40–49cm Dolls aThys - deer girl bjd (~41cm?)

I'll likely end up posting to my blog before anything else so if you want faster updates you can go to http://resinlings.tumblr.com/tagged/aThys

This is the first bjd I'll be making. I've sculpted in the past - but usually on a larger, life-size scale. (you can see some of my life-sculpting here).


On to the actual plans now!







So I did that top sketch of a character of mine, aThys, a while ago and she’s always kind of been a back burner interest for me in terms of a doll I’d like to have. Well lately my friend has been considering making a doll and I was looking around The Joint and thought…. why don’t I make her? I've been wanting to make a doll for a while anyway!

I’d like to model her on the computer first and use the 3D printer here since I have free access which saves me a ton of money (and I work there so it’s a good way to pass time when we’re slow). I think it’d be pretty fun! But I’d also like to try modeling her in clay too… or at least some parts. I've modeled and animated in the past so I'm familiar with the software - but I was thinking of trying Sculptris to get started since it's been a while and it seems more intuitive? (Sculptris is the free version of ZBrush)

There’s a lot of figuring out to do still - that profile of hers keeps changing because I’m not sure what I want yet - which is the other nice thing about digital is I can keep changing it until I'm happy.

I was thinking both sets of ears might end up existing and are just strong magnets.

Anyway I am very excited to get started on my little deer-girl! I will post updates here as they happen.


UPDATES
• Feb 10 - First post & Intro
• Feb 11 - First 3D modeling tests

 

So I started testing out Sculptris a little today. I didn't have my reference photo with me but it was more a day of learning how the tools work. I discovered that I can't actually run Sculptris on my computer because apparently they haven't made it compatible with Mac OSX Yosemite?! I'm very saddened by this since it means I can only work on this when I'm at the lab.

I wasn't really paying attention to the back of the head in this - I just extruded a basic shape which, as you can see is WAY too big. My focus today was messing around with the profile and getting a better feel for how the tools move the digital "clay" around. I did export it as a .obj file and upload it to our 3D printer software - it looked pretty decent considering there's no smoothing on this.

Bonus? This is less than an hour's worth of work and I did it with a mouse (I forgot my tablet at home).

The real challenge now is getting to some tutorials on how to make something have a certain thickness and sculpting around eyes (deleting parts of a shape). I don't know if it's possible to do that in Sculptris so I might have to pop the mesh into another program. I'm still struggling a little with the best way to make lips as well - I tried a few different methods but I've not really liked anything that's come out of it yet.

Any tips and advice are more than welcome!





Replies

the-big-dish - Thanks! I'm pretty excited about it!

 

Ah, thanks for the tips. I've worked with blender a lot before so that was my plan. I have 3Ds max as well which I'm more familiar with (and it's free for students for 3 years I believe)!

I will be doing both - with magnets. I'm actually thinking of sculpting a variety of ears and horns - animal, human, elf, fantasy etc and doing magnets on both the upper part of her head and the lower part. Since I'm just doing the head-project to start off I figured this makes her head-sculpt really fun because you can basically do whatever you like! And I could sell the ears separately as well if anyone was interested.