Commission Review - D.I.M. Minimee Adriana Lima - NS

I love D.I.M. dolls. I love the aesthetic of their sculpts, the body sculpt, the body engineering and the resin quality. In fact, my first doll was a D.I.M. happy body with a free anime styled head because she was the prettiest of the dolls I could afford at the time. However, word on the net is that the Minimee heads are terribly finished and some artists refuse to paint them. When Robyn approached me to paint her Minimee Adrian Lima, I accepted because she told me she had completely sanded the surface and resculpted one ear to the best of her ablities. I also think Adriana Lima is beautiful and wanted to paint a sculpt of her. Well, I'm glad I accepted the commission because here she is!

More info under the cut!
Beautiful sculpt no? I painted the resin out of this head. As Robyn promised the resin surface was fine. No bubbles or bumps. The resculpted ear was slightly rough and the sculpting material was a different color but as Robyn told me to ignore it, I decided to color match it instead lol.

As you can see below, the color match makes the patch barely noticeable. I thought about smoothing out the sculpt a bit (I sculpt too) but decided it would take too much time and the sculpt job was decent anyway. Can you spot which ear was resculpted?

Sculpt wise, she has similarities to Adriana Lima but as D.I.M. says, due to copyright issues they've gone through, their sculpts are only ever a 90% likeness. I think overall the features are hers but the face shape is a bit off. Her chin is sharper in reality and her face a little more rounded in the cheeks. In real life the headsculpt actually looks a lot like Natalie Portman. It's not surprising since beauty as a general concept tends toward a norm but it's a little sad to see that a generally perceived notion of beauty is so narrow. No one ever says Natalie Portman looks like Adriana Lima. Maybe the skintone throws ppl off but she really does.

So, back to the commission! The request was for a peachy complexion with a sunkissed look. The character is named Nefret and has cornflower blue eyes so Nancy asked me to pick an eyeshadow color that will look good with blue eyes. The eyebrows are modeled after Adriana's and eyeshadow that will show off blue eyes was requested. Nancy also requested that I not emphasize the teeth.

The resin color on the head was a pale creamy yellow NS. It was pretty pale but definitely yellow and not peachy. This actually works out better for realistic faceups becasue pink NS resin is a super unnatural color for realistic skintone. I blushed her more heavily than I normally do (I prefer paler more subtle cheeks on realistic faceups) and warmed up her nose bridge and forhead a bit for a sunkissed look.

For her eyeshadow, I decided to stay more natural with a smoked brown eyeshadow and orange/peach shades. Orange usually will work well with blue eyes since they are complementary colors. I also like browns and greys with blue eyes but I generally stay away from blues, purples and greens for blue eyes.

Now for the teeth. There's no way to not emphasize the teeth since they are sculpted in. The only and best way to not emphasize them is to paint them as realistically as possible so that they don't stand out. They look like they belong in her face so you don't notice them ^____^.

Overall I love the way she turned out. I like it when dolls are charismatic after you paint them. What I mean is that, you can spend a lot of time happily staring at it. There are some dolls that are well painted but after one look you don't bother looking again. Not all the dolls I paint are charismatic lol. It's sad but true.

Here is her time chart.

Normal timing for an SD sized head. I didn't run into any issues with her at all. Sometimes I have might run into an issue where I have to clean up a spot of dust that won't come off or I spend a lot of time on applying eyelashes because the lashes will not cooperate. In this case the faceup went without a hitch. I have yet to time myself on more stylized SD faceups. I tend to do a lot of layering on realistic sculpts so I'm not sure if I will be faster on more anime looking SD heads.

And here's one last pic to send you guys off with! 

I'm happy to hear from ppl so let me know your thoughts. I'm trying to finish off August commissions for BJDs and finish up some 1/6 heads but I'm currently booked on a job as well. (One that pays my bills because commissions cannot do it T____T) I thought I could work on commissions after I got home but in the end I'm too tired to concentrate on something that requires my complete attention...oh...lol. I am blogging from work because we have down time while waiting for design decisions and client approval.