@natalunasans gave me this doll for my birthday. She’s notable for using the first highly articulated Skipper size body and also for having an unusual toy-soldier-inspired uniform. I let my whim guide me as I repainted her, darkening everything about her facial features, with heavier brows, heavy eyelids, MW Signature Eyebags [TM!], and brown-based lips. I also filled in her irises with gold paint marker. I’m not sure who she is, but I have enjoyed repainting her, and I think she has much more character now. Continue reading Mattel Nutcracker and the Four Realms Clara repaint

I have used my vacation to repaint a bunch of dolls that really needed it From left to right, we have a Mattel Hip Hoodie Fashionista with head and neck spliced onto an articulated Mattel My Scene body, then two 10″ American Teen Dolls by Dieter Mueller, Dominique in the center and Tara at the end.

Let me tell you about the American Teens. I opine that these dolls were designed by someone who had never seen either a doll or an actual American teen. The character sketches on the back of their boxes claim that they’re in their mid to upper teens, but their undefined, barrel-chested, short-limbed physiques suggest an age no greater than 12. In any case, they’re damn cute, with strong brow bones, round noses, and little smirks. The headsculpts, hair, and pants on these dolls are the best parts.

Onto the bad parts. Their stock shirts and shoes were so cheaply made that I threw them out. As for jointing, these poor kids had solid single-ganged elbows, knees, and ankles, but movement was all but inhibited by the rubbery plastic in which the joints were encased. Why would you go to all the trouble of adding articulation, only to render it useless? I replaced Tara’s arms entirely with some action figure arms and hands. But for Tara’s knees and for all of Dominique’s limbs, I just hacked away enough plastic to expose the joints and make them functional. Both of them now have long shirts and pants so you can’t see their hacked out arms and legs.

Anyway, the first pic below shows their default looks. Next two pics show Harold and Tara after I messed them up repainted them. I erased and redid Harold’s eyebrows, along with shading around eye sockets, nose, and mouth line. I erased and redid Tara’s eyebrows and added shading around eyes. As you can see, eye bags make everything exponentially better.

Continue reading Eye bags make all the difference: touched up Hip Hoodie and American Teen

I darkened the shadows around Chaz’ eyes today. I also tried to make her a wig of some of the poodle shag swatches, but I found it too difficult to work with. It has a more slippery, stretchy backing than regular faux fur, so it’s hard to measure and cut. >:(

Continue reading Chaz lookin’ more haggard

This version is slightly different from the previous. She has adjusted nasal bridge lines and neatened mouth with satin varnish.

Continue reading Improved Brandeis

Her outfit and her hair weren’t doing her any favors, so I improved them. Her faceup also needs refinement. I like the features, but the coloring is a little messy. I need to touch up her lips and the lines around her nose. Her eyebrows and eye bags, however, are perfect! She’s so cute.

Continue reading Brandeis redux

Anna, Zombieville denizen and Isabel’s close friend, used to look like this:

Continue reading Aged Anna

Megan Meehan, Zombieville denizen and Doctor Z.’s assistant, used to look like this:
Continue reading New and improved Megan, now with increased wrinkles and bags!

I did Dillon — Isabel’s ex, coworker, purchaser of her car and carpooler, not to mention Carter’s friend and representative of stupid shit people say about PWS — for once and for all tonight. He started off as an AA Hasbro GI Jane Vietnam Nurse, who is quite possibly one of the sweetest, cutest, most adorable dolls ever. Don’t you just want to be her friend?
Continue reading Voici Dillon!

When we last saw Novella, she looked like this. I made some changes today.

1. I wired from her neck down through her thighs to reduce her floppiness.

2. While I liked the flamboyance of her outfit, I never liked her bikini top, which seemed way too casual for her personal style and for her job as receptionist, bookkeeper and Webmaster at Champlain Valley Body Art. One of my improvements was therefore covering up her midsection with a red tank, a skull tank and then the nubby pink overshirt.

3. Her pale resin made her nose seem undefined, so I gave her some nasal shading.

I’m pleased with the results, which make her look more proportional. Uyoo’s headsculpt has eyes, nose and lips much too big for the small skull, so the temptation is to balance out the large face by adding a high-volume wig. I did that, and the results only accentuated that Uyoo’s head is way out of proportion to her narrow, flat body. By giving her a few layers of clothes up top, I gave her some bulk, which makes her look less cartoony and more realistic. Her proportions are much more stylized than the other regular issue Minigem girls, all because of her huge facial features on a small head.

Continue reading New, improved Novella

When we last saw Brandeis, she had no faceup, a different wig and a different outfit. Now she has a faceup [all brown and a little pink for the lips], a black-based wig instead of a white-based one and a different outfit. I ditched her hat and changed her pants and shoes. She’s adorable! Love her little legwarmers with hearts. <3 <3 The simplicity of her faceup brings out the lively detail in her sculpt.

Continue reading The new, improved Brandeis

Now her smirk is smirkier!

Continue reading Painted a line between Isabel’s lips tonight.

Here’s Carter with his faceup done. The hat is definitely getting replaced, and I’m not a fan of the shirt either. But this is what his face looks like. Colors used were white, black, grey and brown.

Lightning-shaped sideburns are the awesomest awesome that ever awesomed!

Continue reading Carter painted

One of my first tries creating an old character in action figure form was Mamie. She was an LHF character, grandmother of the protagonist Anneka, and she was a tough 95-year-old.

I started off with a BBI Burner F15 Pilot head, as she was an androgynous woman, then recolored the hair silver with white highlights. I also added some light pink polymer clay to extend the end of her nose and her chin, then blushed them a bit to blend in with her existing skin. Mostly I used regular #2 pencil to draw wrinkles on her face, with colored pencil accents for especially dark shadows. Her head’s in poor condition, so I’ve tossed it. However, I have retained these photos for historical purposes. Continue reading Ageing an action figure: Mamie

Another Zombieville denizen attains completion!

I had the worst time with Anna’s hair. Originally I just wanted to repaint the base in royal purple, the bangs and braids in pink, her lips in raspberry and the lesions on her face in red. I had no problem doing the royal purple parts [aside for some paint leaking under the copious masking tape and onto her ears >:( ], but I struggled mightily with the pink parts.

I encountered two problems when repainting her bangs and braids. First, the dark neon green paint that she came with did not want to hide under the much lighter neon pink replacement. Furthermore, the neon pink was slightly diluted [curse you, "craft paint!"], so it kept sliding into the low parts of her hair sculpt, leaving the prominent areas flagrantly green.

I considered thickening the paint. I made a thickening agent out of corn starch and water, then decided not to use it. I looked for modeling paste in the local craft store, but they didn’t have it. My frustration increased.

I decided to dispense with the existing braids and bangs, both of which I had yanked off, and sculpt some from scratch. Unfortunately, I did this by using uncured polymer clay directly on Anna’s head. Bad idea. They clay stuck there and would not remove in one piece for curing, so I spent at least an hour undoing all my work and scraping every goddamn sticky bit of polymer clay out of all the crevices in her ears and hairline.

Having found modeling paste at another craft store, i tried mixing modeling paste and paint to then cover over all the green parts. The result looked okay, but a) it cracked and then b) it wouldn’t fit snugly back on her forehead anyway.

At that point, I threw away her bangs and braid, since they clearly existed only to mock me. I created my own bangs, as well as a ponytail for her braid hole, from small strips of faux fur. The fur, a tricolored atrocity in neon purple, pink and green, actually worked much better than I expected. The pink picks up the pink on her skirt, while the purple picks up the purple in the rest of her hair and in the stitching on her bellbottoms. Finally, the green in her hair coordinates with her green lipstick.

While I was at it, I modified the upper portion of Anna’s outfit from the last time we saw her. I gave her a cropped T-shirt with a NO BOYZ sign on it, over which is a cropped short-sleeved jacket in white faux fur with gold threads. She also has a load of beaded bracelets on her left wrist. Her pants and boots are the same. And I took off that disastrous green nail polish. Oh yeah, and her wheelchair is a Mattel Becky one spray painted black.

Clearly, she is fabulous!Continue reading Anna’s done!

This is what my desk looked like earlier this afternoon. ^_^Continue reading Repainting Anna: creative chaos!

I like Ellery's confident, smirky expression!Continue reading My messy little protagonist, Ellery

Ellery and Lucian's clothes from Andrea came today! Sadly the jeans and the underwear did not fit because the measurements that I gave Andrea were too small, though I took them from Lumedoll's Web site. Regardless, here's Ellery the geek with her questionable sense of style and Lucian the sly, finally with pants. Bonus picture of them together!!Continue reading Ellery the geek and Lucian the sly

I painted Ellery this evening. She's much more sarcastic than I expected. :p I have also included a picture of my messy desk with faceup supplies all over it.
Continue reading The Great Sarcasmo, or, Ellery scribbled on [=painted]

I deplore the divergent trends in male and female action figs. Basically, the male figs have craggy faces with a variety of ages, expressions and personalities [go to War Toys and look at the nudes if you need examples], while the female figs have stylized, generic faces with a tendency toward bland neoteny. I myself am not free from this bias, at least for female figs, but I actively fight it by scribbling on my dolls’ faces!!  Continue reading Scribbling on my dolls’ faces makes everything better!

I got some new paintbrushes today. I will NOT be storing these bristles down. Anyway, I got out my supplies…

Then I shaved some pastels with my craft knife onto my technologically advanced palette:

Then I made a mess all over Will’s face, putting some brown around his nose and on his philtrum and, most significantly, a thin layer of purple shadows [see unmixed blue + red above] under his eyes. Here’s a harshly lit shot that shows the additions. I am just now exploiting his darkened eyes in a formal shoot.

Will had some marks on his nose. I tried to erase them with paint remover. In doing so, I erased all the paint from his nose, forming ragged edges between his paintless bridge of his nose and everywhere where the paint is. I tried to fix this today by applying some shaved pastels to the ragged areas. The result is very messy because I was working in low lamplight, not natural daylight. Also my paintbrush was frazzled. Finally, I have a messy and unfinished style of painting and drawing anyway.

I’m not really perturbed by the messiness. When I first got Will, he looked perfect, pure and unblemished. I admire the high grade of resin used to make the doll, but the appearance of the doll is not accurate to Will’s character. Will is supposed to be over 130 years old. While his body has remained at approximately 30, he has suffered over a century of wear and tear. I imagine him as beautiful but also haggard, more like an aristocratic, finely made-up old lady who used to be a pageant queen, rather than a person in his shining prime. My messiness thus takes away his flawless appearance, but he’s not supposed to look young anyway.

…you should have seen it before I cleaned it up with the paint remover. I am returning to my dolly roots lately with some 1:6 makeovers. Using BBI’s latest issue of the Perfect Bodies, I’m making yet another head for my 1:6 Frank doll. I repainted the eyes brown and made them glance to the side. I also added shading around eyes and nose with paint. The eye shadow, blush and lip shading is done with pastels. Stupendously enough, I’m actually much better with pastels now than I used to be. I still need to find some appropriately curly, dark brown hair with in-scale, small curls…

We continue with the illustriously bad example of customizations on my first BJD, Zephque. These pictures come from his for sale posts in November, 2005. Read and weep. 

Back in May, 2004, I got my first BJD, a Custom House Gene, for the ungodly sum of $675.00.

Slight adjustments made on Frank’s eye shading and make-up. I don’t know if you can see it very well, but angldst [Donna] sent me this 1:3 upholstered chair. You can see a little bit of it in the lower left part of the photo. Frank’s sitting on it. Continue reading I am faaaahbulous.

Substituted light pink and brown for hideous mauve shadows around Frank’s nose. I think there’s some improvement. Continue reading Repelling the purple forces of doom

In yet another stage of Frank’s face-up, I painted over his eyebrows with black acrylic paint. I also tipped his eyelashes with the same color to make them more visible. [Thank you for the tip, Armeleia!] Finally, I shaved the pointy tip off Frank’s nose with my Xacto knife. See the strip of progress photos below the cut. Continue reading Frank’s face-up progress

I removed much of the grape Popsicle shading around Frank’s nose and mouth. I still like the purple between his eyes, so I left that for now. Also I’ve applied the blush much more evenly than before. Picture below. Continue reading Fight against the grape Popsicle!

With my eraser, my Colorless Blender [sounds like a kitchen appliance in a boring shade of grey] and Prismacolor Blush [PC928], I reapplied Frank's blush, trying to make it more even, but still highly visible.Continue reading Slightly refined blushing

Thank you to everyone who posted comments here and over at this thread on DOA. With your help, I learned where to add color to Frank’s face, both in terms of shading and blush. Continue reading I’m blushing!

Lips glossed with satin gloss, eye make-up with matte gloss. Human eyelashes [Manic Panic, Purple Rain Dance] cut down to size and added. I’m really proud of my work. The finished product looks much smirkier and more animated than my mask-like conceptual drawing. I attribute this less to any talent that I may have and more to the high-quality canvas [Volks resin] and tools [Prismacolors] at my disposal. Pic below. Continue reading Frank’s final eyes and lips

On Frank’s eyelids: Prismacolor Violet [PC932] on Frank’s eyelids, blended with Prismacolor Mulberry [PC995]. Above the lids: a stripe of Mulberry above the lids, with a layer of Violet above it. Between the eyes and the brows: a light layer of Violet, partly stripped with decapant universel, blended with Mulberry. Picture below. Continue reading Eye-shadow attack!!