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.

attempting to design clothes

As much as I kind of like the look of the temporary outfit I have Aura in, I want him to have something of his own that isn't made of spare clothes and Batu's belt.

So I kind of sketched out something based on Priest tier 9. It's simplified because I couldn't make that outfit without wanting to chuck my sewing machine out the window after about five seconds of effort. Among other things.

So I sketched this thing out. I can't decide between the more WoW!Priest colors of greys and whites and black or something. And then the more blood elfy colors of red and gold. Aura's first RP outfit was red and gold but his actual priest tier 9 is more greys and whites.

The red and gold is probably more Aura cuz he's a flashy arrogant jerk. (But I love him that way). And he'd look too much like a unicorn in neutral colors. His hair is already lighter than I'd hoped (but it's growing on me) so I think the red and gold would liven him up some.

It's really hard to resist the urge to picspam him constantly. I'm so utterly and completely in love with his sculpt.

spam (because my new camera functions)

Just a quick update because I'm excited to have a functioning camera. It focuses so fast. I misremembered when I said I'd had my old one for six years. It would have been seven next year. It was old. And cost about 5 times as much as the camera I just bought today but such is the nature of technology.

I kept its old cord and put it on the new one to keep a part of it with me.

I have never had a camera that didn't require me to stop breathing to get a clear shot XD I'm very excited. (I don't need anything fancy. Just something that takes pictures. So this is a massively awesome feature for me.)

Here are two really quick shots taken next to my computer. I was super worried when the camera snapped the shots so fast because on my old one that almost guaranteed the shot was blurry. But then they weren't. It was so cool. XD

broken camera

My poor camera has combusted after six years of loyal service. I managed to get it working for a little bit this morning (long enough to take a zillion pictures of Auralion) and then once I turned it off it wouldn't work again.

So have some picspam and then I'm probably going to head off to start pricing cameras. Mine will be sorely missed.

 My camera didn't want to focus so out of over 120 pictures, these were some of the only ones that weren't blurry beyond recognition. Poor thing was so close to dying, but it was kind enough to allow me one last photoshoot.

Aura's hair is more of a platinum blonde irl but in photos it comes out very white.

I'm happier with this attempt at his face up. Hopefully once he has properly sized eyes he'll look better too! Right now he has 12mm eyes in and they're far too big. But I have some green glass ones in 10mm that should be coming soon. Found some cheap on the MP so that was exciting! Now I just need to make him some proper clothes instead of letting him borrow Batu's waist tie dealy combined with an inside out kimono. XD

Sadly there are 900 people in line ahead of him for clothing. But that doesn't always mean they get priority. So we'll see.

an unsuccessful evening of attempting to airbrush

I managed to color match the ears but I messed up on the face multiple times. Normal sealant and airbrush sealant were both giving me issues so the face up itself came out splotchy. I re-did it twice but finally gave up and just sealed it and put the head on a body because it's late and I didn't have time to redo it again and didn't want to leave him blank overnight.

Also his wig turned out much paler after the boiling. I'm used to wigs getting a little more dull after this treatment, but I was a little surprised at how light it was. Oh well. It's only a temp. It's way too wonky looking to be permanent.

Despite being out of focus, this shot was the only one I liked. Possibly because it's hard to see all the things that went wrong with the face up. And partly because I like the way the hair drapes in this one. Tomorrow after work I may give the face up another go. We'll see how it goes and if I feel up to dealing with the frustration.

When I do the official version of Aura's wig, I think I'll do it the way I draw it, with the part being off-center. One can't really tell where the part is in this picture, but it's in the center and I don't really like how it looks from the front.