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.