandpaper and sanded until the surface was relatively smooth. After going up to about 1500 grit it was back to being the same color as the surrounding un-modded resin.

While looking at the jagged shapes my carving tools make, I got the idea to give Scileraen his forehead scars because the jaggedness reminded me of the weird crinkles scars get. So I gouged up his forehead and it's not pretty but it is accurate to his character. (kind of odd that I feel that way seeing as normally I find scars appealing.)

I didn't want to wipe the face up I just did earlier today so I just modded without wiping it and then sealed over it after and just touched up the modded areas. I can sort of see the line between the two parts, but it's not very obvious. Not near as bad as when I tried to mod my realskin Akando without wiping his face... that was pretty terrible looking XD

Anyway, here are some pictures where you can (hopefully) see the mod work that has been done:

Right side of the face.

Left side of the face.

And fairly straight on.

They're not perfectly even, but I'm pretty happy with it.! Also, the wig is dry now (it doesn't look it, but it is.) I used hair glue on the ends to bring them to points but the rest is just the way they naturally stay after my boiling water treatment. I am also pleased with this! I'm sure most people wouldn't find this look particularly appealing but I had a really specific look in mind and a fur wig, while easily styled this way, would have made his hair look too soft. And it's not supposed to be soft.