Author: valentine

Two Note Wonder

Playing around with Joce.

Some weeks back, I traded Dom’s old Isao body to someone on Den of Angels and got this body in exchange. It’s a B-11 split torso one with double-jointed elbows, which I’ve been wanting for him for a while.

A previous owner had coated it, and whatever sealant they used was splotchy in some places and extremely thick in others, so it took a lot of scrubbing to finally get it all (or at least mostly) off. I don’t really care for the feel of resin when it’s sealed, so none of my dolls are coated. Does that make me weird? (Or a bad doll owner?)

In these shots, he also has a heavily sanded Luts s-hook holder on his neck to lengthen it and boost his head up a little without doing a permanent mod. His Heart head was designed for SD13 boy bodies, so the neck hole is a little large for an SD10 body and the head sits lower than might be ideal. I don’t know if I’ll keep it as-is, adjust it a little more, or figure out something else.

Hmm. He’s cute, anyway, bobble-headed or not.

Double Trouble Trial

Bonus – a couple of quickie shots of the two little girls together.

I think my photo editing tendencies kind of mitigate the skintone difference between them; it’s a little more pronounced (and therefore more irksome) in real life. GiGi is my “normal”, with a cleaner (old skool BJD) faceup, while next to her MiMi’s head looks a bit like a pumpkin, it’s so blushed and textured and orange-y. She just doesn’t seem to quite fit in with the rest of the collection, as cute as she is. MiMi looking good when paired with GiGi is crucial.

So I don’t know…

Pumpkin in the Garden

Test drive.

I recently had MiMi repainted, and I’m still trying to decide if the new faceup is going to work out. It’s an incredibly well-done one, with fantastic linework; I love the eyebrows, the painted eyelashes, and her applied white eyelashes.

What I can’t quite get used to is how heavily she’s blushed, and I quickly found out that in person, painted “skin texture” is not for me. She seems overdone compared to the simpler, clean and stylized look of my other dolls, and I keep mistaking the “skin texture” for dust or mold and trying to brush it off.

I want to be fair to her, though, and give myself time to think about what I want to do – if I can get used to the new look or if I should start searching for a different faceup artist and try again. The best way to do that was to start photographing her and see how I felt. I’m really in love with her, but I think that’s a product of it being MiMi (the Tsugumi sculpt, her eyes/wig combo, her personality) more than anything.

So I haven’t figured out just what to do yet…

Not Quite There

I adjusted his eyes a little and am trying to give him a chance, but I don’t think I can get used to him. He almost looks like Jer – he has the right head sculpt, the body, the eyes, the wig, the clothes, the accessories – and yet he doesn’t feel like Jer because the faceup keeps throwing me off. Like he’s an impostor.

I’m edging closer and closer to swapping his old head back and putting this one in its box until I can send it out for repainting with a different artist.

His eyebrows and eyelashes are gorgeous. The linework is fantastic. But he just doesn’t have the darkness and contrast and intensity he needs to really be Jerolyn. The heavy orangey-yellow blushing doesn’t work for me. The skin texturing doesn’t work for me, either, and it looks so out of place next to my other dolls with their cleaner, stylized faceups. I’m devastated that I’m unhappy with the final result in-hand and I don’t know how to fix that feeling now.

._.

Flowers Everywhere

She’s my favorite.