I said I wouldn't unless...

Hi all, going to squeeze in a first post and concept all into one. I was lurking for a few days, now I'm posting... hopefully I can get an adequate post count to unlock some forum features and prove I'm a post whore, and not a spammer.

 

So someone, after much prodding has got me rolling on an idea.

 

I had said that I would only get into dollfies if I could build one of my original characters from my defunct comic turned defunct animation project. It all went south when I ended up in animation and started working... had less and less time to do things and found more and more hobbies to do. This new one isn't going to help.

 

Back on track... ( I have piccies, but the forum won't let me post or link them)

 

 

So First problem; hair... My characters generally have big poofy hair, I found a wig that seemed that it would work.. in fact, it was direct from volks. Some styling might make it work.

 

So pick a blank head and a pair of eyes and let's get playing with hair.

 

Second problem was solved when I found some adequate clothing to at least make a convincing try at dressing my character, stuff that wouldn't be too far out of the realm of possibility where she is. It's on order now... it will be 2 months away from delivery.

 

Third problem... Well... There are no adequate elf ears that I can find in the style and size I want them.

 

I looked around, a few suggestions in the past were sculpey. I just tried that.

 

I tried embedding some neodymium magnets in the head and ears to make them quick detachable and non permanent... I always pick the least destructive method to start.

 

Well the ears turned out to be the right length but really thick, and attempting to make a thin ear resulted in the scuplyIII bleepbling/cracking to bits.

 

The second attempt was that I made ears solid chunks and tried to dremel my way back to the shape I wanted, but again, too thin resulted in cracked/crumbly/brittle ears.

 

So I'm back at trying to figure out how to do horizontal elf ears rather than vertical ears. I found someone on yja selling resin elf ears that snap onto what looks to be the miku head, but they're getting bid up pretty substantially.

 

Are all ears on the heads the same? That would make it more appealing for me to start bidding.

 

The other thing I could do is try and take a cast of the doll head and reproduce what that seller has done in creating resin ears. As of yet, I have no idea how to do that or where to find the materials, but that's only a matter of google-fu and youtube.

 

Before I tried dremeling the ears, I took a couple test shots to have a look at the silhouette of the head and the wig with the ears... even without a face applied to the head, I can start to see my character, she's there, all I need is those ears and a face... and a body. lol, but body is trivial at this point. The ears are the biggest hurdle.

 

As for the size reference of the ears, think asuna in her sylph character on the recent episodes of SAO.

 

Anyone have any ideas?

 

 

 

edit:

 

also what I'm planning on getting:

 

dds base body in normal colour

 

I have a ddh02 but I'm thinking of picking up one of the akiba store only heads when I'm in tokyo next spring, possibly getting the body at the same time.

 

I have some assorted clothes on the way, also another brown wig that's longer to try something slightly different to may the hair style I want a bit easier.

 

Will need to find a face artist.

oh and if anyone sees any military gear like vests, guns and other paraphernalia in 1/3 size, give me a shout.

Sculpy III is one of the softer, weaker polymer clays, to be honest. The art doll sculptors swear by Pippin, Kato, or Dollsculpt, which are all stronger. I'd give Kato a shot--not exactly easy to work with, but cures nice and tough, and does have a translucent variant floating around, which will make getting the skin tone right easier.

cool thanks, ordering a couple chunks of it right now.. seems to be a fairly local supplier too

This person on flickr (and think they sell on YJ!A as well) https://www.flickr.com/photos/poelf/ does a lot of elf ears for DD's and they look really good. Maybe you could ask what he or she uses to make them? They may only speak Japanese but it might be worth a shot.

Also, here is one of their auctions http://page6.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/f141300986 it might list what they are made from? Maybe between asking them and a translation you might find something if the current sculpting clay doesn't work out.

yes I had found that person on yja and was going to bid on their elf heads/ears if I couldn't get my attempts to work.

 

One of the bits of info I'm after for regarding that one is if all ears on the head types are the same or not. If they're the same then I can essentially bid on any ears they may put up. Right now though there's a set of ears on there that are matching the miku head colours.

No, ears are different on each sculpt. The heads start out being hand sculpted by an artist after all.

just did a quick test of the kato clay that just arrived.

 

similar results, but an problem now is that I think i have to cast the head in silicone and sculpt the ears on the silicone... then bake the dummy head and ears together, cause any way I try to model right on the head, attempting to pull them off ends up mucking up the shape. Whey I try to insulate the head from the clay with saran wrap it just slides around and bends out of shape.

 

Unless I'm doing it wrong, and there's a secret process.

 

casting materials are going to get costly

 

 

edit:

 

I take that back.

 

the kato poly clay is much stronger when I dremel back down to a shape I want. Possibly strong enough to survive a silicone molding process. Just have to buy a kit of the stuff, then I might have a process of making ears.

 

Guess it's time to learn how to do silicone and resin casting.

Forgive me if this comes across as rude/mean sounding, I'm not trying to be, but why is it important to have the ears be removable? Is there a reason or do you just not want something permanent on the head. Because to me it seems easier to bake ears onto the head than to create a whole new one.

I wouldn't mind non removable, I just assumed that the head is not up to the task of being baked with the ears. 150C seems rather hot for vinyl. I'm worried about the head deforming/melting.

I've never done it myself, but I know that our board member Mitsuki has done it, and on a limited head no less. Here's a big thread about it with some details.

 

viewtopic.php?f=31&t=4999&hilit=elf+mitsuki

 

And a few other examples.

 

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=6322&p=97171&hilit=elf+ears#p97171

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=6319&p=101146&hilit=elf+mitsuki#p101146

viewtopic.php?f=42&t=10080&p=146377&hilit=elf+mitsuki#p146377

very interesting. I think I will take it into consideration. The riskiest things related to curing the clay on the head were brought up, but not addressed in a hard data format... ie what temperature will a dollfie head begin to deform/outgas/melt/burn etc. But I doubt volks will tell us the exact formulation they use. . The scariest is outgasing with toxic fumes but usually be that time you're also melting or burning it. The pvc datasheet says melting point can begin on untreated pvc at 100C, so then the next threat would be compromising the structure of it either physically or at a chemical level. I had issues with heatforming other material around plastics resulting in some deformation, but I was using a sacrificial object that had little value. A brand new hard to get head like an 09 would be difficult to replace should I mess up on firing a pair of ears for it.

 

I will also use this opportunity though to learn how to make castings, that is one of the reasons for picking up new hobbies for me, an opportunity to learn to do something new and useful I can be an unscrupulous DiYer at times.

 

There's an all inclusive kit that's reasonably inexpensive I'm reading up on that will give me silicone to cast the head and make a replica in silicone and poly clay right off those and bake and then either do a final resin cast from those proofs or do a couple more casts to get them smaller and thinner. From there I can shape/sculpt the ears back down to a much thinner and dainty look than if I did it with straight poly clay. Being able to sculpt on the silicone will allow me to mush the silicone ears out of the poly clay sculpts and not damage anything in theory.

 

The reason for detachable is that I would hate to have an accident happen and an ear tip snap off. With slip on ears you can choose to glue or not glue them in place with some hot glue and then paint right over top of everything, and if an ear breaks, you can replace is easily by heating up the glue and pulling it all off.

 

 

edit:

 

here's a question, I would like to customize a volks wig by adding some wefts to it. Is there any way to color match the hair already in the wig? does volks sell additional wefts? The code on the wig is w-104d m33/12

The casting process would also allow me to reproduce the ears quite easily for anyone who would want a set... the problem would be of course, getting the initial cast of the heads with the ears being unique sculpts.

so Felicia is now technically costume complete. I'm satisified with about 90% of what I need to make her convincing, though I would've liked to get exact 1/3 guns I've given to her, but I can make do with the small selection of 1/3 weapons on the market.

 

The only thing I'm missing will be her elf ears which will take some warmer weather to do some experimentation with casting and sculpting.

 

And I would like to find her a tactical military vest of some sort. Which after digging through taobao, isn't looking good, unless my search strings are not accurate enough.

 

Her DDS body is even on the way, ahead of what I originally planned. Everything else was moving so fast I just couldn't help myself. my poor credit card.

 

I would have liked to have gone with a ddh-09 for her head, but the odds of that happening are pretty slim for now. So I have an 07 coming prepainted to start. Originally I had an 02 for testing and sacrificing to the sculpting/casting gods. I will work out a process with this head first for making her ears before trying it live on a more valuable 07 or 09.

 

Also missing are a good set of eyes, but the basic volks will do for now.

 

Here's sort of what felicia looks like. I say sort of because I haven't drawn her in a long time, and she's due for some adjustments for her tactical gear not being right among a few other things. There were a few other drawings of her since this one, but this is the only full body one of her.

 

And by a long time, I mean back from my college days 10 years ago. Time flies.

 

She's technically a half elf, but you wouldn't know it from her ears. (she's a special sub race of elves) Born as a demigod, she was possessed by the gods as they used her as an avatar in the physical realm, and as a result didn't have much free thought and was a prisoner in her own body. She was forced to be an assassin for a criminal organization until she broke free of her mental captors and locked them away in a corner of her mind.

 

As a result of not being able to speak her mind, she is quiet and keeps to herself, often never saying what she feels or thinks, or saying much of anything at all. She'll follow along with what everyone else does rather than her own thing because she's not used to being able to do things she wants to do, so she just doesn't as a habit. In her main story, she meets her future husband who is an elite soldier belonging to a secretive unit fiercely loyal to a special elf bloodline.

 

She doesn't like being cold, so often steals her man's issued military jacket as a quiet sign that she likes him, but just isn't used to saying things out loud, but that's okay, he knows exactly what she's up to. She's too used to being dressed by her former criminal overlords, so she just tends to pick comfortable, utilitarian clothing, not so much a tomboy, as she just doesn't know how to be girly.

 

She'll be taking time off from sealing off her world's mana leaks and staying with me for a while.

 

Here's the result of a 2 week long shopping spree:

 

 

I don't think her outfit came with boots, so I ordered some just in case. Lady can't have too many shoes, as they say.

 

She won't have the revolver, the holster or the sword.

 

She's not going to be wearing that hoodie, I have something else for her.She'll be getting this red shirt instead:

 

And/Or possibly this red jacket:

 

 

Her man Aaldiir's jacket:

 

I need to figure out how to put some unit patches on it.... after I figure out how to make tiny unit patches.

 

Her adventuring gear:

 

Her world is a dangerous place, normally she runs around with 2 pistols and an assault rifle, but she's traveling a bit lighter with only a glock 17 and an SR25 sniper rifle:

 

 

I would have prefered some HK guns as they seem much more suited for an elf, but I takes what I can gets. At least until I get around to 3d designing and printing some appropriate weapons.

 

I have a couple other bits of clothing coming as well, and what she won't wear can easily be given to dear old mom, who is the next character coming when I figure out how to do her goddess or fantasy outfit.

update on overall progress. Happy to get her to where she is now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She's missing her vest, which I will have to make myself, I'm sort of not looking forward to that. lol.

 

I will need to redesign it a little to make it workable. I do have some materials on the way to mimic military webbing, and I'm happy to see that the tailor who made her backpack also made the same substitution for webbing that I will be making. I've also got some navy blue cordura, the same stuff they make real military gear out of, so hopefully I can make a proper vest for her. Sewing tiny stuff is proving to be really hard.

 

Her ears will need to be done in the spring. the poly clays are just not strong enough to do what I want, so I'll have to mess around with epoxy, and it's way too cold to be doing that kind of work outdoors.

 

I also need to make some wefts for her wig, I ahve a bunch of spare hair that matches the color that I ordered from leeke, but it's not wefted. There's a few spots I need to add some wefts to in order to hide her hair line as well as her future ear line and her bangs where they part, since they look like the hairs are being pulled out of the wefts and it's thinning in those spots.

 

The jacket works out perfectly, it's a men's sd16 size or there abouts so the sleeves look long on her which is great. The pants are a bit way too loose around the waist, and the jacket came with a pair of the pants and the hoodie came with another pair. So I sacrificed one pair to try and resize.. it didn't go so well, but I didn't completely butcher them... they look a bit worn and lived in now. lol.

 

The red shirt I found for her is perfect, I flexed some new found sewing machine muscle to take it in slightly to make it more of a women's cut, but I'm not feeling confident about taking the shoulders in to make it more narrow. I suppose I could hand stitch a new seam, but I'll leave that for now.

 

I've got my hands on some free 3d models of guns that I've designed her to use that I'm slowly tweaking for the purposes of eventually printing out. The psg1 was a great find, but it's all cast metal and it's super heavy.

 

In the near future, I'll be receiving a head to start working on mom and will be picking up a body for her while I'm in japan this spring. I already have enough clothes to set her up so it's just a matter of making/modifying a wig for her.

progress:

 

 

 

finally had time to try a few things. First off, I was concerned with epoxy putty ears sticking directly to the head and not being replaceable or completely messing up the faceup. So I used my blank 02 mule head and applied some petroleum jelly and encased the ears in the putty. I pulled out two generic test ears.

 

I'm using tamiya fast set putty which is 6 hour cure time... a bit long, and it will bend/droop on you if you don't keep playing with it to reset it. Which is why I also left it fairly thick to try and provide some structure or shape.

 

Once the test ears on the mule cured, I plucked them off the head. They came off with a pop, and they go back on with a click and stay there.

 

I like very much :3

 

 

So moving onto the next test stage, I used my blank 07 mule head and repeated the process. The ears on the 07 are huge in comparison to the 02, so some more putty was needed to keep the shape around the ear stable as it set. The still generous cure time allowed me to come back half an hour later to adjust for the droop and then it was starting to firm up. I then hung the head upsidedown so gravity would assist in keeping the ear tips where they should be. After curing I plucked them off the mule... they are actually very well tension fit and they clicked right into place on Felicia's faced up 07 without any issue.

 

The next stage is to see how much material I can now remove off the cured ears to bring them back to the size and shape closer to what I want. Right now they are quite bulky.

She only looks... AWESOME!! Great job pulling all the components together, and your work on her ears looks great.

 

Linda S.

galatia9

some work with the dremel tonight:

 

 

 

I need to buy some masks so I'm not breathing the resin dust. lol.

 

 

They're not quite symmetrical but nobody really is... lol. I removed a lot of material.. too much in some spots so I may have to add a bit back and reinforce it.

 

I also ordered some more putty... and will try a few more pairs and pick the ones I like the most... and then sell the rest. Might be some ears for 07 coming in a few months. ~_~

attempt #2

 

 

 

attempt #3

 

 

playing with different cant angles up and back, I'm thinking more sideways, but number 3 looks like she might fly away in person.. they're rather huge.

so now that I've chosen a cant angle off the head, it's time to chose length

 

attempt 4

 

They actually look a bit smaller in the photo, the flattening effect from the lens makes it smaller looking, but in the end, I think the silhouette is not clear enough. The shape of her ears are just getting lost in her hair.

 

 

So back to attempt 3

 

Starting the dremmeling to thin them up and refine the shape. I had to make them a lot thicker in order for the putty to hold shape as it cured. I'm carefully working my way down to the overall shape of the ear, then I will go back in with more putty to add the detailing in.

She looks awesome. You've got awesome talent there. Keep up the good work!