Changes in plans.

Anyone ever make all kinds of plans with a doll. New eyes wigs outfits all this planing and personality for her. And then BAM it all changes drastically to something completely different. This happened to me just now with my second doll.

 

So I bought a Nanami, L chest, glasses, and green eyes that STILL have not arrived. Thing is the eyes are late the glasses look dumb the L chest misses the mark with that head. I fact I kinda don't like the Nanami head anymore.

 

On the flip side I found a DD2 Yukino on eBay. But her auction photo looked like a kidnapping Ransom photo. And the price just kept being cut from over $400 to $270. So the price and feeling really sorry for her I bought her. And I cut an braided her hair and dressed her nicely she looked kinda ok. I "was" going to sell her, then I "was" going to keep her body sell the head and buy a new head. And I found a lovely head.

But the DD2 body is kinda limited compared to the DDS bodys I have. Also I feel like I saved her and I kinda wanted to keep her as is. But I love the new head I have on the way and I CANNOT get a forth body. Then I stuck the glasses I bought for Nanami on her. And that was it the glasses looked wonderful.

 

So with that my second Doll I named Salsa before I ever got her cease to be now the Nanami head will be stored maybe for some future doll. The head on the way will go on that body and the Yukino will get a new name. So now I need two names and that's ok I think this has been a better Journey dolls coming into being organically just seems better to me.

 

So what story's do you folks have when it comes to your dolls? Did you execute your plans? Did she turn out as you hoped? Or do you just go with what feels right and see were that leads you?

I find that sometimes you just have to get the items you think you want and put them on. You'll never know how they will look until they're right in front of you in 3d.

Yeah. The girl I was in the planning stages of is ending up to be impossible. I can't find anyone to do the sewing for it, so it's a bust. Five people I've contacted have all been unable or too busy to take on such a project.

 

Also been entirely unable to find a suitable wig. So I'm undecided what I will do with her at the moment. May just have to be a long term project.

Yes, I've struggled with any doll that I try to plan a personality/backstory for in advance. Things work out much better for me if I buy who I like and then figure them out after they're already home. I had ideas for my Nanami that I turned into a boy, and I hated him for about two years before I finally found the right look for him, which was completely different from my original ideas. And I've been struggling with my Saber twins since they got home. I'm still trying to work out a compromise on that one, where I still use at least part of my original plan, but it's going slowly. Unfortunately this makes it so I don't have many pictures of the twins since I'm never 100% happy with them.

Yeah. The girl I was in the planning stages of is ending up to be impossible. I can't find anyone to do the sewing for it, so it's a bust. Five people I've contacted have all been unable or too busy to take on such a project.

 

Also been entirely unable to find a suitable wig. So I'm undecided what I will do with her at the moment. May just have to be a long term project.

 

Maybe over the long term things will work out. It sounds like you still like your idea it's the parts that are preventing it from coming together have hope.

 

Yes, I've struggled with any doll that I try to plan a personality/backstory for in advance. Things work out much better for me if I buy who I like and then figure them out after they're already home. I had ideas for my Nanami that I turned into a boy, and I hated him for about two years before I finally found the right look for him, which was completely different from my original ideas. And I've been struggling with my Saber twins since they got home. I'm still trying to work out a compromise on that one, where I still use at least part of my original plan, but it's going slowly. Unfortunately this makes it so I don't have many pictures of the twins since I'm never 100% happy with them.

 

Interesting I have wondered if people make twins. I find when things are not working some time away helps. Clearing your head.

I personally find it easier to start with a budget for how the outfit will go, especially for my girls that are modelled after anime characters. From the base reference character design such as the armor, weaponry etc, you can do a rough estimate of how much the full custom will cost.

 

With a rough budget in mind, it is also easier to see if what you have planned is realistic to your resources at hand. I have and probably will drop plans if I find that it is beyond my current capacity to realize.

My original plan was to get a Nanoha head/body for my first doll, and do my Agatha Heterdyne custom way down the line once I had some customization experience under my belt.

 

Instead I found a screamin' deal on a DDDy body with head, and a wig that would work great for Agatha. Boom. Plan derailed. Agatha came home, and became my ongoing, never-ending project. . . Nanoha I bought fullset a year and a half later.

 

Homura's not a DD, but she totally didn't go to plan either. I expected to hate the painted-eye Azone head, so I got an Out of Base head off Dollce using a proxy. Then she came in, I opened her box, and boom: instantly fell in love with her widdle grumpy face. So she's kept it.

 

The Out of Base head is still sitting in a mason jar, though I miiiiiight turn her into Vita from Nanoha A's once I start getting some decent monies.

both my girls have a lot of custom work to do... so far I've stitched new hair into a wig and completely restyled and modified another with new hair and turned a curly wig into a straight wig.

 

I bought a sewing machine cause half of the stuff I need for 1 is not available, and none of the clothes for the other are available.

 

In the process of learning not to futz up sewing stuff. lol.

 

Also need to make elf ears for one.

 

Sometimes it's just a matter of commitment and determination.. hell or high water.... other times it could be budget related... but I'm a nutty DiYer on just about everything from electronics to cars so sewing is not going to be that bad.

I've been thinking on this for a bit and I really have had only two of my girls do any changes on me once they arrived.

 

Originally, Reiko was going to be a 99% exact clone of Rei with only a slight smile on her being the difference. Her character was basically going to be just like my Rei with only her speech pattern being different. Rei doesn't use contractions unless very upset or very excited. Also, Reiko's body would be the same too, a DD2 with an M-bust. But during her building phase, things went awry....

 

 

I sent her head out to get painted while I put custom eyes on order to match Rei's defaults. The eyes were supposed to get here before her head did but that didn't happen. Everything else was here and ready except for the eyes and me being me, I couldn't wait for the correct eyes to show up because I felt bad leaving Reiko as she was. So I grabbed the only other set of red eyes I had ( a spare set of the same ones Manami uses ) and put them in her. Once I did that and looked at her closely, everything I thought I knew about Reiko went right out the window.....

 

Instead of her being an exact clone of Rei, now she was going to have Manami influences due to a mishap ( caused by Manami ) in her cloning procedure. Reiko was changed to an L-bust to reflect Manami's DDdy influence and she kept the same eyes as Manami too. As for the personality, Reiko still stays like Rei abot 70% of the time but she acts like Manami about 30% of the time now. I really did NOT plan for that at all but it turned out WAY more fun once those eyes got swapped out.

 

 

The only other girl to change was Sango and hers was mostly a physical change. She came to me as an L-bust which I had no problems with. She looked great with it. But as I did more photo shoots with her, Elisabeth and Rei, she made it clear to me that she wanted to go down to an M-bust. Once I did that, she came out of her shell more and her personality went another direction. She was still like she was before the swap, now she was just more confident with herself and had more fun with her close sisters. Odd how that worked out....

 

 

Having as many girls as I do, you'd think more of them would change once they arrived but so far things have stayed on track for what I expected from them once they got here. Wig swaps and eye changes do happen still but nothing else about them seems to change.

 

 

 

Billy

I intend to add further comments to this thread, but for now I'd like to quote an anonymous source that has given me wry appreciation of unforeseen cirbleepstances. It's not an exact quote, but this is pretty close to it: "You need a plan, so you know what to depart from."