Weekend update

I'm finally catching up a little on outstanding commissions but I still have a lot on my plate.

I have mailed out JanetT's heads! She makes great costumes so I'm interested to see how Pet and Maddy turn out.

I need to do final touch-ups to MayWong's heads as well as sand and prep some action figure heads. (sanding and prepping are terrible but necessary chores if I want a good canvas to work on.)

On Thursday I was stuck in Chinatown since my sister was really worked about the 20 yo cat. He's actually not so bad but since he is having a not so good reaction to the penicillin for his UTI he's been having some issues. (I've had him since I was super little so he's impt to me.) I have to take him to the vet again tomorrow for some follow up on the UTI. I've spent a ton of money the last two weeks on vet bills. My sister has no income and she is paying for her alternative medicine school and her mortgage from whatever savings she has so I can't really ask her to handle any of the expenses.

At any rate since I was stuck there I brought the watercolor pencils I had lying around to try them once again. I initially really didn't like them because of the graininess of the lines but on the soft vinyl the grainy look is not there. I think it is because the point sinks in more. However that also means getting fine and dark lines is harder. Overall I like them a lot more and will be adding them to my arsenal. I still finish with paint tho.

Petrucchio for JanetT

He took forever. Hah...That's what comes to my mind when I look at him. Mainly it's because there were many thin layers of paint and because of the facial hair and wrinkles. It's easy to paint a pretty face. It's much harder to paint a not so pretty face. Overall I'm pretty happy with him. It was hard because the face sculpt is for a child but he is in his late 30s to early 40s and has led a hard life.

Well, here he is....the one concern is that Maddy's  huge eyes and makeup overpowers him a bit.  We'll see what JanetT wants me to do.

Commission - MayWong update

So, I finally e-mailed the airbrush supply company I had ordered from since it's been two days and they still hadn't shipped out the part even tho they said they would ship it within 24 hours. They sent me a tracking number a few hours later.....I'm a bit upset about it because I had expected to receive it today or tomorrow. It looks like I won't get it until Monday.

Since I have other commissions I worked on those instead.

I don't use airbrush on the soft vinyl heads yet because I haven't tested out the varnishes. I'm afraid they might not take well to squishing so we'll see. Luckily I still have some ZM spray. The stuff is truly vile.

At any rate, here is Kagura. She is one of the main villains in Inuyasha. As such I gave her a grim mouth and evil slanted eyes much like what she has in the manga. ^___^. The request was for red eyes, red lips and magenta eyeshadow. I kept the lip color a more magentish red so it won't clash too much with the magenta eyeshadow.

Commission updates

For BJD faceups:

While cleaning my airbrush I had the pieces drying and misplaced the nozzle. All heads for February are in progress with the base skin tone down. I finally broke down and ordered a new one since I couldn't find it. It should get here Saturday and the February heads should be done by the middle or end of next week.

For 1/6 faceups:

Long overdue, I know.

I will be finishing the vinyl heads first as the resin heads require more work.

First up is JanetT's mags. I worked on her today but she may need more work. I feel like her makeup isn't garish enough.

I did a mockup of what she might look like under the cut.

Obitsu 60HD-F03 - HOLD

Still no camera -___- . I will probably be investing in my own when I can raise the funds. I've been spoiled by relying on my friend's camera but since I have need of a camera at all times I think I need a good digital SLR of my own.

Today I am refreezing a commission head so I can do more mods on it. I will explain about freezing vinyl heads for modding in a later post about that head. So erm, to relax I painted this head I've had sitting around for a month. I should be working on more commissions but honestly 1/6 scale realistic styled heads really stress me out when it comes to commissions so I will break them out after I finish Asuka who arrived first in the mail.

This head I painted is the much overlooked Obitsu 60HD-F03. I don't see her around much. Usually the more realistic Obitsu sculpts steal the show and when it is a more anime looking head, the designer head is popular. The default 50cm head is also around a bit because it is the default head and the new princess head has been spotted too. This poor obscure head gets no love but it's all about to change! Take a look ladies and gents!

\ (^__^) /

A fiercely cute redhead!

Amethyst - Obitsu Mini Haruka

Another commission update! Meet Amethyst. She is a mini Haruka head belonging to SophieOuch. Let me tell you, applying those lashes was super difficult but I believe I can apply lashes to any doll now lol.

Commission updates for MayWong

MayWong was one of my first customers but it has taken me a while to getting around to her heads. The main reason is because I am behind on all my commissions but also because I was trying to read up on the manga Inuyasha so I can do the characters justice. These are the only two heads from her that are not based on Inuyasha characters as far as I can tell but I have gotten to a point in the manga where I feel I know the characters fairly well and will be starting in on them soon. 

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.

Commission updates

So Audry is completed and approved but I don't have a return address to send her off to since the owner had ordered the head from Volks and had her sent directly to me!!! I have sent an e-mail to the owner but have not had a reply yet. Hopefully she will be claimed. This is a photo of her glossed. Her banks keep falling into her face so I didn't put her on a body for a photo.

Commission #5 - BJD style 1/6 head

I didn't post this head in the W.I.P. because I just went ahead and finished it in one sitting. I wasn't told the name for the character but I was given and idea of her personality. She is kind and motherly. The challenge was that she has down turned eyes but she should not look sad. I was given reference to follow, and while I think I managed follow the reference fairly closely I think perhaps I followed it too closely? I would say this style ended up being more of a manga style than a BJD style. I will ask the owner whether they want anything changed.

The base is a normal skin Volks Dollfie head Type A head with rooted brown hair . For the coloring, she specified purple eyes, versatile but not too plain makeup with a sweet smile and rosy lips.

Here is a photo without gloss. I will take a better photo after she is glossed.

Big Brown Eyes

I'm not a fan of brown eyes. Not that I have a preference for eye color but in general I find brown eyes to be a bit boring because I have brown eyes too. I do try to keep the heads I paint varied and those who have brown eyes look good with them. This time around I think the brown looks good but I think the previous big heads looked a bit more alluring to me because of the more interesting eye color.

This is the last big painted eye head I have for now. I will get a painted eye big Obitsu for myself one day but it'll be a while yet. Hopefully ppl will want to get some big 'Bitsus painted but most ppl like the eyeball heads. Considering that you can get several painted eye heads with different expressions, I hope painted eye heads become more popular. You can't change the eye color easily, but you can change the expression!


EDIT: Lol, I noticed that in the last three weeks I've painted a lot of brown eyes due to the JS contest. I really like how Chie came out so I guess I don't find brown eyes that boring.

EDIT2: Ok, so my bf was a little sad when he read this because he has brown eyes too. I think brown eyes are fine in real ppl, I just mean that in an illustration/doll there are so many choices that brown (which is the most common color in humans) is kinda boring is all. Ok bf? Pat pats on head.

First half of July

Phew! July's been such a bomb. So many terrible things have happened including a minor physical assault ( I walked away with a few bruises but it's still disruptive and makes you feel bad. I didn't start it obviously.) and my dad getting really sick. He has been sick for a while and is undergoing chemo so of course there are complications. I hope the rest of July and the summer will be better.

So on to better things. I have many things to show but as usual I am behind on taking photos and blogging. I made a mini-me or rather two..kinda, to enter the JunkySpot contest for an awesome Doll Leaves doll. I was late to enter cause of stuff that came up and I ended up throwing stuff together two hours before the contest ended. I literally snapped a few photos and quickly composited in Photoshop between 10PM - 12AM last night. Things happen and in the end a contest is not very important. It was still fun to do and I see a bunch of mistakes in these that I didn't notice before but that's ok. I'll fix it later if ppl really mind.

So here are the three little obitsu faces painted on the 21HD-01N. Cute right? My friends all say the third one looks the most like me lol. I tried to make the mouths big and plump but still keep a nice balance to the face.


This Junky Spot poster is my favorite out of the bunch. I think you guys can tell why. I love the baby bitsus. Not very clean photoshop but on limited time that's to be expected.

Not my favorite. but bitty bitsu is sitll cute! Chie looks a bit weird though. She's my newest girl and hasn't had a proper shoot yet. She's on a 25cm body. She doesn't look like me because she isn't supposed to. There's no way I could fit my lips on an Obitsu sculpt anyway lol.

I made both of the little white dresses for the girls and my mom made the white dress I'm wearing for me a loooong time ago when I was 19.


Lol. Kinda hokey but lil invie looks like she wants a hug. Can you tell I don't live anywhere with a good view? I would have taken the picture in a nicer setting but since I was doing this all in my basement at night, this is what you get. I had to drop the background out since the ceiling is literally three inches above my head and it doesn't look good.


I'm embarrassed by the last two and I don't like them that much but I'll just throw them up. Shame be damned. Oh so photoshoppey with gradients lol. It is a nice picture of Chie though. I like the colors in the lighting.



I will do a better post about Lil' Invie and Chie with better photos. I hope everyone enjoyed these though.

Tough Girl

My monitor pretty much sucks, so a lot of the photos I upload look washed out and there's not much I can do about it until I get a new monitor. (It's not a calibration thing.) Anyway, I haven't had time to check what these photos look like on a normal monitor but I hope they look ok. Until I can fix them these will have to do.

This is my #13 head and I'm calling her Kat. She's another tough chick like Ace, and I finally have a body suitable for them. I decided not to do scarring or a frown on this one so as a result she's not as scary looking but trust me, she can still kick your butt, lol.






Yay! I really like the F03 head type. I've seen it painted really badly though and it's not as popular as a girl. A few ppl have made them into boys but I really like my F03 girls. I'll be doing a decent photo shoot for Ace soon.

EDIT: Oh, this is the sketch for her. Now you can see that the sketch --> final product usually isn't super similar...mainly due to the sculpt...and in the photos the lips look a lot darker than real life because of the gloss.



And for those interested, I only used a Rekab red sable brush in size 0 for all of the work. I know smaller brushes exist out there but the line weight when using a brush with a good tip on it is as much due to pressure on the tip as well as to brush size. I will eventually try to get a smaller brush since that should help with finer lashes but for now this is working for me.

And one more pic at a more straight on angle.

#12

I have a new Obitsu head painted, but honestly I'm not that happy with her. The reason is that I was trying to emulate other artists whose works are popular and in the process while I think the head is good technically, she is sort of soul-less. Anyway this is what she looks like. She is my 12th head using an F02NC03 which is a F27-02 sculpt prerooted with brown hair.

I am looking forward to doing a kickass blonde on an Obitsu F27-03 head soon as well as redoing that one Obitsu male head I did. I'm not satisfied with him so I'm going to wipe him.

I realize I never did a good photo shoot for #11 ACE! The reason is that I still don't have what I feel would be an appropriate body for her. Perhaps I will be able to get it by the end of the summer. We'll see. She's one of my favorites so she's not for sale lol.

Currently working on:

1) Moogle

2) Modding my RS Wu's body

3) Fixing up my Volks Megii

4) Dreaming of clothes for Oun (RS Yao) and Zi'li (RS Li) who I hope to bring to my first Doll Meet in Manhattan!

ACE peeks out

The moogle is still being sculpted. His arm is frustrating. While he's curing I painted Ace as I've been meaning to. I'm not sure if I like her yet. I think I should have made her meaner looking and her right eyebrow is higher than her left...though that really doesn't matter since she only has one eye.....Also her sculpt is quite manly and long faced and I didn't compensate as well as I should have for it.

In the end I still like her but could use some practice making mean girl faces.

EDIT: Minute changes and totally worth it. She looks prettier and more feminine but still kickass. Also I'm aware there is a weird texture on her face. I think that's from the sealer. Never buying this brand again. It's a lot thicker and has noticeable pores. In real life they are hard to see though which still isn't good because I can't take good pics of her.

EDIT2: Gah...I'm just not getting her....no expression maybe I have to start a new head...this is...frustrating.



EDIT3: .... Actually quite happy with the end result. She has the right attitude. She looks difficult to approach but still beautiful and disturbing. (note the dot on her forehead is on the camera lense and the speck of dust...is a speck of dust.)

It's a Boy!!!....head

So today, after I worked a bit on detailing the moogle cuffs ( this takes the longest time because you can only do a little bit at a time and then wait 10 hours to let it cure.) I worked on mr. man. He doesn't have a name yet...sometimes the name comes as I am painting or before I paint and other times it comes after or it changes as the process goes on. I'm babbling. It's late. Anyway, here are work in progress pics. I haven't done his hair yet so I'll post again when I do.


Here is a comparison of the Rooted Head for Slim Male Body - Dark Brown (27MSN-DB) and the Obitsu F03 head. They are both really androgynous. I wanted a manlier man but this is what they had for rooted heads. He has a big honking nose but I forgot to do side shots before I painted him. BTW his lips aren't as dark in real life. they do photograph dark as do all the lips of my dolls. Not sure why that is but I never bother to go in and fix it. It does kind of bug me though. (Oh...and yes that is Ace's head freshly rooted to bring down her hairline...and I notice also that mr.man head's hairline is wonky.....hopefully that means not all the F03 heads have ultra high foreheads cause I rather like the sculpt.)


I will be doing more male heads in the future and I'll try to get him to look a bit manlier and with lighter lips. Granted for this one I went with a lush lashed fem boy because I love dark haired boys with ultra lush lashes and light eyes....but I felt it fit the sculpt seeing as it's so girly.

A quick shot of my work table...it's turned into the photo table for the moment. But ou can see my new Li (Zili) lounging with Peyton. I got her on March 8th along with Wu (Ba'ul) and Yao (Oun). I'll do a proper intro soon. I did do a box opening vid...shame on me for taking so long to post...but I'll finish before April.


Sorry to those waiting on the moogle. I promise he's being loved and worked on....it just takes a while for the stuff to cure.. I do have an idea for a different material to use in the future for lacey parts that wont take so long. So for the upcoming sculpts it won't take this long a wait for the lace fabrics.

Overview

So I was showing my mom and sister what I had been working on and I realized that my work has progressed over the last month and a half. Initially thought Milla's faceup was really well done and that I would have a hard time doing another one, but looking back at the photos, I can see I have a little more control and detail than when I first started. Here's a timeline of all the heads I've completed thus far. I've also labeled them with the head type and skin tone if anyone wants some reference. Click to enlarge! (These are all Obitsu heads so far though I hope to try out some different ones at some point.)


Click image to enlarge. The photos of the F01/F02 heads are slightly larger than actual size in real life so this will give you a good idea of what details are visible to the naked eye and which are mainly picked up with photos. The F04 heads are slightly bigger than the F01 and F02 heads in real life.

Aili for St. Patrick's Day

So the reason I've been slower with painting doll heads or moogling is that I've been making doll clothes. I'm not super fast at hand sewing so that means it takes me about a week or a week and a half to complete a doll. (ie. Paint doll head, blush doll body and paint details, draft pattern and sew clothes.) It takes a while but I love the results. I'm super fond of Aili and I love the personality she exudes. I very much wanted her to be the tomboy who transforms into a beautiful and alluring lady. She succeeds...visually...she is still a tomboy at heart. For this reason Aili was painted without lipstick and no eyeliner. I lover her bare face and the slight smirk she has. As much as I don't want to play favorites, I feel like she completely upstages Lara. She's currently on ebay and I feel like given the time I spent on her, I'm posting her for a very low price. I hate to see her go because I would actually love to do another shoot with her. She's the first doll I've felt this way about as I usually do one shoot and I don't really have an idea for another one. This might be because I have clothes for her and she has a painted body. At any rate, the way I see it is that I will be making more dolls/characters that I will fall in love with so if Aili goes to a good home, I won't be lacking for dolls to photograph.

To be honest I've never thought of myself as being a photographer...or rather I was never someone who thought oh I want to get better at photography. I create a lot of visual imagery but I have always considered photography and collage and such to be my weaknesses or something I'm not particularly good at. However, with dolls I've found that it's much easier to create a controlled lighting situation than with a human since the scale is so much smaller. As a result I've really enjoyed taking photos of the girls. I only wish I had more backgrounds or props and clothing. Well all in good time.

Here is Aili in her St. Paddy's finery. I think her personality comes across as rather more complex that Lara's. I hope to create more dolls at this level and that ppl enjoy them and would wish to own them.

(I made everything except the base shoe, stockings, base doll and base head)



Ah, I have also updated my commissions page to include body blushing/painting.