40–49cm Dolls First BJD doll - Candy

So, I thought I could start a little journal to keep track on the progress I am making with my first sculpted BJD doll. I want to get not only into the collecting hobby, but also into the making part of it. And maybe this could be a fun way of seeing my progress.

Okay, so, let's talk about:

~My first project~

I want it to be one of my original characters. Her name is Candy, and she is a BJD herself (well, a BJD demon, let's say). She's a bubbly diva, sweet and charming. Here you have some drawings I have made of her!




She just felt like she was the right choice when it comes to my first dolls, but of course, she will come with some extra hard difficulties.

- I do not know how to sculpt very well yet. I am using Blender for this project, but it is my first time.
- I do not have any dolls with me atm. So looking at the joint and pieces references will be online only for now.
- She's quite short and a little chubby, so I will have to adapt the usual doll making process and parts (which is usually for super skinny dolls) to my idea.

She will be a 1/4 doll, as that is my personal fave size.

So, now that I am done explaining my project itself, I will start showing the process I have so far!

 

Of course, the first thing I had to do was adapting her to a BJD format. That is, making the front/side references. I had to adapt some things and think in a practical way rather than just a character design way (which had me making a lot of research on joints and process). This is what I came up with:



When sculpting later I realized this was full of mistakes (the head was small, the hips had to be slightly bigger so that her legs can work, etc). But it is a start!

 

I do not have the full progress for this, since I just now had the idea to work with a journal, but it's the time to start sculptinggg.

Luckily I had been working with Blender for a little bit before because of my work. Not for modeling but for 2D Animation, which has nothing to do with each other, but knowing a little bit about the program always helps.

This is the process I have so far:

- First up, the blocking. Getting the general idea of the doll with low poly and no detail. In this step I had to fight against the program a lot, but better now than later when I am working with full detail and it can make my computer explode lol.
- Then, I start making a first details pass. I subdivide the polygons and start marking a little bit more of her features. In this step I had to fix a lot of stuff I thought was okay in the reference, but in practice, I was not feeling how she was looking.
- And this is the step I am at right now. I am giving her more and more details, marking her features and making her smooth enough. This is how she looks so far:



I still need to refine her head, hands and feet a lot and making the joints work, but I think she is looking great so far. Shout out to AelithArt's free 3D models that I used for the joints!

After this, I would have to make her empty and start the prototypes process, which I know will be loooonnnng. But it will be worth it.

Anyway! That's it so far! Feedback is more than welcomed and appreciated and thank you for reading me if you got through all of this, haha!

 

Thank you!! I am going quite slooowly, but to be honest, I am just enjoying the process as much as I can ^^

 

Update!! Here is how the doll is going:



- Tweaked her face a little with the help of some people from this forum
- Started sculpting her feet and refined her hands
- Worked on her hips + torso pieces