20–39cm Dolls 34cm mature male: Update Dec 3 2013

Haha, okay guys-- long story. But I'm back. And, I'm working towards casting. (Finally.) Here it is as of today.



Lots of things have happened since I've been gone. I cast the torso and jointed the copy, since I liked the original too much to hack into it. The knees are also double-jointed now, and this guy now has two more heads. I also started working with Apoxie Sculpt, which I love, since the little pieces are much sturdier.

As for casting, I recently found out that my school has kilns capable of reaching the high temp that porcelain needs. Unfortunately, I sculpted this BJD with the idea of casting in resin, which has significantly less shrinkage than porcelain does. So he will be too small and in a scale that no one likes-- approx 10 inches tall when all's said and done. So I'll use this as a way to learn how to work with porcelain and china paint, because selling probably ain't gonna happen. (Though if anyone does show interest, and I am successful with this, I'll make a small batch.) That truly is the joy of this hobby, haha! Pouring funding, materials, and years of your life into something that only you will enjoy. I actually went through the receipts that I've accumulated over the years, and with the money I put into this, I could've bought a few professionally made dolls. But it's the journey that matters I guess.

Thanks for all your comments! I love hearing from my fellow artists. I will be updating more frequently as the actual mold-making approaches.

 

Thanks glimmer!! That is motivating indeed. I've finally screwed up the courage to invest in my first gallon of porcelain slip, meep.

 

No, I'm using the kilns at my school. No one knows how to use them tho, ha. I'm in for an adventure

 

penguu - it's giving me ulcers too! I have been dreaming/nightmaring about mold-making. Plaster's so unforgivable. Fortunately I have about ten more pounds of plaster to burn through...

Myrretah - thank you so much!! Trying to make the joints work aesthetically with everything else has been one of the hardest things. I probably completed the actual sculpting part in two months and spent the rest of the time fiddling with the joints.

The Elf Piper - That is a very good point. I'll have to experiment with different ways of preparing the greenware to see if that will change anything, but looking at other porcelain dolls I don't have much hope. Maybe could try emphasizing with china paint blushing? I'll have to look on Yahoo for those groups; where I live there's pretty much nothing except a grocery store, a cafe, and some cows.

Smallish update. I had to make new hands for casting, so I chopped up the old ones and started anew. This time, started from a block of cured apoxie sculpt for the fingers and carved away, instead of adding fingers individually. It seems to be working better for me (although one finger has already broken, so perhaps have spoken too soon.)

 

Thanks for your comments everybody! You keep me motivated when I want to throw things out of the window.

Myrretah - you are too kind! The people on this forum are a constant source of inspiration to me, too. And I think that's definitely the way to go with sculpting the body. If I had to do this over again I'd even try sculpting the entire body in one piece. Probably would have gone crazy trying to do all the pieces individually! There are too many of them, haha.



Made it this far, and now I’ve run out of pottery plaster. Used up ten pounds’ worth for these babies. I don’t know when I can get more. Maybe I can not eat for a week or something.

Out of curiosity, to see if these sad excuses for molds were actually in any way usable, I made test casts with Ultra Chic porcelain slip. (interestingly, to cast all four of the above pieces I only used about half a party cup’s worth of slip.) Seems to have turned out all right; the surfaces of the mold that mattered didn’t get too messed up, so the only thing that didn’t turn out ok was the seams.

Well, mold-making is definitely as hard as I had thought it would be. The plaster looks really jacked up because I am a noob and how is molds formed? You can tell the order they were made in because the quality gets better as I learned from my mistakes haha.

I can post some pics of the actual mold-making process if anyone's interested, but it's nothing really new or enlightening to the mold-making world.

 

Thanks guys! I am by no means an expert, but I am very happy to share what I've learned so far. I happened to take some WIP photos of the lower torso, luckily, but I wasn't very thorough in documenting the process; will have to walk you through them:



First I determined the parting lines of the mold by taking a long piece of pencil lead and tracing it around the part. This method has worked like a charm for all my pieces so far. The thigh holes will have to be marked separately, since they are undercuts.



I also filled up the joint hollows with some clay. When the piece is cast they will be cut out to make thigh holes.



This was just before the first plaster pour. I didn't take pictures of building up the clay bed, but basically I took a slab of Plastiline clay and dug out the approximate shape of the lower torso, then put it in, and built the clay bed back up around the edges so it would be smooth. Since the thigh holes had to be done separately, I blocked off the area with a wall of Plastiline. Then keys were added, and the shape of the pour spout, and I went over the entire sculpture with mold separator (I find that Amaco's Pure Lube works well for this.) Finally I measured and cut cardboard to fit around the edges. Cardboard works fine, but it's a bit messy and textures the outside surface of the mold. This isn't at all a problem, it just makes it, er, not look pretty.

I had to do the thigh holes in two separate pieces, as you can see here:



Obviously it's better to make molds in as few pieces as possible, but here I couldn't avoid it. Molding the thigh holes in one piece would've made it impossible to separate from the original. Also, there was the complicated matter of the penis, which had some undercuts in it too. This mold was my very first, also, so it's the one with the most mistakes. There are unfortunate air bubbles, jagged seam edges, uneven pours, places where I forgot to add keys, brush marks from the mold-separator... pretty much everything that could have gone wrong, did. But, don't let this intimidate you. Even as flawed as this mold is, it has produced surprisingly usable pieces. I'll probably remake it as soon as I get more plaster, but for now it's doing its job.

The best advice I could give about plaster mold-making is just to do it. Plaster isn't terribly expensive, and there is a learning curve, but it's much, much less intimidating once you get the hang of it.

 

Thanks Noah Reyes

aneemal, you're very welcome! Porcelain is truly an experience to be had. To answer your questions, the difficulty of cutting the holes depends on what stage the greenware's at when you cut it. It's going to be difficult whenever it's done, but there are easier ways to do it. Right out of the mold, with the pieces at leather-hardness (cold to the touch, brown, still has some water content, but holds its shape independently,) it's very easy to cut into, but it's also very easy to destroy the piece by warping it, creating stress fractures, or even finger-print marks. I have learned the hard way to be patient and not to handle greenware until it's bone dry. I've read other artists prefer to cut holes and remove seams at this stage, but personally it doesn't work for me (I'm a klutz!)

Once it hits bone-dry (one or two days out of the mold, stark white, and no longer cold to the touch) I find is the best time to cut holes and sand. To eliminate stress on the piece I basically twirl the point of an x-acto knife into the place that needs a hole, and when the hole gets bigger than the knife, trim away until it's the right size. Other methods like cutting right at the edge of the intended hole place create too much stress and cause cracks, which may not even be evident until firing. At any rate, when the porcelain is bone-dry, it is still very fragile and prone to fractures, denting, marking, or plain shattering in your hand. It's not at all squishy or prone to finger-printing though, which is a plus.

I have also experimented with wet-sanding and cutting soft-fired greenware (SFGW), and personally at the moment I prefer handling bone dry porcelain. SFGW is less fragile than un-fired porcelain, obviously, but it's still very delicate. Overall I personally prefer dry sanding to wet sanding, so handling SFGW may work better for you, who knows.

I hope that helps and good luck with your own endeavors! If you have any other questions I love sharing my mistakes and mishaps, so that others can avoid them.

Just a random pic to end my post with:



surprising how different the body looks in white porcelain!

 

WOW SUPER NECRO

So since I last posted here I graduated college (lol) and no longer have access to a kiln. So I put him aside and forgot about him for about a year (heh) and just now picked him up again. I've decided to get him professionally cast in resin, so I touched him up and worked on his joints (dang, looking at the old pics in this thread, I'm really glad I did... I think he's a lot better-looking now.)


DSC01210 by illuminateddoll, on Flickr

Here he is while I was working on hacking various bits of him apart and reworking them.


Kouros headcap by illuminateddoll, on Flickr

I made a few different heads for this guy, hence having to create a headcap system. Here's one of the newest faceplates. I haven't finished converting the other two heads yet.


Kouros headcap 2 by illuminateddoll, on Flickr


DSC01633 by illuminateddoll, on Flickr


DSC01634 by illuminateddoll, on Flickr


DSC01640 by illuminateddoll, on Flickr


DSC01641 by illuminateddoll, on Flickr


DSC01645 by illuminateddoll, on Flickr


DSC01649 by illuminateddoll, on Flickr


DSC01655 by illuminateddoll, on Flickr


DSC01658 by illuminateddoll, on Flickr

Anyway, he is basically done! Haha wow it has been a long time since I started. It's literally taken me 3 years to finish this guy (from the looks of this thread) between not liking the way he looked, and switching mediums, and not sculpting consistently. But for now I won't have access to a kiln and don't have room to buy one, so I'll be running a preorder to get him professionally cast or something.

Holy cow, I am actually really thrown off by how he looked 3 years ago at the beginning of this thread-- I totally forgot about these pictures. I have come a long way as a sculptor in that time...

 

InNoTeb - thanks! I'm a fan of IpleHouse too, but I can't imagine owning a doll as big as that. There aren't enough mature tinies!
aneemal - Very true... even if looking at the old pictures makes me wince. :p Your one doll is so, so beautiful! Some projects are definitely worth lingering on more than others. I have so many half-finished dolls and parts in boxes, blaah.

 

Thanks cheshirepanda! He is 34cm or 13.5 inches. How tall is your Belle?

Is there maybe a ceramics store in your area? Sometimes they have kilns and will let local artists use them. Around here there's nothing like that for miles, alas (one of the disadvantages of living in a farm-dense area.)

 

I know right?? Tinies should really be called 'convention dolls.' I'm working on a tiny mature lady as well, in a collab with Switchum-- she isn't really far along enough to merit her own thread but here's a pic of her from a while ago:


DSC01199 by illuminateddoll, on Flickr

I've worked on her a bit more since then but all in subtle changes only I would notice-- namely reshaped the breasts, changed the face, tweaked the waist/hip ratio and the sway of the back... I'm finding her challenging, so admittedly this is a case of project stagnation due to pure procrastination.