…as I gore your arm with this harpoon in order to surgically drain you for my next meal.

Yeah, I know he’s really pale, and you can see the places where his skin textures are a wee bit too small, and he looks severely malnourished with a disturbing resemblance to Richard O’Brien, and he’s even faggier than before, with even more of a predilection for violent pink, and the lighting is probably off for this scene, and he’s not really holding the syringe, and his hands look like they are flexed unnaturally, but I don’t want to hear about it. I am proud of myself beyond measure because I finally figured out how to make someone use a prop that wasn’t hair-related and easy to stick on someone’s head. Now if I could just figure out a way to move props easily into position, I’d be all set.

I’d probably develop a hankerin’ for violently pink makeup too if I’d been dead and out of the sun for 130+ years. I’m not sure about the alarming fingernails, though. I didn’t know he had those until…well, they happened. I think nail polish is one of the world’s stupidest inventions, but apparently my characters disagree. At least it matches his outfit.

I need to fix the size of the body textures. Dolls don’t have seam lines like that….

GOOD magazine provides a comic view at the death industry. My favorite part is that all the employees of the death industries are shown as ancient Egyptian jackal-headed gods of the underworld Anubis.

…Dollhouse, an upcoming Fox series created and produced by Joss Whedon, starring Eliza Dushku and somehow involving Tim Minear [who was involved with Angel, Firefly and the rockin’ awesome Pushing Daisies], will go down in flames, despite a hyperactive cult following, only to be released on DVD in a year and a half with unaired episodes. I’m also not sure that the sexy but rather flat Eliza Dushku is the appropriate choice for a main character who is basically a Method actor bot. I don’t think she has enough range. It is amusing to note, however, that, in the linked interview, she’s very happy that the Red Sox Losers won the World Series.

I’m having some problems with the M3 mesh, so this is the only angle from which he doesn’t have strange lumps on his arms poking through. It’s also a characteristic posture. I would like everyone to know that I successfully subdued the V3 Ultimate Changing Ponytail and made Chow’s hair. He’s supposed to be dressed in a subdued and somewhat antiquated manner, befitting his personality.

With her short hair and straight eyebrows, she looks much more like me than the 1:6 version. She sees you when you’re sleeping and knows when you’re awake….

http://netherworks-studios.com/shoppe/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=10&products_id=20 a download that will finally get me to fit V3’s Ultimate Changing Ponytail to Chow’s head!!!

Here’s Will again as he dresses for the Harvard Square midnight showings of Rocky Horror, which, he would like you to know, he attends very rarely, and he only played Riff that one time because he had promised the girl who usually played him that he would do it, and besides, he never would have done it if he wasn’t drunk, and the only thing he is going to say about the Short Skirts showing is that “madness takes its toll [50 cents please!].”

Renderosity:

AVA Gothica

U3 White Dragon

Valarie V3

V3 Angel

Elisa [Pippilotta?]

Raven V3

http://www.3digitalcrafts.net/studiomaya/1download/index.html Free hair and clothes, including an underbust corset

http://free.daz3d.com/free_weekly/detail.php?free_id=112 Dial Cleaner

http://free.daz3d.com/free_weekly/detail.php?free_id=81 Stakes and crosses

http://free.daz3d.com/free_weekly/detail.php?free_id=36 Squirt guns [change color]

http://free.daz3d.com/free_weekly/detail.php?free_id=27 Ancient book

http://poserpros.daz3d.com/store/viewitem.php?selitem=2238&start=0&selcat=0&selsub=0 not free, but a corset for M3?

http://poserpros.daz3d.com/store/viewitem.php?selitem=8829&start=0&selcat=0&selsub=0 underbust corset

http://poserpros.daz3d.com/store/viewitem.php?selitem=5044&start=0&selcat=0&selsub=0 short short skirt, spike platform heels, underbust corset thingy

http://poserpros.daz3d.com/store/viewitem.php?selitem=7251&start=0&selcat=0&selsub=0 underbust and lots of fishnet pieces

http://poserpros.daz3d.com/store/viewitem.php?selitem=158&start=0&selcat=0&selsub=0 overbust

Find Glorious Goth for The Girl???

 http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=35878&Start=31&vendor=_samildanach_ the best corset thingy for M3 I’ve ever seen, plus arm sleeves

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/?id=2083  Dumbbell tutorial

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=69557&highlight=using+primitives Merging primitives

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=52807&highlight=primitives How to play with planes

http://www.wings3d.com Wings3D

http://market.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showforum.php?forum_id=12445 an active W3D forum

Instead of buying some tombstone models that don’t look like the ones in the Old Burying Ground, I could use Blender to make them my very own self!!! 

Dear blender
Oh won’t you help a first offender
Oh, toaster
Don’t you put the burn on me
Refrigerator, why are we always sooner or later
Bitchin’ in the kitchen or crying in the bedroom all night

No thanks to you, Shock Treatment.

 As I’ve mentioned before, I’m keeping a running list [part I here, part II here] of BJD companies that I do not deal with because of dishonest, dubious and/or illegal business practices. Now I’ve got a new one for the list: Dollkot. In advertising a custom sculpting service, Dollkot committed a pile of egregious offenses. Instead of showcasing their own sculptors’ talents and results, they used photos from DIM’s MiniMee project to illustrate their concept. 

Okay, that’s dishonest, but it gets worse. Said photos from the MiniMee project were actually directly scanned from a magazine article in Haute Doll where MiniMee owners contributed their personal photos and comments about their MiniMee dolls. So, not only did Dollkot misrepresent its services, but it did so by doubly stealing: once from Haute Doll, which gave no permission for the article to be reused, and also from the MiniMee owners, whose photos and comments were reproduced on Dollkot’s Web site without permission. 

To add insult to injury, their inanely cheerful response to Armeleia, one of the MiniMee owners whose photos and quotes were illegally used, implies that they thought they could get away with it. They removed the pictures, but why were they even up in the first place?

I’ve done multiple playlists about queer characters and one about dolls and one about the ’80s. Now it’s time for…one or two or three about VAMPIRES! The A.V. Club has a good starting point. Although the article focuses on obscure novelty tunes, the comments have a trove of alternatives. I have to say…I’m surprised that nothing by Type O Negative is on the list. Or Vampires by the Pet Shop Boys from their appropriately titled Nightlife album, which makes explicit the connection between love, death, sex, desire, hunger and blood in these lines:

Do what you want
and then can I do it to you
You’re a vampire
I’m a vampire too
You’re a vampire
I’m a vampire too

It’s a reflex
Just a reflex
like fear or sex 

Edit: There’s more here: in a Philly paper’s special section.

Tonight I learned that you can put makeup maps developed for Victoria onto Michael’s face. However, when the designers made makeup maps for Victoria, they apparently erased her eyebrows and replaced them with thin, high lines that make her look revoltingly surprised. I ended up approximating Will’s makeup by pasting the eyes from Victoria’s map onto a map for Will. Then I just changed his lip color in the Surfaces menu, with some gloss from the Victoria maps. Besides all this, I also closed his eyes slightly so that he doesn’t look so much like a bug, then puckered his lips slightly, since his mouth is supposed to be short.  If anyone says he looks like an aging queen, why, you’re right. He looks a little softer with makeup on. It’s definitely an improvement from his stark look with invisible eyelashes….

Here’s the second installment of the Daz test comic. Will is distracted from his gender-related bitching by a mysterious noise. Strangeness ensues.

I don’t know what he’s doing. It’s just that this pose amuses me. I finally found him some underwear too, thank God, so he’s not flashing me any more. This is actually a more accurate rendition of the clothing that I imagine him wearing: short, bright and tight.

You do know that no one can take you seriously in these clothes, right, Will? It’s not the boots so much, and the underwear isn’t a problem because usually no one sees it, and even the shirt is kind of acceptable…but what’s with the dress?

Can you guess?Continue reading Why is Will smirking?

I finally got my CrossDresser program to work, converting clothes for female figs into clothes for male figs. I’m still running into problems with skirts for anyone, male or female, but I’m happy to report that XD successfully converted a ridiculously short, long-sleeved crop top [not shown] and some black pleather platform heels! Well, at least Will’s footwear [and certain shirts — he always did have a thing for crop tops] is accurate now. I’m going to go to bed and work on the skirts later… Heels below.

Me trying to make Will wear something more in his style. Every time he moves his legs, though, they poke through the skirt, so I have to fix that. Remarks were made that his is not a very sophisticated outfit. This is true. He can dress very much the macho part [with relative success], but, when it comes to his true tastes, they are either flamboyant or clueless or both… The best part of this outfit are the boots, which are textured with a picture of a swirling pink fantasy planet!! Please also note that he is flaming, as per the flames on his shirt. Nyar har har.

Today I learned some important things. 1) I can now keep characters’ pants or skirts on so they don’t leap out of them when being posed. 2) Clothes made for Victoria do not behave when fitted to Michael. That goes for shoes too…. 3) However, poses developed for Victoria 3 translate nicely to Michael 3, thereby expanding my library of poses easily! 4) Whenever Will comes out of his closet, his [lack of] fashion sense always startles me.

Anyway, here he is in another sartorial folly as only he can accomplish. [Pinstripe pants and red pleather… I weep.] He is in a Victoria model pose, which explains why he appears to be on the verge of spinal whiplash. [Modeling poses are pretty dumb, but he does look pretty anxious and intent.] I do like the lines in the pose, though. They really convey a sense of quick, focused motion.

“Fit to” vs. “parent and adjust:” http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=52607&highlight=parent+clothes 

Keeping clothes on and moving with fig: http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=54638&highlight=loading+clothes

Putting clothes on morphed figs: http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=68516&highlight=clothes+fit+pose

Overview of 3D modeling programs: http://www.canary3d.com/tutorial/3d-intro.htm

Organizing runtimes: http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/?id=2231 

Possible organization for runtimes: http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=50433&highlight=save+characters

Saving morphed characters: http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=59134&highlight=save+characters  

Customized textures into Cyclorama: http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=54947&highlight=cyclorama

How to make custom textures and MAT files for Cyclorama: http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=54947&highlight=cyclorama

All right, here’s my second try on Will’s Pussy Part I. He’s now against a real live photo backdrop of the Charles River, along Memorial Drive between Western Ave and JFK Street, looking toward Western Ave. Now you can see the details of my photograph and of his bulge. I assume this is an improvement. No comments about the size of the bulge, please. It’s a function of the outfit, which apparently maps its textures directly onto his skin.

When in the latter days of LHF 1.0, I wanted to make my characters hanging out in recognizable Boston metro locations. I tried using photos of mine as backgrounds to achieve this effect. However, since LHF characters are all goddamned nocturnal vampires, I darkened my pictures to simulate night. While the low light was accurate to the time of day, the night effects effaced the detail in my characters, my backgrounds and my overall compositions.

I observe the same effacement in Will’s Pussy Part I. Therefore, I’m thinking that I shouldn’t go for full night effects. I’ll stick to dawn and dusk, which means I should only take photos early in the morning, early in the evening or on very cloudy days. On that subject, I took some photos along the Charles River between 7:30 and 8:00 AM today with clouds and light rain. Perhaps I can use them as part of a new scene for Will’s Pussy Part I. 

Here’s the first panel of a test comic that I rendered in Daz tonight. Will is standing in the pre-loaded Faerie [HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH] Forest scene that came with the program. The lights are on “night.” Auspiciously enough, my computer did NOT have a hernia while rendering a high-res character with a bunch of high-res props and a background. Let’s see what happens when the second character enters the scene….

Using only a few photos and some digital props, I am going to artistically recreate a 3-D set of the Old Burying Ground in Cambridge, my favorite cemetery, and then force my characters to hang out in it because I slaved so hard over it. This is, of course, assuming that my computer doesn’t go totally hemorrhageous from all those high-res textures.

My photos will be of the actual cemetery, hopefully projected using the Cyclorama. I have a sarcophagus prop, several gravestone props [with lichen!] and a Spooky Tree [TM] prop. Eventually my characters will be able to sit on top of the sarcophagus and at the base of the Spooky Tree. Oh yeah, and there’s a Light Dome to make it look like night.

I would really love to make an aerial view of Will curled up on the ground next to a gravestone, sleeping with his teddy bear and smiling. 😀 😀

After downloading the necessary stuff for actually getting shit done in Daz [base figures, face/body morphs, standard textures, some clothes, some poses, Will’s teddy bear, etc.], I spent several hours tonight tweaking Michael 3.0 in order to get Will out of it. He has the skinny body morph with a lot of tweaks to his face that make him look rather old. These are about the only clothes that I knew how to put on him without parenting something to body parts. A full report on the program and its usability ensues later, but so far it’s exceeding my expectations. Look at how close up I can get in the photos below. [Any resemblances to James Marsters and the character of Spike are completely intentional and probably accentuated by the outfit. I should have made the coat leopard print, but I was getting lazy.]

 http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/?id=905

An easy tutorial for my later use!

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/?id=1632

This tutorial takes out all the photorealistic details that I don’t need because I am supposed to be making comics with dolls, not people.  

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/?id=755

This one is about how to make your own Cyclorama backgrounds….

Including dresses, gowns and skirts for Will, which were hiding under “robes” or “tribal clothing” or “Egyptian” because apparently you can’t search for “dress AND michael” [Michael = latest Daz 3D male character] and except to come up with anything, nooooo. I’m beginning to despair of finding corsetry. Forthwith, what I HAVE found…

Poser! It has collision detection, dynamic cloth and a mouse-based interface, plus a much larger built-in library of items, faces editable all over, editable hair, a sprawling user community with free items and…more realistic results than iClone. The base pack of Poser 7 is just around $250, and you don’t have to buy hundreds of extra bonus packs just to do simple things like make people naked or modify their clothes. Better deal?

Look…it’s Bang Ping, otherwise known as Baozha [meaning “explosion”] Bang.

This is my first all-around accurate iClone render of an LHF character. [Previous ones of Will were experimental and thus didn’t count. I also did Janet earlier, but she doesn’t have appropriate hair.] Everything about Baozha’s build, features and even clothing is accurate to her character. Her outfit represents my earliest pathetic attempts at customized clothing design. For example, her pants were made with a downloaded texture, originally in green and opaque, which I tweaked to look like bleached denim. Her shirt is an application of a fantasy industrial scene jpg with a clear reflection + yellow glow so it looks like it’s made out of plastic. [I foresee lots of shiny, slick and plasticky clothes for my characters.] As you can see, her face is going to freeze in that expression…

What’s this then? An av generator? Should I be caring? I don’t know… I’ll look into it later.

So…I got iClone 2.1 Hooray! I have yet to do anything substantive with it, though. From what I read, I should probably just wait until the 2.5 patch, released later this season, which will make manipulating characters, props and other elements much easier.

Oh yeah, and on a positive ranting note, I find the site Renderosity a great source of free 2D backgrounds and textures. I downloaded some creepy/industrial/Gothic/night scenes for possible use in LHF 2.0. The only disappointment I have with Renderosity is that it contains many Poser and 3DX files that I cannot use because I do not have the software. But the thumbnails sure are pretty to look at.

iClone Studio 2.1 $199.95 [the engine]

CloneCloth vol. 1 $97.46 [so they can wear more than pants and shirts]

Classic cuts vol. 2 $17.95 [more styles for guys and gals]

Saloon chairs and table $1.59

Mahogany round table and chair 0.80

Well, this set was intended to show Will’s naturalistic posture in my living room, knees curled up toward his chest, hands in his lap. Instead, I cranked with the levels, contrast and Dark Strokes filter to get these pictures. He either looks like he has skull holes instead of eyes or he’s been punched in the face…take your pick.

Assuming I want to use it…

iClone 2.0 Standard $79.95 [the engine]

Furniture Pack 1 $39.95 [because they need beds and chairs and tables, but that’s about it]

Working Fashion Theme Pack #1 $97.46 [because they need to sit, stand and talk — that’s all they do]

Total $217.36

Monetarily speaking, that’s actually cheaper than 1:6, given than I’ve probably spent $2K [?] on 1:6 in the past 5 years, maybe more. {We won’t talk about my BJD spending. Oh, okay, we will. I’ve had Zephque, Sardonix 1.0, Jareth, little Jennifer, Frank, big Jennifer, Submit, Sardonix 2.0 and Will, which is 9 dolls, not to mention their clothes. I’d say that I’ve spent about $9K on them in the past 3.5 years.] 

Alternatively, iClone 2.0 Studio is $199.95 and it comes with Working Fashion Theme Pack #1.

Cool Clones has downloads.

Cool Creators has a store.

I would like to try before making a commitment of several hundred dollars!

 Option: 1:6 dolls and backdrops

Option 2: Software like iClone

Option 3: Photos to line drawings

Option 4: Get a drawing partner

Option 5: Draw a simple sketch comic

Option 6: Draw a detailed realistic full-body comic

Option 7: BJDs and backdrops

Option 8: Export from something like Sims

melopoiea

 suggests a program like this, which converts photos into line drawings. I wonder if I could make this work for a comic strip. I could take pictures of characters in stereotyped positions, then mix and match parts…? I know that Oh My Gods!, a much simpler comic strip, uses preselected parts to construct the characters, and Two Lumps is just lazy, reusing images of the cats with different expressions. Maybe I could use a similar method WITH SLIGHTLY MORE FINESSE. [I miss LHF.]

One hundred years older…

Reaper is about a 21-year-old guy whose parents sold his soul to the Devil, so he has to be a bounty hunter for errant souls. Reviews say it has witty banter and comedy. I’ll bite, but I’m damn well spittin’ it out if it don’t taste no good.

Is “undead” a legit TV subgenre now?!

So saith my wife when she sees Frank and Will in their new-to-me fake fur Wicked Wigs. I picked these up today in a face-to-face exchange with DOAer SolarCat [Lauren]. I showed her my Soom Sabik; she showed me her Soom Kanoa, an irresistibly smirking little guy with a great pointy nose. She sold me the Wicked Wigs for 1/3 of list price, and I got two well-crafted wigs that fit closely to the contours of my dolls’ heads.

I’m pleased with the construction and quality and even more with the result. The length of short-pile fake fur is a much better approximation of Will’s hair as I imagine it in my head. Picture below [crappy, low light], with Frank just in time for Halloween and Will apparently anticipating Xmas.

Hi, I just watched the pilot of Pushing Daisies on ABC. Those of you who enjoy candy-colored, quip-ridden whimsy should check out this show before it is flushed down the inevitable toilet. Its well-balanced construction of consistently witty writing, neatly sketched characters, sun-drenched nostalgic colors and perky narration can only last so long before one of two things happens.

Well, I wanted to watch the Moonlight premiere last week [about the tortured cliche vampire falling in love with a stereotype human woman], but I missed it. Maybe I’ll catch it this week, although I see that Pushing Daisies, another show about a human/undead relationship, is premiering tonight, so I might want to catch that. Furthermore, season 3 of Supernatural begins this Thursday, but I don’t know if I will be able to catch that, which is tragic, given my current VIOLENT crush on Jensen Ackles [who plays Dean]. Dammit…so many walking dead, so little time.

I’m purchasing two fake fur wigs from Wicked Wigs secondhand. One is a patchwork of black and orange, the other a twist between white and blood red. Will’s wardrobe may never progress beyond leather pants and a black tank top, but he’ll have hot-rockin’ hair.

Supposedly an indie journalism site, Alter.net provides analysis under the major radar.

Especially with messed-up levels and high white contrast.

When you’ve been wearing make-up for 100+ years, it becomes very, errrrr, stylized….

…But it disappeared in my fascination with Will’s head.

Ultraviolet, a TV series from 1998. Contains vampires, naturally.

For some reason, those song lyrics are in my head. Here are some artsy-fartsy shots of Will with hair that approximates his actual length of hair.

 Made to Play House: Dolls and the Commercialization of American Girlhood, 1830-1930 (Paperback) by Miriam Formanek-Brunell 

The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England by Alex Owen  

Garnered from the bibliography of the jargonlicious article on philosophy of corsets:

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World

Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England

Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity

Whether you believe that the universe tends toward good, bad or mediocre, there’s still the question of where to assign these capacities. Are people good, bad, good+bad, bad+mediocre, etc.?

Naturally he employs them to feel up Jareth.

More messing around with burn/dodge [on the eyes] and wild skewing of levels and contrast. Will just conduces this somehow.

Frank now combines the head of Volks Yukinojo, the body of a Model Doll girl [Bella Auden] and, for the most recent addition, Twiglimbs arms and hands made by twigling. Poor Frank has been languishing without arms since the end of August. A month later, I finally got around to reassembling him today with a pathetic improvisation of regular stringing elastic, round cord elastic suitable for tinies and 18 gauge plastic-coated steel wire.

I’m extremely pleased with the result. Ever since I got Frank’s Model Doll body, I disliked his narrow shoulders and scrawny, slender arms. Now with the Twiglimbs arms and shoulder cups, he has appropriately broad shoulders. His thicker arms and larger hands are also much more proportionate. Now his overall look is one of extreme muscularity and extreme curvaceousness, which is a much more accurate representation of how he looks in my head. The addition of his robust arms also makes him look less like a lollipop and more like the ambiguously sexed and gendered being he is. His arms have the squareness and muscle definition usually associated with men, as does his face. The rest of him, however, looks ridiculously long and curvy, like certain comic-book heroines. Success!

I like supernatural creatures. Partly I like them because they are a testament to human inventiveness in the face of the unknown and inexplicable. They’re beautiful creations of folk logic [“Well, if it looks like the corpse’s nails and hair are growing and it’s in a pool of blood when we dig it up, that means it must be alive and feeding on blood!”], fear and wonder. That’s why I will devour stories about them: because, as human creations, they are clever, rich and powerful, full of meaning… They’ve got a hold on us.

I also like supernatural creatures because they work as lovely metaphors, which partly explains their continuing fascination, even to people who do not believe in them.

I got my season 2 of Supernatural in the mail today! I’m so excited! I’m disappointed with Half.com’s “expedited” shipping, however. The default shipping method is media mail, which takes 2-4 weeks. “Expedited” shipping is regular first class.

Fine, right? Well, my “expedited” DVDs took a week to arrive from TN. First class mail, even a package, from TN to MA should take 3 days, according to the handy-dandy postage calculator at the USPS Web site. Why did it take double that? Why did I even bother “expediting?” [Answer: Because I wanted my dose of stupid TV NOW!]

Half.com is not the source for instant gratification or even slightly delayed gratification. The low prices are so low in part because the shipping is a flat fee for a slow postage method. Most of the time I can stand the trade-off, but I was especially impatient for these DVDs.

Back in February, 2006, Mercy on DOA put a call out for “celebrity dolls,” that is, BJDs made after famous persons, real or imaginary. I submitted information about Jareth and Frank. Anyway, out of the blue, Mercy PMed me to say that pictures of someone [I think it was Jareth] got into Doll Reader a few months ago, and she’s trying to get Doll Reader to send me a copy of the magazine. That was completely unexpected. So maybe some day eventually I will get a copy of a magazine with a picture of Jareth in it or at least a quote from me about him. Fascinating, I know.

I need to get this book.

When I look at Will with my eyes, I feel as if I am seeing his character the way that he presents to the world. When I look at photographs of him, I can adjust color, contrast, levels and burn/dodge so that I can see his moods, feelings, thoughts and parts of his character’s mental state that he keeps hidden. Apparently his mood have lots of eyeliner….

Supernatural season 2 DVDs are coming my way with expedited shipping! I ordered them this morning. I figure that, if I no longer want them when done, I can sell them on Ebay. Since I watched much of season 1 and some of season 2 on DailyMotion, I know the plot lines, but my viewing enjoyment was marred by a) dark, grainy, small pictures, b) interruptions in video streaming and c) removal of Supernatural eps for copyright violation [dammit!]. I’d like to indulge in the eps without swearing at the computer when it stops loading at a crucial moment in the action. Hopefully the DVDs will come soon.

The feedback collections on Ebay are a great record of a seller or buyer’s overall trustworthiness, but Ebay does not allow users to analyze the feedback to best effect. For example, there is no easy way to find negatives or neutrals through the Ebay site proper. But this Web site, Toolhaus, has a tool that allows you to pick out bad feedback. You type in the Ebay ID and check the results. You can find bad feedback given and bad feedback received.

StoryCorps is a neat project aimed at tapping the oral history of the nation. At mobile booths around the country, almost anyone can schedule time and record an interview with a friend or a family member about…almost anything. I have listened to two stories so far, and I will be checking out more. Here a man talks about saving his friend’s little brother from the train tracks. Very dramatic! Here a Vermont lesbian couple are talking about their 30-year partnership and getting civilly united. Their happiness, after all these years, is still infectious.

Bonus: Here are two women talking about being identical twins, dispelling some stupid assumptions about their relationship and being very practical about the whole thing. “Being a twin was the best thing that ever happened to me! I recommend it to everyone!”

More angst-ridden crime-solving goody-two-shoes vampires. Welcome to CBS’ Moonlight, starting at the end of this month, treading in a well-worn path first hewn out by Forever Knight, followed by Angel. While curious, I have much better things to do with my puny mortal life than sit around and watch a new show when it first airs. I’ll wait a while to see if it’s anything of any substance that I can sink my teeth into.

This is Will a la mode francaise.

As I was unpacking my dolls, I put together a showcase for my favorite outfit.

At the Internet Public Library, you can do everything that you would do at your usual public library: read fiction, join a book group, find tax forms, do research. Only here, it’s all virtual. IPL organizes the many online atlases, books, reference Web sites, etc., into an easily browsable, subject-based format so that you can more easily find what you are looking for. Your local public library or university library or corporate library may have a similar site, but IPL is open to all users.

I enjoy Paleofuture, an intelligently organized blog highlighting outmoded views of what people in the past thought the future would be like.

Dull comparison for no one except me. Here’s a photo of Will next to a picture of a story character that I drew about 7 years ago. The character was originally invented about 12 years ago, and I’ve been pursuing his likeness for over a decade.

Now that I’ve moved to an apartment with more than two rooms, I have an improved set-up for photographing my dolls. My desk now sits in the living room with a filled-in fireplace to the left and two windows to the right. The wealth of natural light + white walls provides soft tones and bright colors, in contrast to my previous apartment, where yellow walls + way too much daylight produced overly warm tones and yellowy colors. These pictures were taken at about 5:15 PM.

While I do patronize my local, independent booksellers, if I want a used book, I am much more likely to go to half.com. Why? Because I can often find ridiculous deals where the shipping price is much greater than the book’s price. Witness my recent haul.

Just to provide some context, the first three are scholarly treatments of sexuality and courtship in historical America, soundly written, well-respected titles, you know, the sort that cost half a hundred dollars when they first come out. They owe their disgusting cheapness, I assume, to their promulgation [hence quick use and discard] as college course books. The last is the aforementioned book My Husband Betty, which, as a popular, recent trade paperback, is significantly more expensive. Note, however, that shipping still makes up more than 50% of the costs.

Searching the Heart : Karen Lystra (Paperback, 1992)	Price: $1.88 Media Mail: $3.49 Subtotal: $5.37
Hands and Hearts : Ellen K. Rothman (Hardcover, 1984)	Price: $1.94 Media Mail: $3.99 Subtotal: $5.93
Intimate Matters : Estelle B. Freedman, John D’Emilio (Paperback, 1989)	Price: $1.00 Media Mail: $3.49 Subtotal: $4.49
My Husband Betty : Helen Boyd (Paperback, 2004)	Price: $7.16 Media Mail: $3.49 Subtotal: $10.65
	Merchandise: Shipping: TOTAL: $11.98 $14.46 $26.44

All in one set, the entire run of the original Twilight Zone for your viewing delectation!

Witness the paltry fruits of last night’s labor here. It’s Part I of my stoopid Labyrinth parody, slightly rewritten by me, animated by Meez [I’ve made 105 at last count, but they aren’t all in this short], set to the tune of clips from the Labyrinth soundtrack. Parts II and III are done, waiting for upload, and I have plans to do the rest of the movie. I don’t promise that it will be more than mildly amusing, but it will be a good killer of half an hour.

P.S. If you do watch it, leave a comment and a rating [on the Google Video site, not HERE!], will ya?

I wonder if iClone software really works as it claims to… It says that its features include 3D character construction, clothing, prop building and placement, set generation, character movement and animation and sound import, all so a person can make little CGI movies.

Sarah realizing it’s 7 PM and she stayed out too late and she has to babysit, so of course she says her favorite phrase, “IT’S NOT FAIR!!” Shut up, you whiny bastard.

Holy fork, I’m clearly a) brain-dead and b) obsessed with Labyrinth. I just made about 50 [?] Meez animations of Jareth and Sarah so I can create a little version of Labyrinth. Preview below of Jareth doing what he does best: playing with his balls. This should tell you what kind of movie I’m making.

I enjoy psychology, cultural analysis and subjects of mental health, so I was excited to find out about  Psychjourney. I just sampled one of the site’s podcasts, an interview with Courtney Martin, author of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, an Interesting subject, but the audio was echoic and blurry, and the interviewer’s voice was too measured and soporific. Another randomly sampled podcast on body dysmorphic disorder, suffered from the same problems. 

The jury’s out on whether I recommend these because they provide substantive overviews of interesting topics (auditory hallucinations, compulsive hoarding, rumor and gossip), but the audio quality is mediocre. It’s like listening to a low-tech tape of someone’s phone conversation. Why don’t you try one out and see if you can stand it? I know that I will be dipping into a few subjects of interest before blowing the site off entirely.

Does this sound like you: Female, age 18-28, told you can have it all, convinced you need to save the world AND take care of your friends AND your family AND your body, andover-achieving person who’s constantly striving to look better, smiling to the outer world, hitting the gym every other day, reading the latest self-help book [outwardly mocking but secretly listening to it], going vegetarian for health reasons…only to throw up your hands in exhaustion, eat an 8-ounce rare dead animal, despair at the hope of ever getting promoted, wish you could just have some hugs, nix the family reunion because you really can’t stand your great-aunt, feel sick and tired of your personal responsibility to be eternally successful and put together… Blogger [for Feministing] Courtney Martin’s new book, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, talks about the widespread struggle between perfection and exhaustion experienced by many contemporary bourgeois women.

Ignore the categorization and ads for this book that say that it’s all about eating disorders. From what I can tell, the book appears to address the larger issue of young women’s anxious relationships with their bodies. Super-achieving feminist go-getting vies within us against secret tiredness and desires for affection and peace. I saw a clip of her reading about the perfection vs. exhaustion struggle, and I thought that it had greater applicability than to just those women who have eating disorders. The internal strife she was writing about can be found in many current bourgeois women’s lives. 

Perhaps I’m particularly interested in it because I’m trying to pack and simplify my belongings and write a book and do seven hundred and eleventy-five book reviews and do all my occupational work and ensure a raise and eat right and sleep tight and keep the bedbugs from biting all at the same time…anyway, I think I’ll check it out…after my nap [hahah!].

…and all the book reviews I’ve been writing and all my other obligations, I’m starting to feel like a reanimated corpse:

This is about as animated as I get these days:

Unfortunately, even though I feel like death warmed over, I do not even have the consolation of cool hair, cool make-up or cool clothes as demonstrated on the avatar. This is probably why I like the Meez program. It has a large array of facial features, costumes, backgrounds and animation, which offer extensive online customizing possibilities. Furthermore, Meez are larger than, say, pixel dolls, and, unlike, say, Zwinkies, they do not contain any downloadable spyware. They’re also 85% free, although some cool shit, such as thigh-high boots, costs money. Thigh-highs aside, though, Meez provide an amusing outlet for the brain-dead.

In her spare time, Jennifer also keeps compact, detailed notes of everything in her memorandum book.

When she’s not cooking, cleaning, maintaining the limo or otherwise running the mundane details of Frank’s life, Jennifer likes to ride her mountain bike around Burlington, Vermont. Unfortunately there was no option to add a bike helmet, which she would not be caught dead without!

Here’s my closest approximation of movie Jareth… Amusingly enough, the chair and cane come from a set called “Pimp Throne” and his pants are wet suit pants. Not that you can tell… Non-animated picture here.

In a more casual setting, Frank designs clothes. That really is what his bedroom looks like inside my head. Animation below. This shit cracks me up for some reason.

I did these a while ago, but couldn’t upload them until now. Witness Frank in his element, makin’ faces.

I did some dolly wrasslin’ after work today, using 18 gauge plastic coated steel wire to thread through Will’s arms. Since I had trouble getting one piece of wire all the way through both arms and the torso cavity [daunted by the curving holes in his upper arms — who thought that was a good idea?!], I ended up using two pieces of wire. One piece goes all the way through his left arm and out his right shoulder hole, down his right upper arm, while the other runs from his right forearm to his right upper arm. Now he can achieve the following poses without aid from me.

The much-enhanced Sabrina Sabrok looks like a CG 2.0 with a Bloody Rose body, especially in this photo. [Also here — I really like this photo, actually, mostly because of the combo of flagrantly orange hair + black vinyl.] Part of me is pleased that this freakish body shape appears on a real, live human being, while part of me is repulsed by the unnatural sphericality of those…growths…on her chest.

ashbet

 recommends Endicott Studio, a site containing said Journal of Mythic Arts, an online periodical devoted to luxuriating in fairy tales and analyzing them. I love scholarly online sites. They make me feel smart.

Frank's in pieces all over my desk and bed right now because finally, after a wait of over a year, I finally have a bulkier, larger set of double-jointed arms, more in proportion with his body, than the defaults than came with the Doll More Model Doll girl body. Yes, the TwigLimbs arms have arrived, and I'm pleased with them.

twigling

 has balanced an intimate knowledge of musculature and solidity with a pleasingly realistic style. Pictures below.

I’ve died and gone to Heaven. Over at Sur La Lune, Heidi Heiner has annotated a translation of Andersen’s The Little Mermaid with hypertext footnotes and explications in a fine exploitation of the online form. I’m drawn to Andersen over and over again, for his creepy sadism, self-abnegating protagonists and thoroughly gloomy view of life, so it’s always a treat to find illuminations of his stories.

P.S. For lovers of fairy tales, Sur La Lune provides interviews with fantasists, discussion boards, analyses of stories and other fascinating avenues to explore.

Moping looks extra picturesque at night. Thank you, Will. Most of these photos were created by tinkering with greyscale, levels and burn/dodge around his eyes. They’re gloooowwwwwing…. First is my favorite.

Carnival of Souls does not have much going for it. There’s the cheesy title, a definite strike against it, followed closely by its director Herk Harvey, better known for making simplistic mental hygiene films designed to drum good manners into 1960s schoolchildren. Then there’s the low special effects budget, which means that the creepiest things our protagonist experiences is attack of the pancake make-up and occasional periods where the soundtrack just fades to silence.

I’m happy to report, though, that Carnival of Souls rises above these limitations to be a surprisingly effective, almost existential, horror film.

Everyone go see Nosferatu at archive.org! This is a vampire film before it became a silly cliche, a vampire film before the vampires became romantic tortured souls, back when they were barely formed things out of the ooze of of our symbolic nightmares. You will not find much character depth or subtlety in this 1922 work, but you will find a steadily creeping sense of dread and a memorable exploration of what it’s like to be stalked by death. Answer: It’s freakin’ scary!

Nosferatu closely hews to the plot of Dracula, with a stupid real estate agent visiting the gloomy castle of a creepy count, who then follows him back to his homeland, killing along the way, and only the real estate agent’s wife, with which the vampire is obsessed, can stop the Black Death. Though Bram Stoker’s widow won two suits to stop distribution of F.W. Murnau’s film because it ripped off her husband’s novel, copies of the film had disseminated too widely for them all to be pulled.

Fortunately for us, the best, moodiest, most unforgettable vampire film remains in circulation today. The form — silent except for music, black and white except for blue-tinted nights and red-tinted sunsets — strips the story to its schematic, structuralist basic: a story of light and shadow. While Ellen, the real estate agent’s wife, glows in her white nightgown, Nosferatu is literally a shadow sliding across the walls, menacing innocents with his mere disembodied presence. The one-color tints for different times of day also add eerie feelings. The pale blue tint of night gives a cool, icy, drowning sensation to all scenes, while the red tints of sunset communicate alarm, sensuality and, of course, blood.

None of this color and light symbolism would work if it weren’t for the actors…or one actor in particular, Max Schrek, who plays Nosferatu. As stiff as a coffin plank, he doesn’t seem to walk or float so much as he just manifests, further away and then closer. He does very little except for looming, but he incites the mad realtor Knock to fidgeting and murder and Ellen to dangerous sleepwalking. Nosferatu’s minons, the bubbling, squeaking rats, link him explicitly with plague and, in their seething motion, demonstrate the confused panic he incites in humans. But, in a genius twist of interpretation, Nosferatu doesn’t really seethe himself. He merely exists, inexorable, quiet, pitiless, dire. While he does roam from place to place, in the end, he lets his victims come to him, for he is death, and no one can resist him.

See The Media and Communication Studies Site. Okay, well, they’re not really old, mostly 5 to 10 years old, but that seems like eons where such papers are concerned. All sorts of juicy stuff is linked here, including queer theory, social psychology, online communication et hoc genus omne ad infinitum. Despite the age of the material, a random sampling of links proves that most work and actually go to the content promised! Have fun.

twigling

 reports that a set of Twiglimbs arms and hands is in the mail for Frank to replace his scrawny, disproportionate defaults. How exciting!

I took pictures of Will in the areas outside around my work. He drapes so nicely on stonework and he exerts an irresistible gravitational pull on my camera. He is just as much a pleasure to photograph as Submit [Elfdoll Hana Devil], only more so because he’s bigger!

Feministing is a feminist perspective on the news.

PopPolitics is serious analysis of pop culture.

Poor light and a wobbly grip on my camera means few good shots, but I thought I’d post them anyhow. Will does the languid, melancholy and introverted mood very well, I think. Incidentally, he is wearing a black see-through sleeveless that came with the I.B. Hunter outfit, the Dollheart Kala skirt, default black fishnets from Dollmore’s Bella Auden and Cheerydoll mixed black shit-kickers. As always, his sense of style is debatable.

According to the post office, he is attempting to redeliver himself to my work address, at which I am waiting excitedly. Hopefully he comes soon!

As I was tracking my EMS package this morning, I found out that Will is in the States, apparently just waiting until my work building is open so he can come in! Tracking says that there was a delivery attempt yesterday and a notice left. Since the attempt was to an office building, my work address, I am baffled as to where they left the attempt notice. The receptionist hasn’t seen it. Hopefully Will will arrive successfully today, much sooner than I expected! I was anticipating at least 3 weeks between last payment and arrival.

Ultimate Flash Face can help you create realistic mugshots of your characters, assuming that they have boring, short hairstyles. Below, an example.

Here are my most frequented Web destinations, ordered alphabetically. Can anyone recommend some good sites of news analysis, kind of like weekly news magazines, only less rarefied than The New Yorker and less hebetated than Time and Newsweek? Particularly intelligent pop culture blogs and tech blogs.

I made the final installment payment on Will. $1332.80/$1332.80 is paid! 100%! No more doll debt…. Now I’m just awaiting his arrival. I wonder how long Soom takes to ship items that are all ready to go.

I pared down my Will order again to just the I.B. Hunter doll with outfit and a pair of underwear. New total = $1332.80, with $1097.61 paid, $235.19 outstanding.

Look into the exhaustive archives for Escape Pod and take your pleasure of the many clear, humorous, perkily read sci-fi and fantasy stories on podcast. I just listened to the amusing, low-key “Conversations With and About My Electric Toothbrush.” I’ve also finished “The Burning Bush.”  It’s very dryly delivered, to humorous effect. And I know that “My Friend Is A Lesbian Zombie” will be good because its author, Eugie Foster, is an acquaintance who turns out consistently well-crafted, mythically solid and romantically tinged stories.

In fourth grade, I watched some painfully earnest and educational sci-fi mysteries for nerdy budding journalists, Read All About It. Each 15-minute episode revolved around Chris, Sam and Lynne, 3 Canadian 11-year-olds investigating the alien invasion, captained by Duneedon the freaky floating head, in their small town. With the help of a pedantic typewriter, Otto, and a talking TV screen, Theta, they published a newspaper, The Herbertville Chronicle, as the perfect alibi for their search for Chris’ missing uncle. Inevitably, vocabulary lessons and word puzzles advanced the plot and helped them save the world. Anyway, I forgot all identifying details of the show until now…
 
I remember liking this show [aside from the cadaverous floating head!] because the vocab lessons played to my strengths and made me feel that my verbal intelligence was applicable and important, although I can’t say that I’ve ever used my mental thesaurus to rescue myself and a friend from a Problem Pit. In any case, if this plot summary brings back nostalgic happiness [or nostalgic queasiness, if you’re thinking of Duneedon], you can find all eps of the first season on Youtube. Here’s the first. As the theme song exhorts, "There’s a mystery to be solved / So why not get involved?"

Last night I watched The Aristocrats, primarily under duress, because we had to return it before the late fees became atrocious. The Aristocrats features scores of prominent comedians yammering about a show-biz in-joke that is not really that funny, then analyzing what makes that joke so compelling.

In the tradition of investigative science/humanities radio shows like To The Best Of Our Knowledge and The Infinite Mind, WNYC’s Radiolab centers around a broad subject, like sleep, morality or stress, and glues together interviews and intuitions about it.  While To The Best… and The Inifinite Mind are very structured and strive for authoritativeness, Radiolab is more conversational, kind of like Sound & Spirit, lighter on the scientific details, but no less interesting. I would call it casual philosophy. Seasons are tragically short, but you can find listenable archives on the Web site going as far back as 2005. I caught a clip of Radiolab from an ep of This American Life, and I agree with TAL host Ira Glass that Radiolab should have wider listenership.

This 1996 film about necrophilia looks possibly interesting. It strongly reminds me of a vampire film. I need some more interesting movies in my life. I’m in a good movie drought right now.

EDIT: I just bought it from half.com because neither Hollywood Express nor Blockbuster had it. [Well, Hollywood Express had it on tape, but the world don’t run on VHS any more.] I wonder why I think less about purchasing DVDs than I do purchasing books. 

While I’m purchasing movies about sexual deviations, maybe I should also get a copy of Secretary, you know, just to fondle. I really haven’t been rewatching any favorite movies recently.

On the subject of paraphilias, I wonder when that movie about bestiality with horses will come out on DVD.

“Deviancy” is one of my favorite words, deriving from the Latin “de” = “away from” and “via” = “road.” Literally it means going off-road [or what happens when you get really lost on a car ride]. Though the adjective gets a derogatory inflection most of the times it is used, it is actually a neutral descriptor. I find it equally applicable for discussion of road trips, recipes, political leanings and sexual predelictions.

Very rarely am I generally impressed with a movie, but that’s my reaction to the latest Pixar effort, Ratatouille.

I also just have to mention that we saw a trailer for Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium,

Wake me up when Stardust comes out. Despite my fear that it will be a thoroughly formulaic, thematically light fairy tale [Neil Gaiman is not notable for significant depth], it does have some good actors in it and possibly some nice swordplay. Alternatively, I’ll check into The Golden Compass, just to see how much of a compressed turd they make out of a good book by putting a Scientologist nutball as one of the lead characters [unless I’m wrong and Nicole Kidman swore off the space aliens Ponzi scheme religion once she broke off from Mr. “Not Gay No Way” “Big Nose” Cruise].

I just made a payment on Will, bringing the total amount paid to $1097.61. I guess I’ve purchased all of him up to his nipples. I can’t wait to get his head!

Unidoll is apparently coming out with new bodies [?] for their 63cm Uni Real male dolls. The new bodies have fully articulated fingers. From what I can tell, the articulated hands look like wooden artist’s mannequins. I think they are really beautiful, although I wonder about their clenching power. If the articulated hands can hold things without drooping out of position, I wonder if I could get them separately for my dollses…

Took some stuff off my Will order, reducing total to $1437.60. As much as I eagerly await my doll, I’m annoyed that the price for I.B. Hunter Sabik was so ridiculously inflated compared to the initial release and then to Cyborg Sabik. I’m also very annoyed with myself for paying said inflated price.

So in November of last year, Mike Dillon sent me five single-spaced pages of erudite speculation on Jareth, Sarah and the psychological ramifications of the Labyrinth. Not until today did I hack a shorter, less dense essay out of all his fascinating thoughts. See below for a theory on Jareth’s secretly benevolent nature. Apparently he really wants to be Sarah’s therapist. No really…just read it… Amusing comic-like illustrations included…

[MW STEPS UP to the podium at an outdoor amphitheater reminiscent of the Coliseum.]

MW: Howdy there, loyal Jareth’s Realm viewers.

[MW LOOKS around. SOUND of crickets chirping.]

MW: Apparently all my fans are invisible. Anyway, folks, we’ve got some great new material in the works. I’m right now editing a fan’s interpretation of Jareth as psychologist, so watch for an interesting essay on that soon.

[SOUND of crickets chirping grows fainter as MW PAUSES again.]

MW: Plus I have some awesome fan art of Jareth coming up! The artist,

phurie_dae

, worked with me for over a year to get it just right!

[MW GESTURES dramatically. NO more  crickets CHIRPING.]

MW: It’s really sexy. He’s lounging in a window with a smirk on his face and you can see a glimpse of his Area.

[MW WAITS for audience response. CRICKETS have clearly gone back under their grass blades to listen to something more interesting, like a rebroadcast of Senate subcommittee hearings on welfare reform.]

MW: Screw this. I’m gonna go sing Video Killed The Radio Star off-key for the 478th time in a row.

[MW WALKS off the stage.]

I just made another installment on the Will doll, which brings me to $722.61 of $1498.60 paid off.  I think I’ve just about successfully purchased his legs, which make up 40 cm of his 80 cm gangliness. Did I mention he was an expensive fucker? I hope he plays fetch, washes my dishes and gives back rubs for that kind of money…

Home on the Strange uses a light touch and bold, happy lines to show the amusing, slightly exaggerated lives and intersections of a small cluster of 30-something nerds. The usual jokes about gamer culture are here, but fleshed out with relationship dramas and a deft use of character development. Ferrett Steinmetz and Veronica Pare make a fluid and humorous collaboration.

In the summer of 2001 and 2002, I watched both seasons of TNT’s Witchblade with a friend.

The Cerebrus Project Mini Fee Ruth that I sold to Baiken in France WITHOUT insurance or delivery confirmation arrived safely! In the mean time, I worried that it would get lost just because I had tempted fate by forgetting insurance and delivery confirmation. Now that the damn doll has successfully arrived at its destination, I offer the following announcement for me and others:

If you’re sending a valuable package by USPS domestic mail, pay for insurance and delivery confirmation. If you’re doing the same with a package going internationally, send by EMS [even though it’s more expensive than air letter-post] with insurance and delivery confirmation as well.

As a rule of thumb, I usually insure the package for 15 to 20% more than what the person paid for it. While insurance and delivery confirmation do not solve all problems, they do obviate anxiety about the package between its departure and arrival.

I have a Destiny, doncha know? With a capital D. Really! I’ve got a
prophecy and superpowers and everything.

Supposedly.

http://www.dollshoesinternational.co.nz/

I’m gonna compare these to measurements for Jareth and see what clothes Will might fit into. The stupendousness is fascinating, huh?

Based on these measurements and the eyeballing of my BJD wardrobe, I expect Will to fit into the following:

Tops: stretchy lace leotard, the black sweater with red trim, the men’s white dress shirt with sleeves up, the lace shirt, blank tank, Hell Queen bodice [with some wedging]

Bottoms: Hell Queen velvet bloomers [hah!], Kala skirt, red leggings [legs too short], grey leggings [legs too short]

Shoes: Jareth’s shitkickers, Frank’s faaaaahbulous pink glitter-shitting boots

I’ve seen Just The Right Shoe shoe sculptures in tchotchke shops. The designs have attracted me, but the fact that there is only ONE shoe has annoyed me. However, now that I see that they are 4 inches long, I think that there might be an actual use for these frustrating collectibles. You see…4 inches = 10.16 cm, which is about 2 cm longer than Sabik’s feets [8.3 cm] and generally about 1:3. Perhaps it is possible to modify some of these JTRSs into fabulous footwear for my dolls…namely WIll, for whom I cannot find a decent pair of atrocious heels to save my life… JTRSs sold here.

Fete miniature shoes are sold through Amazon.

Disco sandal keychains…?

High-heeled pump keychains…?

And these…oh, these…are the ultimate in coolness: Disco Diva JTRSs. Cheap here.

…although, since he is on layaway, the doll will not arrive for a while. Expensive fucker.

I am zees close to buying a Sabik [Iron Brain edition, yahahahahahah!] on layaway when he is available tomorrow.

I want this doll because it looks like a character of mine [Will] and because it’s approximately the size I want as well. With mannequins [aka life-size dolls!!] as a comparison, I mistakenly assumed that 1:3 BJDs would be much BIGGER than a measly 60 or 70 cm. Sabik’s size, 80 cm, approaches what I’d expect from a BJD, although I’d be much happier with a 3- or 4-footer.

EDIT: I really hope that Build A Bear clothes would fit Sabik as egregiously short crop tops or shorts or microskirts, especially since they are cheaaaaaap and there is a BAB store nearby.

In my investigations, I have discovered two more companies to add to my list of companies I do not want to patronize because they are tainted by plagiarism.

Slayage, the online journal of Buffy studies, has a new URL. It can now be found here: http://www.slayageonline.com/

O frabjous day!

For the past few years, I have been looking for books about the affective, psychological and cultural meanings of dolls, specifically as they might pertain to the modern popularity of BJDs. If anyone has more suggestions, let me know!

Studies of Jareth.

I made a monogoggle prototype just now with my usual plastic cap for a lens base and bronze paint. Then I added several layers of leather, cut from an old purse, for padding around the eye. I felt confident that this might actually be a finished product and not a prototype, but then I tried it on my largest BJD’s head [Frank’s].

More for me than for you.

Screw caps seem to work pretty well for lens fittings on BJD-scale goggles.

I modified Brass Goggles’ tutorial on disposable steampunk goggles for humans tonight. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that I took her tutorial as inspiration for some experimentation of my own based on the screw top for a small maple syrup container. The area around my desk still smells like syrup, even though I finished the monogoggle a half an hour ago. I can honestly say that this was one of the sweetest projects that I’ve done. HAR. While incredibly messy and unfinished, the experimental monogoggle looks more professional and convincing than my cardboard goggle mock-up.

Now making the rounds on the Net is the BBC2’s docu on the Westboro Baptist Church Cult.

Doggles sells eyewear for dogs. There are many different colors and sizes, as well as swappable lenses!! The sizing chart seems to suggest that an XS size would fit your standard 60 or 70cm BJD’s head. [I assume that the “head size” refers to circumference.] According to some more detailed stats, the XS head band adjusts from 5 to 13 inches, and the lenses are 1 inch high and 1.25 inches wide.

Doggiduds also sells goggles for dogs. No changeable lenses, but slightly cheaper.

EDIT: I just bought a pair of the XS smoke/chrome ones…strictly for research purposes, you know. $18.00, free shipping…and that was the lowest I could find after shopping around. Hopefully I can customize them with steamy, punky gimcracks… EAT MY PRICE TAG, ANOTHERSPACE!

Anotherspace sells goggles for dolls. It boggles my mind that the price is $42.00 for a pair of 60cm goggles with leather frames. Why are they so freakin’ expensive? Is it the leather?

Here’s an aviator outfit for teddy bears, including goggles.

Here are some white goggles, along with a swimsuit, from Build A Bear.

Here are some human-sized brass and leather goggles for inspiration.

Here’s a TUTORIAL on how to make brass[ish??] and leather human-sized goggles out of escutcheons and old belts…

Here’s an Instructable about modding welder’s goggles to make human-sized steampunk goggles.

This evening, using the pattern mentioned in the previous entry, I constructed a pair of lensless prototype goggles for Frank. I used cardboard for the frames, masking tape as an adhesive and rubber bands for the nose piece and the head straps. Since I was scaling down a human pattern, I guessed on the measurements. The actual size of the frames looks correct, but the side pieces are clearly too deep. I also made the mistake of using a stretchy material for the nose piece so that the goggles stretched out to look wall-eyed. Despite these first-time blunders, i proved to myself that I could indeed construct goggles. With better materials and more refined measurements, these will look pretty cool. The picture of just one of Frank’s eyes gives a sense of how neat these will be when drafted again and finished! Reference pictures below.

Here is a discussion thread about many styles of steampunk goggles and how to make them: right here.

Here is a tutorial on temporary steampunk goggles, fit for costumes: right here.

I can use this information to make doll goggles, I think.

Denny Kim, representative of Doll In Mind, struck up a thread about likeness BJDs earlier this year. After an initial spurt of interest and a round of orders in mid-February, the first set of custom sculpts are surfacing on DOA with model photos for comparison.

I loved making maps of imaginary countries when I was young. Now I can do the same thing on the computer with the freeware AutoRealm. I wonder if I could bring the United Provinces of Ilion into digital format?

CrazyTalk software does simple animations on still photos so that they seem to be speaking in synch with sounds. Interesting.

Oh yeah…and while I’m at it…

Not Doll Lab’s Miriam looks like their earlier release [EDIT: DollMore’s] Banji [translucent skin, round eyes, pursed lips], although larger and more mature. I like the sculpt, but the shallow cuts all over her body distract me. I can’t think about the aesthetic appeal of the doll or the paint job when I’m trying to wonder how someone would receive such wounds. I can only guess that she peeled off her pajamas and went sleepwalking through the raspberry canes, in which case the whole conceit appears silly, rather than edgy. Also…what the heck is that background…raisins on a sheepskin rug??

Those persons realizing that Sabik is too big for their tastes are now selling him. Unfortunately, his body, clothes and hefty shipping price come along with him. The price jacks from $650.00 [nude, no faceup, shipping included] direct from Soom to ~$925.00-$950.00 on the secondary market. It’s frustrating to see la poupee available but unreachable, especially since I want Sabik’s head more and more as I see more pictures of it.