PJ's Playing with Dolls!

She's such a cutie, I love her eyes!  I'm also a sucker for a toothy bebe and dig her whole pirate vibe 👌.

11 hours ago, mmmuguet said:

She's such a cutie, I love her eyes!  I'm also a sucker for a toothy bebe and dig her whole pirate vibe 👌.

Thank you! I love open-mouth dolls and pirates, so I'm really happy with her! I just love the eyes from this artist, so I just happened to have them and thought they were perfect!

Little Compass photoshoot! I did a Polaris one too I'll have to post later.

I really like the book theme and the outfit! The little magnifying glass and poses are great 😆

Thank you! I thought the rich colors would fit her outfit. My mom used to do photography as a hobby, so she helped me arrange a cute set.

Oh geez, did I never post this? I've been doing a lot of art recently, so it musta slipped my mind! (Speaking of which, if anyone is going to be on Art Fight, I might post my dolls on there!)

A while back I got a hold of a Real Doomsday head, and I really love the cartoony look to it. I wanted to make a smug mage type of character, I love rude academic type personalities. Mad scientists and all that. So I went to the concept art and ended up satisfied pretty quickly!

Well....pretty quickly. Note it's labeled G.2. It was a lot of different eye designs, I find that's my weakest part of designing anime dolls. I knew I wanted a glow effect to the forehead symbol and had a pretty good idea of how to do it. The symbol is the alchemical symbol for phosphorus, with the glow based on the color phosphorus glows naturally! I love alchemy, magic, and chemistry, so picking a design was fun

Could have probably used another layer to darken the lines, but shhh. It's so so humid here in summer, finding time to spray MSC is hard. The eyes are Compass' stock ones, they might be temporary? I have other eyes on the way, but I guess time will tell. The "glow" is just layers of pale green pastel with white paint on top of it, but that's not the only glow!

Excuse the blurry photo from my closet, but I added glow in the dark paint to the symbol as well! It's super reactive, only needing a moment under a lamp. I know I made fun of Danny Choo for requiring you to point UV light at your doll's face, but this slaps so that's my defense. This little light mage is named Levant, and they have a body on the way right now! I have a second Real Doomsday head with only one eye I'm hoping to paint once it becomes less humid, so get excited for that! Until then!

Mini mage gang rise up (╯✧ω✧)╯✨ 

The actual glow is impressive ofc but you did a rlly good job with the pastels and the pseudo glow. Your character concept is cool!

Thank you both for the kind words! I'm really happy with Levant, honestly, they might be my favorite head I've done so far! I just got new cartridges for my respirator and on Wednesday I'm going to be heading for the craft store for some eyeburningly-bright paint shades in prep for my next Real Doomsday head! Not a vinyl doll, but I also have an Acat Bo Hakimi head on the way I'm incredibly excited to work on too!

Oh gosh, this doll was a ride. So this is Mistral (she/he pronouns), a Real Doomsday winking head, and their concept art took several wildly different passes to get right. I wanted a kind of jester, Mardi Gras vibe, so in the end I chose this:

The eye and mouth drawn by my girlfriend, and the graphic "wink" and eyebrows by me, plus some general tweaking. So I grabbed some florescent paints and got to work! And at the end of the process I stepped back and...wasn't sure about the doll? It took a few days before I liked her, which is unusual for me. I think he's cute now, though I wish his wink was placed lower on his face. I also really like the blushing this time! But more exciting than that is I decided to craft my own yarn wig.

I'll be the first to say it looks kinda messy, but considering this is my third wig ever and the first in about 8 years, I'm happy with it! Mistral is sporting the second eye from Polaris right now, and will likely get an Imomodoll body eventually. But Levant's body is going to be here soon, so I'm prepping for that at the moment! How do you feel about Mistral? I wish I could have gotten the eyelashes brighter, but I did my best. Until next time!

I love the bright colours you used  Turned out great!

He kind of reminds me of a certain Hunter x Hunter character... 🤡

EDIT: not meaning that as an insult

Edited July 6 by Giallo_Gatta

Hilowe is finally dressed enough that he can have photos taken of him! I took him outside very briefly (it's too hot!) for my first outdoor photos!

So cute, the big eyebrows are adorable 😂

I put together some "School Picture Day" photos for Hilowe, and took a photo of Monty with her new backpack!

Took a while to post this because I had to gather all my WIP photos. When buying an Imomodoll body for Levant, I sprung for an Empty head, since I apparently want to keep accruing floating heads. I instantly knew I wanted a sinister, one-eyed appearance (this was before I even got Mistral!) and something like the shadowy culprit you'd see in Detective Conan or Danganronpa. So I immediately got to work on a mockup.

It's...not my best work, but I cranked it out fast to explain to my girlfriend the kind of concept I was thinking of. An eye and mouth mod with shadowy features. So of course, she took a swing at it and knocked it out of the park!

I was in love with this and wanted to get as close to it as possible. I've done some mild eye-widening with Little Boy Lost, but never fully carving out holes, and I've never made a mouth mod before. So I started up my dremel and (very very nervously) got to work.

Here's my initial cut for the eye and sketch for the mouth. You can see I have to continue adding roundness to the eye at this point, I kinda cut too slanted.

Mouth mod cut and eye rounded. I need to invest in those diamond files I've seen Japanese hobbyists use, they seem way easier to use than sandpaper! I only have a very fine grade sandpaper and some sanding sticks meant for nails, and the vinyl wants to spring away from them.
And finally...

Here she is! Be careful of Upside!

I've never worked with oven-bake clay before, just the kind meant for plaster casts, so this was an interesting experience. Makes me wanna sculpt more, I miss going to studio classes...You may also be able to tell I sculpted her teeth upside down somehow OTL but it's FINE it's fine just. It's fine.
Her eye is just a piece of paper I drew on with sharpie and carefully wedged into place. It makes her one of my only dolls with a follow-me effect, which is delightfully creepy. I honestly think she might be one of my favorite faceups so far? After the disaster Mistral initially was, I was glad to have a win.

I have two Obitsu 50-01 and an Imomodoll tan Rucy head on the way, and I have plans for the Obitsus at the very least! Though maybe I'll sell the heads after? I dunno, does anyone want my work or should I focus on continuing to improve first? Let me know your thoughts on Upside, I'll see you again in a few weeks!

My Obitsu heads and Rucy are out for delivery~! But before that, I got inspired as heck by how Seaumi4 on insta photographs their dolls to arrange into little profiles. Definitely one of my favorite doll photographers out there! So I tried doing something similar using the abundance of scrapbooking paper I have. I took a profile-style shot of every (semi) complete vinyl doll I have! Hoping to use these as my doll directory icons now!

It's that time again! I actually painted three heads, but this post will be focused on just one of them. It's because I consider him the end of my "season 1" dolls, and after this I will be moving on to a new naming convention! It's not because navigation names are hard, shut up.

I originally thought the head I got on Mercari was a Imomodoll Rucy, but it turned out to be the near-identical from afar Toppi, which better suited my concept anyways. In the middle of the night I did a rough concept on my phone, and then with the proper sculpt in my usual drawing program later on. I wanted to make a little baby dragon!

No WIP shots this time, I was juggling 3 heads and my last bit of MSC (I got a new can while making him), so you just get the finished product~!

I'm really happy with him, all the colors came on super bright! The freckles were more subtle than I wanted, so I added a bit of paint to help them out. His name is Libeccio!

To finish it off, I thought I'd define my doll's names to explain their navigation/directional theme:
Hilowe: High-Low. Pretty simple, lol
Nohwe: Meant to sound like 'nowhere'
Compass Rose: The pointy compass on maps!
Tramontane: The classical name for the northern wind. Known for causing madness, spooky!
Polaris: The northern star that is used as a guide at sea.
Levant: The classical name for the eastern wind. Usually brings good weather!

Mistral: The classical name for the northwest wind. A strong wind!
Upside: Upside-down, of course.
Libeccio: The classical name for the west or southwest wind. Usually causes violent squalls.

Westley: Named after 'west', of course!
They don't have dolls, but in Levant's lore they also have three roommates: Zenith 'Zen', Azimuth 'Azi', and Nadir! Zenith means the top of something, azimuth the horizontal angle, and nadir the bottom of something.

 

Whew, that's a lot of infodumping! Soon I'll share my Obitsu 50-01 twins, and I miiiiight sell them if anyone is interested? Not sure yet! Stay tuned!

Oh nooooo he's so cute with those big ol fangs and blue blushing (⸝⸝;ω;⸝⸝)~ I love him so far!

Libeccio is so cute! Love the coloring! Can't wait to see him all complete. 😄

I loved reading the logic behind the navigation names! Very cool! 👏

Ok ok ok, my next two dolls share a post because they're twins! Both Obitsu 50-01 I got from YJ!A. I thought at first they were, uh.......kind of ugly? And I'm someone who likes Obitsu's weird sculpts! But I decided I would make it work. I wanted to make two contrasting makeup-heavy looks to go along with those big ol' eyes, so I came up with a kogal gyaru design and a classic goth design.

I was mainly worried about if I could pull off the two very different mouth shapes on the same sculpt. Plus, getting opacity on the black eyeshadow was a bit of a pain with pastels. And to make matters worse, I ran out of MSC on these two! So my last spurt of it made some visible droplets, which gave them an amateur feel. Luckily I got some new MSC for their final coats.

Meet Hana on the left and Nina on the right! Plus a stealth look at my nendoroid collection lol. I wish I was less heavy-handed with their painted lashes, but I decided to also try real lashes this time! Plus cute glossed lips! I wonder if you can guess their naming scheme? :3c The hint is that it's multi-lingual.

I love how these two turned out, but I don't know if I'd have the space for both of them as full dolls. Maybe they could share a body with someone else, or I could sell them...? What do y'all think? At the very least, I wanna get them eyes, wigs, and hands with custom nails (excited to do that mod!).

I actually have one last custom doll for now after these two, though I'm not sure about it's on-topic-ness? It's a nendo-doll. But also I adore him and it's my thread so you'll likely get some pictures of him soon anyways. Until next time, bye-bye, 안녕, and またね!

Ok ok ok I'm finally gonna post my newest guy. He is so....I've been obsessed with him. I've never had a mature tiny before but I love how holdable he is and he probably fits some of my Rainbow High and Barbie clothing, though he's a bit shorter than either...I'm getting ahead of myself.

I made my first obitsuroid/nendodoll recently! I got everything I needed for him in a single Taobao package! He's another fandom shell, yet again for one of my obscure interests! I really like musicals. I really like the musical Be More Chill. I wanted to make a SQUIP doll based off me and my girlfriend's personal design for him mixing things we liked from all the different show designs and our own takes (if anyone cares abt BMC, it's specifically a post-musical design where he's kinda in his depression look™ phase). But anyways, this was a lot of little firsts! I've never painted a nendoroid-like faceplate before, and I've never had to paint hair, or facial hair! So let's get to it!

Here's the mockup. 3/4 of the refeence images are drawn by my girlfriend, I drew the bottom-right one on the left. Tackling wild freckles this time...I also got a nendoroid hair in white from I belieeeeve A3! Chigasaki? I think bang ponytails are cute. I took photos of basically the whole process this time, so I'm gonna just go through them quickly.

Blushing and sketch lines.

Final lines and freckles (terrifying to do with a toothbrush!)

Finished face and WIP hair (tried pastels before moving to paints)

And finally, the finished boy! I'm soooo happy with him, he's adorable!

And my favorite detail: His little undies!!

Thanks for listening to me on a slightly off-topic ramble, if you need to smack me and make me put it in a different thread I will. My next project is going to likely be making long gyaru nails for Hana and long goth claws for Nina! I have a method I'm excited to try. Besides that, which won't be for a while, I don't have any projects lined up besides another nendodoll eventually. Anything you wanna see, or heads you'd wanna see me work on? (Preferably Imomodoll, those guys are cheap!) Let me know! Until next time!

Ooh, loved seeing your last projects! 👏🏻

I'm curious to see how Hana and Nina will look as you keep working on them.

For your next project, maybe you could do something with the 1/6 Toppa mold, the one my Iori has? It has elf ears so there might be interesting possibilities. And maybe in tan? Just an idea!

1 hour ago, Ayrell said:

Ooh, loved seeing your last projects! 👏🏻

I'm curious to see how Hana and Nina will look as you keep working on them.

For your next project, maybe you could do something with the 1/6 Toppa mold, the one my Iori has? It has elf ears so there might be interesting possibilities. And maybe in tan? Just an idea!

Hehe, thank you! I'm considering Hana having curly light brown or blonde hair and Nina having a black hime cut or bob. I'm also hoping to get eyes for them similar to my concept art! A Toppa might be cute to match my Toppi, Libeccio...maybe a red dragon to his blue?

More of the extremely photogenic Compass~!