Still in progress ~ 90%

You know when you work very hard on something for like two months and then you can't even get one decent picture of it?

 

Broken robot, flowerhead

I didn' post the pictures of what this head has become either ^^"

Solan, the broken robot whom Réi has found on the Edge of Koross. He's split onto pieces and scattered aroud the place, but he still works. He actually is quite a nice, friendly fellow and likes to have long talks with visitors about anything at all. Réi would very much like to find spare parts and fix him, maybe someday he can be whole again?

More pictures and  the face-up walkthrough:

Update on Sculpting progress

I'm so sorry for not updating for ages >< I've been sculpting a lot, working on older and new projects, and I have too many of them going on.

Here's a little update, the Cleric and Hunter faceplates are doing well, they still need more sanding though. The Berserk faceplate of which I don't have any recent pictures gets its coating. 

And I've been mostly concentrated on a 30cm doll, Kirai Solan which is fairly new. The 30cm Kirai body is that of a robot with cartoonish shapes, very stylized anatomy and cute proportions. Solan faceplate should not be the only one for this doll, but I won't be working on any other ones for the moment. Not until I have all of it done ^^"

I'll try to get more pictures next week :)

Ldoll anyone?

Ldoll, comment ça c'est bientôt?
Et là, tout d'un coup, je réalise que le Ldoll c'est bien dans 2 semaines... J'ai hâte, mais carrément hâte, et en même temps je ne l'ai pas vu venir!
J'y serais bien sur, cette année encore, pour baver sur vos dolls, dévaliser vos stands et venir discuter de tout et de rien. La question fatidique - qui est-ce que j'amène cette fois? Je n'ai pas vraiment "renouvelé" ma "collection", il n'y aura pas de surprise. J'avais amené Vice et Ezekiel l'année dernière, ce serait logique que Réi y ait droit cette fois-ci, mais en même temps ce n'est peut être pas très intéressant non plus. J'amène Snej pour le concours bien sur, mais elle sera posée dans un coin, je ne l'aurais pas sur moi...

En tout cas je me réjouis!

Bloom...

 My "last" doll that happens to be a floating face of a Dollchateau Stacy, work in progress:

I've cut the face out of the head, so it's not for use on a body anymore, but I do plan no body for that doll.

And that's what the hole on the front is meant for:

Snejinka

Snejinka, Snej for short stands for Snowflake in russian. It's a Dust of Dolls Lünn - she's tiny, delicate, cute and very curvy^^ And I should be taking more pictures of her sometime.

 

And another one

Another BJD sculpt in progress, the third one that I call "The Cleric".
It's a sharp narrow and rather unhappy face.

I always start sculpting my faceplates with a something that looks very much like a mast from "Borderlands" or an alien face. I think I'll be sculpting an alien head sometime later one too :)

And one week later here's what I've got:

 Sorry for bad quelity pictures, but here's some more shots:

More sculpting in progress

New BJD faceplate sculpt! 

The Berserk sculpting process: face

I have been doing some BJD sculpting lately, determined at last to get this project going and  done.

And man that's one hella time-consuming activity. There is much to do and I don't think I'll be able to finish the prototype this summer.

The faceplate though is almost ready to be cast in resin:

The head is 7-7.5 inches. Eyes should be 12mm with a smaller iris, or oval 10mm.

The doll should be around ~55cm tall. 

Back to business!

I've been away, moving a to a new place and being busy, so that this blog is not even close to up-to-date!
I'm back to 5 BJD, my 3 usual Zaolls, a WIP project and a grim grey little buddy that got all lace and ruffles lately:

Butterfly fish

Painted at last:D

Darn.

I'm not sure if I have already stated this, but I have indeed decided to stop getting new BJDs, Fish was supposed to be my last one. On the other hand I'm not yet sure I really want to keep him...

And the more I stick to  spending less time on BJDs the more I realize how much I want another white-skinned 50cm doll >__<
Sharing my pain :D

Demon face

I just wanted to change his face-up, but I ended up modding the whole face...not sure about how it came up but it did. Now I have the rest of his little chubby body to paint.

Faceup tutorial

I happened to put together something that looks like a face-blushing tutorial.

Kinda made me realize what I really need to improve myself^^

Little Fish

I'm done with the body carvings, woot.

Still need to paint those and re-paint the face too.

I  don't know if I should carve the face as well though...

Let darkness reign

BJD 2013

That is what my BJD colleaction looks like this year :) I feel like it goes in the right direction. 

I still have more work to do on it though, especially on the two in the middle.

Unclassified species

Sorry for all that Vice spam.

But - it has been such a long time sine I enjoyed taking pictures of him, that I had to get tones of them!

Some work is in progress.

Still not done yet. But most of the carving is over!

 

All of a sudden

I have been thinking about opening a Zaoll mouth but never dared to do it. And suddenly...

I can't say if it really works well, but I now am fond of his cheekbones and teeth :D

At least, Vice is back, and I don't totally dislike how he turns out on pictures!

Petit Prince

Je n'ai toujours pas avancé la custo de cette doll. 

Pourtant je l'aime bien, j'en ai donc fait quelques photos d'une grande banalité:

Good robot

Rei is a good robot. He is obedient and calm, thoughtful, polite. He wants to fulfill his purpose.

Yet he is curious about all sort of things and underneath it all he has courage and determination of his own. And he may yet find a different purpose for himself than the one he knows of.

I changed Rei's face-up for the sake of giving him a slightly different expression, it's a lso a tiny bit less girlish, I think.

Face-up Tutorial

Well, not a real tutorial, just a walkthrough, actually.

Narsha and Zaoll face-up:

Unless I've skipped some I did these ones in three steps:
- First step defines the color  areas of the face, where which color goes, using the lighter shades of each tint. I also usually define the mouth line at that stage unless I forget it^^"
- Second step is for accentuating colors, use darker and more saturated variations, start working on the skin texture and define the eye-brow shapes. I usually try the eyes on at that point in order to make sure the facial expression is coming out fine.
- Third step comes with details: more skin texture, lashes, mouth details, eye-brow details, while the darker parts of the face-up get more dense color with extra layers of pastel.

And then a layer of gloss or two, and here we are :)

Petite nouvelle

C'est sans trop y réfléchir que j'ai enfin cédé à l'envie d'avoir une Narsha chez moi, et là voilà, c'est une petite chose merveilleuse et fort bien faite (sauf au niveau des genoux qui me posent quelques souci). 

Donc pas de regrets donc, mais beaucoup de questions que je me pose sur sa custo... qui n'est toujours absolument pas décidée. Mais peu importe, j'avais envie de lui faire quelques petites modifications sur le visage et un face-up, juste pour m'en faire une meilleure idée.