Posing Comparisons, FL Minifee, RS/BBB Mini and 5StarDoll MIni

It's been another long while but I have a bunch of things to post. I'm also taking time off work to concentrate on trying to improve my own work flow and to apply to jobs as well as finish off some commissions.

Today I bring you guys a review on the posing ability of MSD dolls from some of the more affordable companies compared to the posing ability of one of the most popular and expensive company. Generally I will agree that the more you pay for a doll the higher the quality but of course there are a lot of factors. Resin quality, mold quality, engineering and production quality all account for how much a doll costs. Fairyland dolls are amongst the most expensive as well as popular dolls. They are known for their consistency in quality (though there was a period of lowered quality), their beautiful sculpts and their posing ability. The engineering and precision of their joints as well as the resin quality is reflected in the price. The molds for their bodies are probably replaced fairly often because the fit of the joints are crucial to the mobility whereas joints from ResinSoul can afford to be less precise simply because the fit isn't as crucial.

Light of Day

Hah! I took awful awful pictures last night thinking I could function at four in the morning. I took some new shots outside for better lighting to show the faceups better.

Birthday Weekend

My birthday is a Palindrome this year! It's on 11-22-11 but I celebrated with some friends this Saturday to avoid Thanksgiving weekend. I was still fairly productive though. I finished two commissions and worked on my own Custom House Prayer Choa. Here are some pics. The commissions turned out fairly well but I only took pictures of one so far. This is Eden redone. You will remember her from before.

W.I.P. RS Mei (Eden) for Samantha T.

Yes I'm alive. Here is a W.I.P. shot of Eden for those who don't check the W.I.P. page. ^__^

ResinSoul DJ Girl Body Pelvic Mod for Sitting.

ResinSoul has very nice facial sculpts and I generally like the shape of their bodies though there are a few details I don't like. Since we're only looking at the RS 42cm girl double jointed bodies for now I will focus on that.

Aesthetically I don't like the half melon shape of the bigger bust which you can see on deer hoofed Yao but that is acceptable compared to the fact that these girls can't sit up by themselves. I think it's odd that they didn't bother to fix the sculpt since standing and sitting are the major requirements of BJD posing.

Anyway I've been putting off this mod for a while since I was scared to work with tan resin and leaving a white scar. Fortunately the mod was a lot easier than I expected and with proper sanding, there is no scar. The resin pigment for Light Tan dolls from RS/BBB is distributed throughout the resin.

Tools Used:
1) Pencil
2) Foredom (You can use a dremel or carefully cut with a craft knife.)
3) Respirator! (Very impt. Resin dust is toxic.)
4) Sandpaper in a gradation of grits. (I used 220-800)
5) Water. (Don't dry sand. Wet sand for a smooth finish and to reduce resin dust in the air.)

Process:
1) Figure out how much I want to cut and draw a pencil guideline.
2) Use Dremel/Foredom/Craft knife to get rid of most of the resin to be reduced. Don't go right to the pencil line. If you make a mistake here it would be hard to get rid of the mistake so leave some space here.
3) Wet sand using lowest grit until you reach the pencil line. This makes for a nice smooth even curve which may be hard to get with a knife or even a dremel. Make sure you round the edges a bit so it's not a harsh straight edge.
4) Finish off by wet sanding with higher grit sandpaper until you reach desired smoothness.

So here are the pics. I didn't take any in progress pics since it's pretty boring and self explanatory.

The pencil line I drew on the unmodded pelvis piece and then the modded piece. No scar!


Yao and Li have the same stomach and pelvis pieces. The thigh pieces for Yao are just modified thighs from the normal 42cm double jointed girl bodies so the upper ball area is the same. Yao is unmodded and Li is modded. As you can see the difference isn't very noticeable and they both stand solidly after restringing. I will suede them later just to improve posing. For now they are just restrung and Li is modded.

A closer look at the pelvic area. Li's pelvis piece has slightly higher leg openings.

Li still doesn't sit perfectly. As you can see she leans back a bit. I can mod her hips a bit more so she sits straighter but for now I'm pretty happy she can even sit up on her own. ResinSoul really didn't do a very good job designing the bodies for posing. As you can see the shape of her buttocks and thigh muscles causes the sitting pose to naturally lean backwards.

On the other hand, sitting with a lean is still much better than what Yao can do. She needs to be held to be in any sort of sitting position.

When laying down, Li can hold her legs up at about an 95-100 degree angle. Yao cannot do that at all.

From this angle, you can see what the changes are. With the legs still angled to the body, Li's thighs are pretty much flush with the modded leg openings while the original shape of Yao's pelvis does not allow the legs to bend toward the body. (I am holding Yao's legs.)

Voila! It's a pretty easy mod but any kind of mod scares me before I do it because I don't want to mess up the doll. I do feel more sure of myself now though and if anyone wants their RS pelvis modded, I can add it to the list of commissions I do or you guys can try it yourself! It's really easy.

EDIT: I realize from some questions ppl asked on forums that they are not sure how much to cut. I am adding a picture to illustrate.

1) While doll is still strung, position leg in a sitting position to the body so you can see the amount of gappage. The width of the gap is the same amount of room that is needed for the leg to sit correctly in the pelvis.

2)Using a pencil mark the same gap width above the highest arch of the pelvic cup for the leg.

3) Draw an arc similar to the curve of the leg if it were sitting correctly.

This is how I figured out the curve. I basically did this once and didn't have to remeasure or retrace. when I cut my pelvis and sanded I sanded directly to the line and the leg just fit perfectly. I think this was purely luck, but you can also help luck by being careful! So just prepare yourself well and things should go well!

Playing catchup.

I need to set a day or two during the week to be my blog days. I have been working on things but I don't post them here. My bf sees the pics I take of my dolls for ebay and wonders why I don't post them. I guess the reason is that I forget ppl might like to see pretty pic spams lol. Neway I will do some posts of the two CH dolls I customized and sold as well as a new Obitsu head. For now I wanted to show my own dolls with some new faceups.

I've had these guys since March 8th but I was afraid to do their faceups because they were tan dolls and because I dunno..I was just scared. The first time I tried was a month ago but it had been raining so much that the MSC frosted like crazy and then I got scared for a month again. My RS Dark Tan Wu is still suffering from frosted MSC stuck in the lip line but my two Light Tan girls have their faces on.


There is still a slight difference in color between the MSCed head and the bare body but that is to be expected as having a matt texture immediately means there will be very slight frosting. It's similar to matt frosted glass vs shiny clear glass. Here's what her head looks like on her body. Currently my Li (Zili) is disassembled to mod her hips so she sits better. I'll post on that so you guys can see how to do it.


And last but not least, my floating male SD head.


I think he looks better this time around. A lot more natural. I think this might be my last forced natural faceup run. I am quite happy with the looks on these three heads so I will go ahead and go back to my more stylized faceups. Of course there are still areas that need work but I think for now I am capable of doing natural bare faced looking faceups.