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.

Phone photo of Tiyana's outfit the other day, cos I changed her (finally). I forgot to post this here, because it's a phone photo, and it's much easier to upload this to instagram and tumblr than blogger. Man, I wish I have my normal camera with me, but I left it in hostel.

Basically it's exam week right now, and I came home from the hostel to study. I could only carry so much stuff home with me, so I prioritised my studying materials (duh), both my dolls whom I brought to hostel (Dennis and Jack) and some extra clothes. I couldn't bring my camera after everything, sadly. BUT, my exams end tomorrow, so I should be going back to pick my camera back up, if I remember to take a detour from school back home, lol.

I've been wondering if Tiyana needs some glued in upper eyelashes...cos it seems like she looks just a bit bare. I don't know if I should try looking for short-ish human ones or order some doll sized ones if any shop I'm going to buy other stuff from carries. Oh, and I really should get her some shoes (she only has that pair of heels in the photo) >_<.

Anyway, some lists of things I want to do after my exams:

To-do:
1. Try the acrylic wig dyeing method on the wig I bought (need to cut it first)
2. Make more doll jewelry!
3. Buy eyelashes for Tiyana
4. Sew some clothes with the new fabric I bought
5. Try making the wig from yarn for Sion this time :|
6. Look for clothes that fit Tiyana better/buy her shoes

Maybes:
1. Do white-glue scars on Dennis's wrists?
2. Send Sion for modding to get his ear gauges (or should I just glue his earrings back on??)
3. Get new wigs for the twins and Caillen??
4. Do Sion's finger tattoos (I need MSC D:)
5. Slim Caillen's nose mod????????
6. Matching wrist tattoos for Hew and Sion?
7. Buy Kristolf's body :(

It kind of sucks to not have enough money to get bodies for my floating heads. I think I grew a bit too used to when I could buy paypal funds from Singaporean owners without incuring fees. Nowadays, Singapore paypal accounts can only send normal payments, so buying pp funds off another owner and transferring them SGD isn't an option. And I've not really been making or selling doll jewelry so no income from that end, much. But despite that, I'm kind of getting into the mood for "shopping" around (more like looking around) to see what bodies I can get for my floating heads.

1

First is Kristolf, my Mihael head. Some drawings (kind of old) which I did, to show you what he looks like. He's kind of stocky/buff and tall. 

He can't really borrow anyone's body cos he's either too short, or too thin on those bodies.

I've been thinking of getting him a Granado Nuevo body for a while now, but saving up has been really slow :/ The alternatives were Impldoll 72cm body but that's kind of thick/even taller than what I need so...

2
Caillen, my Migi Cynical Ryu, I've been thinking of getting a Popodoll 68cm body but I don't hear much news about Popodoll recently so I'm not sure if they're still the same shade of NS etc...but he's kind of lower on the priority list, so I figured I'll look at it when it comes to it. Alternatively I was looking at Dikadoll 72cm body (10cm neck or was it 11? Either way, a thinner neck and shoulders than most dolls in that height range), but again, not sure if I want such a tall body hmmm...

Oh yeah, forgot to say, he's supposed to be lean and trim, not like someone who pumps iron too much, but who obviously cares about his appearances. I quite like the overall frame when he's borrowing the Akagi body but it'll be better to have more muscle on him.



3
Joe, my Esthy Peroth rerelease. Uhh. He's meant to be not too fit but not fat per se. Just kind of thicker, I would say, and his shoulders are not that broad (but not super narrow like Gabby lol). I kind of like him on the Volks SD13 body (resin doesn't match though):



But besides the fact that I don't particularly love the SD13 body cos it's not the best poser really, I don't want repeats of bodies if I can...And it doesn't really match either.

And I know from taking photos of him on the Akagi body that he doesn't look right on that lanky body with broader-ish shoulders :(


So... I'm really trying to find something close to SD13 or SDGr but a bit less painful on my wallet. Is there even such an option? I mean, if money wasn't an issue, I'll totally buy the SDGr and like, blush his head to match, but it's really expensive (I can probably buy Kristolf AND Caillen's body with the money), and I don't know...I can't justify spending that amount for 1 body vs 2. GAH. I can't find any options with the thickness of body and limbs except Volks but I don't want another SD13 body (which is okayish priced 2nd hand but that's not the issue :( ). I don't know man. Maybe I should just suck it up and prepare to save for an SDGr body after I'm done saving for Kristolf's body (long way away, man).

Sorry for the long rant but I forget how body woes are annoying. >_>

I happened to bring my camera back when I went home from hostel the other day, so I snapped some shots even though it was midnight-ish. This are the twins. And Tiyana's head is on the bottom left of the photo but she didn't get in the shot cos she looked a bit too shocked/wide eyed without proper posing (I was lazy, they were all in my wardrobe and hard to move about). Haha. Sion's wearing a necklace I made the last time I went home, but haven't had time to take photos of to sell.



And a different corner of my room with Zeke. I changed his clothes and everything, but he kind of still looks the same. I'm super happy he fits in Sadol delf-sized jeans though. Cos that means he can share clothes with my other dolls although he's taller. Haha. But man, those jeans are tight on him (sorry, you can't see >_<)