40–49cm Dolls Elf girl doll, my first doll project!

Hii! This is the first doll I have designed and sculpted to a far enough stage that I think I can safely say she's truly my first real doll project, though still very WIP. I'm using ZBrush to sculpt her, so there is a polypaint on her currently so she has a face. I've also included a pic of some different faces I painted on her for fun.

Right now I am just starting to work on figuring out the joints so most of what you're seeing are just proxies, but it's cool the more I mess around with it the more it keeps making sense. I'm still tweaking her figure a bit too.




FYI, just to get an idea of how she would look with eyeliner/eyelashes she has an extra piece on her eyelids that wouldn't be actually printed and cast on the doll. You can see how she looks without it in the unpainted pic of the model.



It's fun thinking about what resin colors I would want to make her in, what her sculpt name would be, different parts to make in the future and so on.

I love historical and fantasy themes so for now she just has a cleavage bust (still deciding if I want to sculpt nipples) because they always look nice in clothes, but I think it would be cool to do a natural non-gravity defying bust one day too. I am showing her with flat feet, but she does have heel feet as well - that just seems like a must. I definitely want to make her hands and feet magnetic.

Thanks for taking a look and hope you like her!

 

Thank you so much!! That makes my day. I will keep posting her progress on this thread.

 

Started meshing some of her ball joints to the actual limbs yesterday and today and resizing some little stuff. Made a rough-ish elbow joint and now she has an actual elbow from the side view. No string slots yet or anything but should get to that soon enough. It's slowly coming together and making sense on how to proceed with the joints.




I also plumped her cheeks out a little because I think it makes her a bit more appealing? Aaaaand made yet another quick faceup for fun.

 

Also, I realized I never shared my sketches! It started with this side view of her face in my sketchbook and then I did the front to help begin sculpting. I did a really rough body sketch too with the heads that is super unpolished but it really is useful to have these orthographic views in the beginning - and it was only created to inform my sculpting as a reference so I figured why waste time making it pretty. Some proportion has changed a bit, but that's how she started!

 

Fixed those broken images! I didn't realize they were massive files lol.

 

Thank you SO much for feedback!!! Totally agree about the 3/4 view so I think it was the right move.

 

Thank you so muuuuuch!!! I'm so thrilled you like her! And it's such good feedback to confirm everyone seems to like the fuller cheeks so far. I've been staring at her for so long and then one day, you're like, "ya know....."

 

I'm almost ready to go to the next stage and use Booleans to start making all the parts fit together on the inside!

But I made the crown of her head bigger, which I think would probably be more accommodating to wigs. Is it too much? I wish I had a 3D printer so I could just whip one up and try a wig on her.




Ok, I just made a side by side image from the last post, and it's honestly not that much more height so I think it's fine.

 

Totally hear you! I should probably make one that's somewhere in between - naturally gravitational and maybe a bit smaller. I'm sorry I'm into the big chests, lol. I actually think the cleavage chests look mildly ridiculous naked, but the clothes I make for my Minifee always make me wish I had the E bust. It's such a silly dilemma! If it wasn't for the extra seam lines, it would be so cool to have chest plates like face plates so you could just swap 'em without all the work!! I guess you could do it if it went all the way up to the shoulder line without it looking too weird.

Thanks so much though! I'm so happy to hear you still like her!! The chest piece is all done now, so it should be easy enough to re-sculpt the front to make a new shape. I'm just working on how I want the head and head cap to fit together, and I think I should adjust the hands and feet magnet area (some areas look too close to the edge and I'm worried will be too thin). But all the other pieces are hollowed, channeled and done! I mean, other than the fact that I have no idea what will need to be adjusted once I have a print hehe.

 

Thank you so much!! I love drawing stylized stuff these days....always thought in the past I would sculpt something more realistic, but newp! Love working stylized. I think it's more forgiving for my first doll too.

And thank you a bunch about the printing! I know of one person I plan to get a quote from, so I will see when I get there. I finished her head cap a few days back and it kind of ate my brain, so I've been taking some time off from the doll to work on an illustration haha!

 

Oh my gosh you genius! How did you know I have been vacillating between redoing the elbow joint to make it round on top? I had just thought the other day, ehhhhh I think it's fine. But this video is sooooo helpful. I have a Iplehouse FID, and yep, she has the exact same issue, but I didn't realize she couldn't hold a crossed arms pose (and the others)! My gripe had just been that you kind of have to pop her elbow joint out to get her hand up to her face instead of having a more smooth movement. But not being able to cross arms is a really vital reason to not be lazy and deffo change it. I'm so glad you messaged me!! Thank you. Haha, I can't believe I didn't realize. Goes to show how great I am at posing my dolls.

Thank you so much for the feedback about how she looks too! I'm so pumped you like her!!!! Will post more soooooon! Besides fixing the elbow, I have to make the channel in her head with the groove for the S hook to rest on, and hollow out the neck socket more so she can move her head around, and probably fix up her hand/foot magnet area bc I'm afraid it might be too thin in some little areas.....so, almost there!!

 

You had the most immaculate timing for bringing it up! I'm so glad. It really was something I'd been musing about for a while and had just abandoned haha.

 

Awww, thank you SO much!!! You are the sweetest and that makes my day.
I hear you, though! I took a ZBrush class in 2015 in LA with Eric Keller (who is wonderful), and it's probably the only reason I can get around in it...I do occasionally endeavor to teach myself new software lol....but ZBrush is sort of it's own little beast. It's not the cheapest but I have always heard great things about Maddie Scott Spenser's ZBrush tutorials and I'm sure there are other instructors out there on learning sites that are not as expensive. I would think it would be sort of helpful like the class I took to get a fairly detailed overview from the same instructor so there's a real lesson plan involved. But you can totally do it and learn it if you want to!! Traditional sculpting practice is also really helpful for digital too and it's all super fun!

 

Update time!!!! I finished almost all of her joints and inner workings and resculpted her elbow joint for better mobility (at least in theory lol), thanks to the recommendation and education from the lovely @tangy_melon !



I took some time away to work on some illustrations - cause wow, I haven't posted a pic since June 18th! After like a whole day of figuring out how to do all the Booleans for her headcap, I was cross-eyed and tired! I've previewed her with her heel feet this time so you can see those. There have been a few minor tweaks here and there. Right now, I'm working on the areas where her hands and feet mag-on, because as I mentioned before I was a little worried that some areas were too thin. Next up, I'm going to mess around with a second option chest part that is less bubbly and gravity-defying.

Doesn't she look way different without a faceup!? I keep thinking about a name for her. I've been tossing around Danaë, but might go for something more classically elvish sounding (and not the name of Perseus' mom haha) like Lythiel or Aelianth or....something.

 

Sooo, I did create a smaller bust option. I'm happy with it and it's a lot easier on the eyes to me while she is undressed (I keep putting my thumb over the bottom of the cleavage bust to simulate her having some kind of bustier on haha and I know I'll be happy when she's dressed)!


And for fun I tried to polypaint her in white and pink a bit like my original concept and then painted some hair in Photoshop to see her with a wig on lol.