Looking at this photo I found on flickr convinces me that the spiritdoll ver2 girl body is better for Freddie than the SD16. I was half regretting not buying her with the SD16 body but now I'm not. But I'm not sure if I should buy it cos I've been spending too much...

Double Trouble! Meet up 25.05.14

So I went to a meet on Sunday. It's been a while since I've gone to one, what's with me being busy with school everytime Catherine (Zetahadrian) asks me :x Anyway, the meet is a themed meet but everyone gets to choose their theme, and dress 2 of their dolls (or pair up with another owner) in that theme. Pretty fun, though I realise I only have casual clothes for my dolls...oops :p

The owners who went are Catherine (Zetahadrian), MK (lipslock), Nats, Chin (Mouldysweets), Shiori (ShioriErde), Fumiyo and Seline. I'm not familiar with all the dolls so excuse the lack of names for some ^^|||

Anyway, this was the only shot I have of the dolls on the table. We didn't have time for a group shot before the sun set D:

Also, the photos are in themed pairs, not in the order they're taken so the lighting changes...just...yeah. It is mildy annoying especially cos my Nikon likes the light on one side of the area we were in better but the dolls kept moving, haha. So some shots have weird lighting on my camera. (But they look fine on Canons...D:)



So the themes are...

Pirates. Both of them are Fumiyo's. The outfit's super detailed, and look at Beefcake's chest (she couldn't find the string for it lol)



Also, he looks like he's eyeing her... ;)

Shiori's Masaru (right) and Seline's Akane in gothic




Shiori's boys, Nozomi (left) and Haru (right) in Military (Weeee~ Their uniforms are sooo cool. But wait for a later pair of Uniforms later ;) They're also damn handsome <3 font="">




Chin's boys...I only know Shinya's the one in specs and who is very particular about cleanliness, haha. :D




Nat's girls. Alice's the one with ginger hair...and I don't know the name of her little girl ahh...:/ They'r errr sort of Alice in wonderland theme? Haha. Nats herself isn't too sure what this theme is lol. XD




And the little ones with a bag of M&Ms, haha. Lighting was getting bad here.


MK's London (left) and Nats' Zak (right) with MK's little girl for Japanese Traditional clothing. The seats were red and matched quite nicely here :D


MK's December and Shinjiro in cutesy clothes :) The bunny ears and bag are so cute, haha.




Catherine's Shiraga (left) and Valerie (right) in sportswear. The props are pretty cool, especially the basketball which looks too big in person but turns out the right size in photos. Haha. And I didn't get a photo of Valerie's knee guards which Catherine made just the night before/morning of the meet :(



And I just realised the 2 shots are almost exactly the same except for the orientation...whoops ><

Then Shiraga and Beefcakes changed clothes (with much effort. Like Shiraga's hand had to be removed cos the sleeve wouldn't go on), we have 2 handsome er...pilots? Military men? Either way, the uniform looks good but it took Catherine and Fumi really long to get everything on them. Haha.



Also, I think this is the first time I handled Soom Idealians...they're so huge. Like I can't wrap my hand around their torso to take them up safely with one hand (I usually grab my dolls with 1 hand, usually by their torso, or sometimes even just an arm if I can't reach their torso...>.>). They look really good but I finally know what people mean when they say some dolls are too big for them to handle. I shall just look at their boys and admire them from far, lol.

And my own dolls, Freddie and Zeke for a medical theme. MK was saying how this looks like the beginnings of a porn plot. Haha. (I have to agree...lol)
Anyway, I didn't have anything, as I said, besides casual clothes so I borrowed Catherine's dolly stethoscope and doctor's coat for Zeke, and made an arm sling for Freddie. I imagined that she injured herself playing basketball or something, and I would totally make a leg cast except that's too hard. The arm sling wasn't too bad to make actually. Simpler than I though.




That's all the decent photos I have. :D Hope you liked it!

Just realised that the BeYours old boy body might be a good size for Joe, except he'll be short (61cm ish) compared to Caillen (hoping for 65-68cm body for him) since he's around Zeke's height (he's a on 66cm body). But it's a nice looking body, that's for sure.

Also, the BeYours 65cm body has a weirdly thin waist and about the same sized shoulders as the 61cm body (what's with that, lol), but it looks like it might be a nice body for a trans man or a girl who binds (not sure which my currently unnamed character does)...just a though.

Shall keep this in mind for now :)

edited to add this:

I just realised I have 666 deviations. Haha.
Side note, I watched Supernatural S9.23 yesterday and I'm still ...just thinking about it. Like I'm not doing anything to consciously think about it but it appears in my mind randomly during the day. Gahhh, I can't wait til S10 is out :<

Freddie's here!

So my Volks Olivia head is here, weee :D

My mum actually didn't tell me she received the head and I had to ask her after checking the tracking when I got home, haha. And I was too excited I started opening the box before I took some crappy shots along the way.


Her papers :)


Packing peanuts. But like flower shaped. So many! I've not went to clear that box yet (probably will do it over the weekend :/) And can you see her? :o


She came with super long lashes and her faceup is actually super duper sparkly. Like a lot of shimmer powder. But I like the faceup, though I do wish it was less shimmery, haha.


And a photo with flash cos it just happened (camera was on auto). Look at that smirk (she was a potential Caillen at one point, haha, but I like her better as a girl ><)


And yes, after I actually unpacked everything and looked at Freddie's head and all, I finally remembered to take a photo of the huge bag she came in. My mum was like, even the postman thought the big bag was a bit too much...haha. When I first saw the bag, I was like, you sure this is for me? Then my mum was like, yeah, it's from Russia, which is where the seller's from, so I was like, okay...open the bag. But yes, huge bag aside, I got a Volks Olivia head after she's on my grail list for sooo long. :D :D

And have some crappy indoor lighting photos of her wig a temporary wig. She's meant to have a red wig (dyed hair, whoooo. Also. I dyed my hair dark red, and it's a pain cos the colour seems to be really good at running even after 4 washes so far...so yes, Freddie, I understand your pain. But you should have red hair >_<) but that's probably gonna take a while to arrive. She also stole the Makoeyes I originally had in my C. Ryu, and now Caillen (C. Ryu) is wearing the Leeke Glass eyes instead, since glass eyes reflect more light in his small eyes anyway.

Freddie's borrowing Tiyana's body (Supia old body), and I think I should get a broader body for her, but for now, she's gonna have to share the only girl body I have.





Oh yes, and I took out her eyelashes cos they're too girly for Freddie. Freddie's a tomboy who plays basketball and games with Zeke :) Can't wait to have time to take photos of them together.

Worrying a bit now cos the tracking isn't updating (last update was 13 May, it's now 16 May) but I'm hoping it's just one of those cases where tracking is slower than actual delivery or something. Bahh. EMS shouldn't have so much problems...

Oh yeah, and I'm surprised by the difference in reception of photos of dA and tumblr. I wonder if it's cos it's easier to find things on your dashboard as you're scrolling than if you're on dA and have to go click through the messages? There's a photoset on tumblr that's doing much better (80notes) than dA (15 favourites). I half suspect it's cos more people saw it on tumblr though, to be honest (usually the number of faves etc I get is about 10% of the views, so naturally when there's more views there's usually more faves).

Woohoo, tracking number for my Olivia head (Freddie :D). Think the seller got EMS (I thought it was just registered, and expensive lol), soooo she's gonna arrive faster than I thought. :)

Blehh, photobucket is on maintainance so I need to wait for it to be back up before I can upload sale photos for just 2 items (1 wig, 1 shirt). It sucks cos it's just 2 small items...

On a side note, I hate bumping my sales thread when I know I have more items to sell soon. Is it just me? I end up never bumping even if I have time sometimes cos of that ><

Nat face planted! D:

I was just taking photos of Nat modelling some jewelry I made but he suddenly went smack, straight to the ground. I pick him up and the front of his nose was flattened D: And MSC chipped off.







Gah. The most obvious was from the upnose shot. I couldn't stand looking at his nose flattened, so I went to boil some water and steam his face, hoping to un-dent whatever I could, since there wasn't any cracking. That worked pretty well (but I was so scared it wouldn't D:). I basically just held his head as close to the pot of boiling water as I could stand (I don't take heat from steam very well ><) and took him up to check the progress every now and then.







This is from just holding his head over boiling water (over, not in, because I wanted to keep the faceup as much as I could). I figured it's enough shape back and I just needed to sand the rough edges off, since even steam couldn't undent everything. It might have been better if I dipped his nose into hot water, but I didn't want to/dare to so yeah. I sanded his nose a bit and he now looks like this:







It's not too bad, just a different shape tip from before he faceplanted:

(^Yea, that's one of the photos from before he face planted :/)

So on one hand, I've solved as much of the damage from faceplanting as I could by steaming and sanding, but steaming also made his faceup matt (his lips are wayyy less glossy now) and I need MSC (which I DON'T have right now, sobs) to go over his nose. I'm really lucky that this is all the damage, and that Nat's faceup isn't that thick that msc chipping off caused a lot of issues either. But I do need to get MSC and I don't know what to use to make his lips as glossy as before, cos my Winsor and Newton gloss doesn't get that glossy even after 2 layers.

Ohmygod. I just contacted and paid a seller on doa for a Volks Olivia 2nd head. :D :D :D

Digital Mockups

Ignore the ugliness of the bad collage, lol. But I was commenting on doa's thread about digital mock ups for faceup and I remembered that I did a mock up for body proportions instead. Cos Akagidoll is too new for people to have tried the combination I wanted, so I went ahead to do a digital one instead. It wasn't too far off from what I got in the end :)

What I did (left to right):
1. Take a full body shot of the Zeke, so I can use the shoulders of the body in the photo to rescale the new one. He's borrowing a Little Monica body in this one, with shoulders of 14cm width and about 63cm tall overall. I also had to find a photo of him with a wig afterwards cos I realise his wig makes a big difference for proportions lol. And I rescaled this wigged head to the same size as the full body photo (just set the wigged shot on 50% opacity etc, and try to line up the features lol).
2. Found a photo in a similar view (front shot duh, haha) from Akagidoll's website.
3. I used photoshop's line tool to measure how long the shoulders of the Little Monica body was (in whatever size my photo is), divide that by the actual size (14cm) and multiply that by the size of Akagidoll's shoulder size (13.5cm). Then I drew a new line with that dimension, and resize the original Akagidoll company photo. To check that I wasn't too far off, I did the same math as above but for the measurements of arms and legs using Akagi's measurements. Seems about right, so I thought, I'll just go order this Akagidoll body!
4 and 5. Just comparing what I got digitally in the mockup to what I had in real life.

I did a faceup one before too, but it's in my old computer so I don't have the photo, haha. It's just Sion's faceup, basically, before I did it for the first time. I did a couple more mockup of body proportions too. Cos it's not always easy to find someone who'll have photos of the body/head swaps I'm looking for, and mostly cos it's faster to quickly gauge if it'll even be okay.

Leeke Mihael head (Kristolf) and Granado Nuevo body


Esthy Peroth (Joe) and Dollzone 65cm body


I just did the dollzone one cos the 2nd hand market has it for sale, and I was like, hmm, I wonder if it's a good body for Joe...might be okay, I suppose, but resin match in real life would be bad. Cos dollzone resin is quite dark, even if it's the normal pink, and nobility's is quite light. So yeah, blehh.

Clearly the mockups don't tell you anything about resin match (I digitally change the photo's colour so I can a better sense of proportion without having to see weirdly mismatched bodies and head) or about head movement etc, but hey, it's just a tool for me to test body proportions. I usually do a lot of research before I even buy a body anyway, so the mockup is just to add on to my research, more than anything.

Hybrid woes, lol. Actually, not really, sometimes it's fun, especially when you find a good hybrid. :D

Tight pants for Nobility Emotional body - finally!

The skinniest male doll body I have at home is the Nobility Emotional body, and it's really hard to find pants that are tight on him. And it's funny cos Nat loves skinny jeans. But yeah, even the Sadol delf sized ones I have are okay in the legs but leave this gap at the back of his butt. The 4D cypress ones are nice and tight on the legs but the waist is so loose, I can pull it off without unbuttoning. -.-

So the other day I was putting Tiyana in this pair of SD16 girl pants that came with a Greentime outfit set, and her legs were way too short for the pants, and it looks like she's in baggy pants, lol. So I tried that pair on Nat today, and woohoo, pants that are tight and actually fit his bum! Excuse how blurry the photos are. I wasn't paying attention to the sharpness as much as trying to fit the pants in one shot. Haha. While holding Nat's shirt up and using a 50mm lens (i.e. it's hard).









But look at that last shot. The pants fit his butt!

Also, the pants are fake leathery material so maybe it stretches a bit, I'm not sure. I might buy more SD16 pants to try if there's any nice ones I see, but for now this's all I have. Also, I thought the pants were black from Greentime's photos, but nope, they're a dark navy blue. Looks blackish in photos though, haha.

***

Also, I ordered Kristolf's body. I caved and used my debit card to the remaining I didn't have in my paypal. AHHHH WELLL.

And I was trying the acrylic dye on a wig just now but I'm trying something fancy (about 5 colours) so I'm only done with like 1.5 colour. I stopped halfway on the 2nd colour when the paint on my palette finished, cos it took much longer than I thought to dye, and even then it's still streaky. I don't know. I'm going to continue another day.