So, I painted her, and I think winged eyeliner hides the original sculpted sleeping lids really well. I went a bit too dark on this faceup, and I don't think I'll be keeping her so sad and gloomy like this, especially on the general eyebrow shape, haha. I do think it was really fun to paint her different from how I usually do faceups though!

Her eyes are just white beads painted with acrylic and with tamiya gloss. It's weird how one eye too the glossy really nicely and made a dome shape (like how glass eyes dome), while the other refused to do that. I ended up photoshopping the white reflection on one of them. Haha.

Anyway, I think I'll wipe her and repaint at some point. It's harder to decide since she has no body (not even really one to borrow, unless you count Cypher's but he's NS and she's WS), and no wig, but I think the nagging about how overly sad she looks from my boyfriend got to me. Haha. I really like the default smiling Lilin, in NS. I'm not sure how that would translate into this faceplate. Maybe I'll mod her lip corners a bit. Or open her eyes more. We'll see!

Did Freddie's faceup because the one by her previous owner was a bit messy with glue/gloss at the eyelids. I liked that faceup a lot, especially the shape of the brows, which I kept in this faceup. The rest of it was done how I like to do my faceups, haha. And I painted her teeth, though it's actually not that well done. I think I need something to dilute the paint, and I don't think water would work, for a colour like white. I do use water to dilute my watercolour paints for the rest of the linework, but those are dark colours like black and dark brown. I wish she has a body though. Well...can't be helped.

Mods on the Unoa faceplate

Remember the Unoa Lilin I got the other day?


I said I got her for modding, and I did that last week. Because this is my first eye mod, and also because I tend to be really bad with multitasking, I only got a bunch of random shots while I was modding her, but I thought I'll share it anyway. :)

First thing I did was sand off her sculpted eyebrows, because I think I might want to do different eyebrows on her. Since she doesn't have a character, I thought might as well experiment a bit with her. Haha. Here's a photo after I sanded off her left eyebrow (on the right in the photo). The sculpted brow is really subtle, but dimensional, so if I didn't want to do different things with her eyebrows, I might have kept it. But I don't like being restricted by the sculpted shape...


And after sanding them both off. (By the way, I didn't use the penknife, and the scissors was just to cut sandpaper.)


The next thing I wanted to do was to open her eyes. I was thinking of doing either dreaming eyes, or really small squinty eyes. In the end, I went with the squinty eyes, because dreaming eyes remind of Gabby, and I don't really need another pretty dreamy doll in white skin. Haha. Squinty eyes gives me more variety from my current dolls. This was probably the 2nd or 3rd time I drew the eyes, but it still wasn't the shape I wanted.


I think I might have redrawn it a few more times, before I got this, which was (roughly) what I ended up modding. Notice I also kept her mouth as it is, instead of drawing in where I might carve it into more of a smile. I figured I could always do that next time if I want to.


Then I got an exacto knife to slowly carve her eyehole. I tried using a penknife at first, but the blade shifted very easily, and because I was working on such a small area, I couldn't go with the error, so I dug around the house and found an exacto blade. Basically the difference is that the exacto blade has its blade screwed in tight, while the penknife is more like the one you can typically buy with breakable intervals for the blade. I had thought that a penknife would work fine, since I use it quite regularly for making architectural models for school, but it didn't. Lesson of the day. Haha.


A lot of carving and sanding and fine sanding later, tadahhh. I think her eyes turned out smaller than I drew, but it's okay. I'm in the process of doing her faceup, and I think I'll update that when I'm done.


I also made her eyes by painting acrylic on white beads, because I don't have eyes small enough for her (I tried Kristolf's 10mm, and they were still too big). I really don't know how small her eyes are. o.O But for now, I've started a freckled faceup for her.

Box opening: Unoa Chibi Lilin Sleeping faceplate

First things first, I ordered this from Mandarake last week, and it arrived today, so around a week or so. Really fast, and oh so bad for impulse buying tendencies! Since this is my first time ordering from Mandarake, I wasn't sure what to expect, but the whole process was quite simple. I signed up for an account on Mandarake, place the item I wanted into my cart, then check which type of shipping I wanted (I chose EMS, but there is Small Package as well). And since Mandarake has storefront and warehouse items, and my Unoa faceplate is a storefront item, they took 2 days to check if my item was still available, then gave me the total price including shipping and handling charges. And another day or so later, I got my tracking number :D

So the box. Even though it was just a single Unoa Chibi faceplate, they shipped it in a pretty big box. You'll see what I mean if you watch my box opening video. Haha.





To be honest, I wasn't sure what skintone she would be, because I can't find it in the description, and the packaging didn't write. One look at her once she's out of the box showed that she was white skin, or fairy skin, as Unoa calls it.


She has those sculpted eyebrows, that don't really show up on camera. And her lips has lip lines sculpted too. Really fine work.


And the back of her faceplate has two carved dots? I know that B-grade Unoas have 2 dots to show that they are B-grade and not standard grade, but the only photo I've seen doesn't have the dots at the eyewells like mine does. So I'm not too sure. She does have a bit of obvious seamlines, that are more protruding than usual.


And her with the packaging and a wig stopper that came with her.


I bought this faceplate thinking to modify it, but I'm not sure what I want to do with it yet. Took a photo of her against the light to show where her resin is thinner. That's probably where I'll start her eye modification, after I decide whether I want dreaming eyes, small but fully open eyes, or just open eyes. And whether I want to mod her lip to a bit more of a smile or smirk too...


And I also compared her with my Cypher, my LTF Pong Pong for size.


They seem relatively similar enough in size, though the Unoa is a bit bigger.


But on the body the neck is clearly too short. It could be because of the mouth part on the headback for the Pong Pong head, because I have seen Unoa Chibi Roar on a LTF body. Hmm...well, I don't really like the proportions, I think she's a bit too bobbleheaded.


But you know, if you wrap the body up, you can still take some photos. Haha.


Now it's time to think about how I want to modify her. And then who she might be, as a character. I've also been looking at hybrids, trying to get her as close to a YoSD size as possible, for ease of sharing clothes, but I'm leaning towards the hybrids that are a bit taller in terms of how they look. Either way, since I got her as a project to do, I'm only going to worry about that once I get her faceplate modded properly first. It'll be my first eye opening mod, and my second mod so far (the first was Caillen's nose). Excited and nervous at the same time. :0

I'm not as fond of this faceplate as I am of the default Lilin faceplate, but it was a good price, and I figured modifying it would be fun. At the same time, I think I can grow to like the sculpt, especially after modifications, but I'm trying to not let myself be too attached to it first, because I don't want to start getting ahead of my intent and skip the process of modifying her and slowly letting her take shape, and just hurriedly buying her a body and headback etc, just to see her more "complete".

It's been a while since I did something relating to their backstories, so I tried to get this scene in photos.

This is one of the first few scenes I have when I started thinking about Gabby's backstory. Gabby is the kind of person who would try to stand up for justice, which is why he tried to defend Dennis when Dennis was made fun of by Sion. He didn't realise it'll bring him trouble with Sion, who, at this point in the story is 17 and a teen, and bullies others for fun. (Yes, Sion isn't terribly mature at this point.) So here he's threatened by Sion to not interfere or he'll make Gabby's life in school tedious (trip him up, spread rumors, get others to isolate him), and Gabby is standing up against that. That kiddo has an unwavering sense of what's right and wrong, huh. Even when it harms him. Slightly naive, perhaps, but an admirable quality.

 Of course, this just makes Sion madder.







***

As some might know, Gabby and Sion are a couple in my story, but not really, at the point of the story I was depicting in the photostory above. Despite that, I kept thinking, this is awfully like a kabe-don scene. Haha.

And here's a photo of them just leaning on each other. I like Gabby's sleepy face here. And Sion looks thoughtful instead of menacing. Which is more of how he feels when/now that he is more grown up, even as a character in my head.

Faceup removal video

I thought I'll record me removing Freddie's faceup since I want to redo her faceup. Personally I like using isopropyl alcohol since there is a lesser chance of staining, and I don't need to work as fast or as carefully as I do with acetone. However, pure acetone does have the benefit of being a better remover of tough stains, especially the lip corners and eye rims. Now that I have both removers, I think I'll stick to the routine I use in the video, which is the isopropyl alcohol for most of the faceup, then pure acetone for any harder to remove bits. Seems to be the best way for me so far :)

Also, I'm in the process of doing Freddie's faceup, and I really do love how Volks sculpted her lips. So much amazement in that area. I could be biased but ahhh, I really like her lips. I did realise she has this weird dividing line going on with her cheek area. I don't really know what to call it, but my Peroth has a similar thing going on too. It's basically when the cheek area follows the profile of the front view, rather than a more "realistic" cheekbone structure?

I was looking through my photobucket to see if I can find a photo to show this. For example, Tiyana has that sharp shadow on her cheek in this photo. Which a lot of dolls have.



Compare this to Sion's cheek which has less of a defined line going all the way from cheek to chin, but a more 3D look that is closer to what defined cheekbones look like.



Anyway, my point is, the shadow that connects from cheek to chin in a clear straight line like Tiyana's is fine, but I realised that for my Volks Olivia aka Freddie, the line is actually shown in the sculpt? Like the transition from one plane to another isn't smooth. I don't know if that made any sense at all. Anyway, it's not a big issue, but I thought it's interesting, especially since it only happens on one side of her face.

I got a DD??? For this photo of Gabby.

Just a real surprise, especially since I've not been that active, and this is the first DD I've gotten. So. Wow. Wow.

Thoughts about "grail" dolls (with a bit of Ninestyle order box opening)

You know how people have grail dolls? I have grail doll heads, and grail doll bodies. Haha. The meaning of grail aside, I just roughly took it to mean, a doll item I really want/like and is relatively hard to get, usually because it's limited, sold out, expensive, or (usually the case) all of the above.

So I do actually own two of my grail heads, and 1 of my grail body. The grail heads are Volks Olivia and Esthy Peroth, and the body is a DT15 old body. It was never my intention for the grail head(s) to be on the grail body, but here it is. Joe, a Peroth on a DT15 old body, both of which I was lucky to get. I changed his clothes to be a bit more like beach wear, but I don't really have appropriate shorts or bermudas for him. He's wearing Freddie's harem pants for now, which are still okay, I guess. The necklace I made a while back is a nice touch, I think, for this look.



With that said though, it's funny how even though Joe should technically be *the* grail doll, seeing how he's both the grail head and body, I don't really feel all that much special about him. It's kind of like the grail "hype" doesn't necessarily translates into my excitement for the doll or character itself. Or maybe because I had to come up with a new character for him, since he didn't fit any of the existing ones. I don't really know. 

Either way, today, I noticed his hands have weird white-cream coloured stuff stuck in the crevices. Probably MSC or something from the previous owner. And it surprised me that I've only just noticed. I've had the body for about half a year now, and he was with me in my dorm the whole time, and I only just noticed. ...I really don't play with my dolls as much as I used to back when I had just Gabby and Dennis.

Also, the DT15 old body is a nice solid stander, and I really like its aesthetics overall. But his sitting isn't really fantastic. His thighs are a bit thick, so his bum ends up lower than the thigh, causing him to lean backwards. I don't know if there's a way around it, but I've not found it so far. Anyway, at least I'm getting to know him a bit better today, when I've had him sitting beside me at the laptop table today.

In other dolly updates, the ninestyle order I had just came in. :D I got registered air mail for it, so it was kind of slow, but much cheaper, since I only got a wig and face mask. For the new dolly, who has yet to ship. Gahh, It's 14 working days so far. Still at least 10-15 more days, if the company is on time with their waiting times. I'm pretty surprised that ninestyle shipped the 2 items I ordered in a box. But well. What did you know? It's a nice maroon red box.



And her wig. It photographs greenish blue, but is much greener in person. Kind of more turquoise. I mean, ninestyle did call the colour "vintage green", so I wasn't too surprised by the green.

And I'm still actively counting down to the new doll. Or rather, just counting how many working days it has been, haha.