New Lyric

I just haven't felt the same attachment to some of my dolls for a while and often that happens when I'm not actively in the hobby for a while so I gave it some time to see if it would pass. And for some of them it did but for others I just realized I wasn't really regaining interest.

So I started listing things for sale and considering options for replacing some of them (though others may not end up being replaced. We'll see). Anyway, after seeing someone's posts on tumblr, I fell for Or-doll's Orlando. I considered buying one but the wait time was off-putting so I decided I'd just put that on the back burner.

Well then a couple days later I saw one for sale on DoA for what I felt was a very good price and that eliminated the idea of wait times, so I bought it and decided I was going to make it my new Lyric. He's one of the ones I've been less than completely sold on lately, so I decided to rehome him.

Anyway, I wasn't really feeling it when the new head arrived so I let it sit in the head cabinet for about a week before touching it. Yesterday I finally decided to pull it out and give it a face up.

 I'm still deciding if it's quite working out like I wanted. I've already sold his previous head so there's really no turning back. I like the head. Something just feels slightly off. I think it might perhaps be the eyes or maybe the stronger jawline. Could also be the mouth. I'm so sensitive to the way the corners of mouths look. They have to be pretty much curved completely downward for me to even perceive them as neutral. Otherwise all I can see is a smile.

I suspect he'll grow on me. It's just going to be a bit of an adjustment.

I used to get so worked up about selling things I didn't think I'd ever be able to get back. Lyric's head (a Soom Olivine) and my former Ezsphrein's head (a Latidoll  Chaim) among other things. But I can't think of a single sale I've ever truly regretted and I just didn't see myself getting them new bodies or characters and if I did win the lottery and get them new bodies I didn't see myself doing much with them.

I also got a DBDoll Ronger in a trade recently. I'm about 90% sure I'm going to make him a mini Iltheridas. I haven't given him a face up yet because I haven't decided if he's going to be a living version of Ilthy or his undead self. Vaith is sort of an amalgamation of his living and dead traits so maybe I'll do something similar with mini Iltheridas. I'm sort of hoping inspiration will just strike me and I won't have to really sit down and think hard about it.

Maybe I'll just get out the face up supplies and just go nuts and see what happens. If I hate it I can always try again. I would like to get a feel for what he'd be like all properly put together. He has the most fantastic ears!

tiny sewing projects

I decided to make little Aura some clothes. Only I couldn't find the material I had initially intended to use so I decided to use this scrap of red velvet. I always tell myself "you should draft a pattern and make a mock up" and then I always shoosh myself and say "nah we got this!"

I didn't really think through how I wanted it to attach in the front so the buttons are primarily there to hide the stitching on the snaps. My initial plan was those enclosures like duffle coats have but I thought maybe that was a bit weird for velvet. So snaps happened. somehow. So much more classy, right?

projects and things

My ongoing project lately is shelling cast of Selly's and my WoW characters as tinies. We've talked about things like this before but never really got around to making it happen. But this time it is looking like it actually will.

My Soom Keny is little Vaith, and then I got a Souldoll Frith in a trade to make into Selly's little Theo. She also got another doll from a company called Kids-Sky that I had never heard of before and that one is little Ivalise.

Which brings us to the first topic I wanted to talk about. I've been working on some sort of temporary outfit for little Liss and the first one turned out terrible so I decided to start over. I made decent progress on my new outfit last night and then today I messed up the next part but I think I know how to make it better when I do it again. After work I shall give it another go.

I also bought a couple dolls to be Aura and Cail to finish out the group a little over a month ago but then I saw this listing on DoA for a doll I'd never noticed before. An Aileen Doll Cedric. Apparently the initial release had him with both a cyclops head and an elfy sort of head but i'd only ever seen the cyclops head and wasn't interested. However, the elf head looked perfect for little Aura.

Because I had already gotten another doll to be Aura, I ignored the sales thread for close to two months. Or I tried to. I checked in on it regularly, vaguely hoping that someone else would snatch him up so I would no longer be tempted. Finally, I decided that Aura was too important a character for me to settle for anything less than what I considered perfect for him, so when I sold a head for enough money to buy Cedric I went for it.

He arrived today and he is so perfect for little Aura. He has such uniquely posed hands and his little non-jointed torso makes him sit and stand up so straight, which is wonderful for wee nobility. And his facial features look very much like he could grow up into my adult Aura.

I will be slightly disappointed if this means that he doesn't look enough like my potential Cailath but I will live.

Edit:

little Aura has a face up. I am not yet sure how I feel about it yet.

dressmaking and that's about it

We'll start with the lighthearted stuff.

I felt bad that my Cerisedolls Lyse (who is still sadly nameless because I keep prioritizing other things) was still sitting around in a baggy plaid shirt while other people had gotten custom clothes.

So I threw together a quick dress for her.

 I'm not sure any of these really showcase how the dress looks/functions but they were the ones that came out okay so that's what we're going with for now.

I could not locate much in the way of white fabric so the bottom is sheer. I will make a proper lining for it when I locate my material. I know I have some somewhere. I really wanted to make her something in light blue, but I have no light blue at all. Only dark blue.

It's a bit later than I thought so we'll skip the rambling for now and save it for another time.

sweater!

I haven't gotten any good pictures of the newly assembled body/head combo in the previous posts. I don't have any proper clothes for her yet so she's just wearing this black coat that obscures any sense of figure for the most part so it really doesn't look any different at the moment from the original pictures.

However, my Unoa Xyle (mentioned two posts ago) arrived and I set about giving him a face up and making him some properly fitting clothes.

I was doing such a good job of avoiding oddly sized dolls despite multiple temptations in the 51cm range. Alas, Unoas are my weakness.

Here he is in his new sweater. I need to see about styling his wig so it doesn't cover half his face. Or making him another wig. I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing with him yet. But I did make myself sell some things to make up for my impulse buy and I've decided I cannot get any new dolls until all of the ones I currently own have clothes and names.

mods, cont...

A couple days ago I finally decided to do some additive work on the mod project. And then I let it sit a while longer because I used the cheap epoxy (I wasn't sure I wanted to waste a bunch of the good stuff on something that not only might not be permanent but also might end up a horrible abomination).

Well anyway between the cheap epoxy which doesn't match the body at all and the horrific uneven mess that was my dremel work I just wasn't sure this was going anywhere.

But I finally decided to do some sanding work and here are some pictures of the results:

So here you can see what I meant about the epoxy not matching the body at all. The sanding job is not at all perfect but I felt it was good enough for the time being. I wanted to paint over it and do a trial run with the head to see how things were coming along. Also the heat was brutal and I was dying. 

So at this point I took the body over to the airbrushing and face up station and made a rough attempt at color matching.

Behold the truly horrendous fruits of my labor! I felt like it looked better prior to the paint job when I saw how these pictures turned out but as it sits here on my desk with a fan blowing on it to dry the paint, I'm less distressed. I think it was just the sub par lighting combined with the paint still being all shiny making it look terrible.

As soon as I'm sure the paint is dry I am going to give it a few coats of sealant and try the head with it and see how things look.

mods

So I had this brilliant plan. Go to Yahoo!Japan and search for a cheap used SD13 girl body and so some minor mods and I figured that would be pretty in line with what I wanted for the head that has made an appearance in the last few posts.

Well, I happened upon an Unoa Xyle and with the yen being so weak against the dollar right now it was a really good deal. I tried to talk myself out of it and stick to the plan, but I failed. I told myself I would bid once and ignore the auction until it was over and I kind of figured someone else would come along and snag it out from under me, but they didn't and I ended up winning.

So that puts a new girl body on the back burner for a while. But I decided I did want something at least semi functional as a temporary and I kind of liked the proportions with the head and the ancient Customhouse body it had been sitting on, so I decided to see about maybe modding that to work as a temporary.

It's very rough right now because I was just trying to get as much generic shaping in as possible before the dremel ran out of batteries. I have a corded one but it only has one speed setting and I find it very hard to work with at times. I'll likely do a bit of additive work as well and then sand the top part smooth. And then I'll do some work on the lower torso as well.

Luckily these old bodies have such thick resin that you can do things like shave off large chunks without damaging structural integrity. That's part of why I was considering an old SD13 because I knew there would be plenty of room for mod work. 

I haven't decided yet if I will do anything to the arms. The legs should be fine as is. I might also take the time to refine the lower torso joint I made years ago since it doesn't match anything at all. Or I might just put the lower torso back together to make it easier to sculpt on. But we'll see. A lot depends on how happy I end up with it as I go along. If I end up liking it enough then maybe this will end up being a more permanent solution. And if I don't then I won't want to spend as much time on it if it's going to be replaced anyway.

But so far I feel like the general roughed in shape of things is coming along okay. Once the dremel is recharged I'll probably work on it some more.

I wanted something that wasn't on the super super tiny side, but a lot of female bodies I see these days that are not super tiny tend to be extremely busty. And I kind of felt like that wasn't really the direction I wanted to go with this particular project. I did find a few that might work but most of them weren't going to pose any better than this body anyway so it didn't really feel like a terribly worthwhile expense.

One of Doll Chateau's bodies really appealed to me but the price tag and the wait time really didn't.

Piercings

Somewhat inspired by the Lisbeth Salander comparison, I decided new dude/lady/person needed some piercings. I completely forgot to work on that yesterday after work, but then as I was going to bed it suddenly occurred to me.

My initial thought was "okay keep this in mind and definitely work on it tomorrow" but my then my second thought was "you'll forget about it tomorrow." So I jumped out of bed and grabbed my tiny drill and some jump rings and set to work.

 Here is a side shot to show the ear piercings. I need to get out the x-acto knife and neaten up the hot glue near the ear. It looks a little yucky.

And in this one you can see the lip and eyebrow piercings. If I was to do it over again I'd probably make the eyebrows piercings look less like they are going DIRECTLY INTO THE SKULL but oh well. I regret nothing. Might add more later. Not sure yet. For now I am pleased. I didn't bother with the other ear because even trying to find it underneath the mass of hair was a challenge.

I had another post started...

And then a package arrived and I ran off to get it and then I spent something like six hours rearranging furniture and troubleshooting my computer and I lost my progress. Not that I'd made much.

I've been sort of re-evaluating things (that seems to be the case a lot lately) and I'm thinking of selling a lot of dolls. There are several I just never do anything with and whose characters aren't really essential to their group. I'm debating on some but others I'm fairly certain I just won't really do much with.

I was actually debating a bit whether I still had any interest in the SD size over the past few days. I've just been enjoying the smaller ones a lot more lately.

This morning I actually went and took pictures of a lot of my larger dolls and was contemplating setting up sales on DoA, but then I decided I wanted to attempt to make a weird sort of wig for head2 that got a face up yesterday so I figured I could put off sales threads for a while.

Well, wig making kind of turned things around for me and reminded me that I do enjoy my larger dolls. I haven't had any real direction or inspired ideas for them in a while and this was the first time I had something in mind that I really wanted to see realized. And while the results aren't perfect, I enjoyed the process and I think the result is kind of neat!

I probably just need to buckle down and design some clothes or hairstyles for a few of those awaiting such things. It would probably up my enjoyment factor significantly.

It's uh... something like a scene mullet crossbred with a faux hawk. I'm not really sure. It's probably the most unconventional hairstyle I have ever given to a doll. I kind of hated it at first just because it wasn't quite lining up with my mental vision, but it's grown on me. I'm now debating whether this is going to be a boy or a girl. Or maybe some sort of androgynous being. I don't know. I haven't made up my mind yet.

I really need to stop being lazy about setting up the tripod

I decided I wanted to work on some face ups today. Not really for anything in particular but just for practice.

Was trying to decide who I wanted to practice on when I happened upon my L-bi, who has never actually had a proper face up since I got him. He came from Yahoo!Japan with a partially done face up and all I ever did was give him eyebrows in the right color for the characters I used him for.

So I decided I wanted to do his face. And then I also decided while I was at it I would screw around with my modded Iplehouse Jessica head that used to be Orkas.

He came out a little more sunburnt looking than I wanted, but I'll redo it another time. For now it is at least semi functional. I had him in this blonde wig I made when his new body arrived but I just didn't ever really like it. It was a bit too fluffy for his head.

I was pondering making something else when I remembered that I had planned to make him my new Nazoe. So I dug out Nazoe's wig (which has transitioned multiple times in size, starting as a size 9/10, then modded down to a 7/8, and now down to a 6/7) and took that in to fit his little head. I'm much happier with this than I was with the blonde.

It looks a bit like one of the default L-bi wigs if I recall correctly. XD

And next up I was just screwing around. No idea what on earth I wanted to do with the other head cuz it's pretty much a spare and I did all these mods to it and also crushed part of it between a desk and a wall so I don't think it really has any resale value to speak of. But I don't know what I want to do with it. So I guess it's a practice head now. I dont' know. Might go back to my old old plan of making it into Layne.

But that is neither here nor there.

I was mostly just messing around with blushing and shading. And then I decided I wanted to go for the no eyebrows look like Lisbeth Salander or something. I dunno. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Not sure what sort of wig I want to use though so for now there's some baldness action going down.

Possibly something white or black and very spikey. I dunno.