Modification Fixing The Worst Condition Obitsu

A few weeks ago, I got an email from Buyee with my saved searches and this little head was waiting for me. Despite her bad condition, and cheap price (I desperately hoped someone else would buy her so I didn't have to deal with the astronomical overseas shipping), the auction kept getting reuploaded for a week with no one buying her. I had to bite the bullet and start quite possibly the scariest project I've gotten myself into.


I couldn't help but be enamoured with her (my biggest vice is needing a billion project dolls) and was so fascinated by the mods that had clearly been done with her. Not visible in this image are: her eyes are stuck in there with three different substances (hot glue, blue putty, and something thats gray that I can't quite identify. I'm only praying that it's not apoxie sculpt lol), her nose is completely sanded off, her head cap has been replaced with an Obitsu one (no clue why also). She was dirt cheap (1000¥) and even with overseas shipping, was cheaper than a new DDH 10. She's gonna be a HUGE restoration project because quite honestly I do not know the extent of the damage. The damage to her face is really clear, but I have no idea of the yellowing is across the entire face. By the way, she's in the white vinyl tone. Not semi-white, not normal, white, but is SOMEHOW that yellowed. I have no clue how she got to be in this bad of shape (assuming the faceup was sealed badly??) but I want to give this poor girl a good cleaning and a lot of love! I'm far more familiar with resin (and have been doing a lot of mod projects w resin lately) but no one else was snatching her up, so it's up to me! I wanted to document this process because it is by far the most extensive modding project/restoration I've ever done.


The side view to show more of the issues because I cannot emphasize enough how she is the worst shape DD head I've ever come across.

My to-dos:

• Surveying the damage once she arrives (typing this out as I am waiting for her to come! She's out for delivery right now and I'm so excited to get my hands on her properly)
• Get the eyes out. This is immensely terrifying because I really do not know what else this gray stuff inside the head would be other than Apoxie Sculpt. If I need to, I'll dremel them out but the eyes are genuinely so baffling to me because of how it feels they are premade eyes (they almost look like teddy bear/general stuffed animal eyes to me?) that are stuck in a clay base
• Clean the head and then remove the faceup. I'm a bit worried that the dark patches might be mold here but I've removed the mold from older MLPs in the past so I'm hoping I can use similar techniques here if it truly is mold (or that it'll be removed from me removing the faceup lol. Hopefully it's just dirt on top of the face).
  
• If she's all the way yellowed, I'm going to deyellow her head (as the body I have for her is very NOT yellowed), but if it's just these patches, I'll probably incorporate them into the faceup on their own (which is my preferred way of dealing with uneven yellowing I like to kind of keep those elements of the dolls in there when I can). It's just super hard to tell because any dolls I've gotten that have been massively painted over with some areas that aren't, the paint can protect the resin a bit (unsure if vinyl is the same with this?) so it could be all over and she was painted to hide it or it could just be these patches that are yellowed. She's white vinyl which is a bit terrifying to see how yellowed she is (I truly don't think I've ever seen a DD this yellowed?)
• Sculpt the nose via milliput. From what I can tell and my research, milliput is the best way to go for sculpting on vinyl + I don't necessarily need to retain the squishiness here. I want to make her nose somewhat different than her original one, as I really like how the DD Alna and Rise sculpts noses look so I might try for those (but we'll see by the time I get to this point haha)
• Make her custom eyes. If you're not familiar with the DDH-10 sculpt, the default eyes do NOT look like this and it makes me a bit worried that normal eye sizes wouldn't fit her. I have never sculpted eyes before but I plan on making them out of clay and UV resin. In part of my goals to keep her original spirit in a way (worded weird but I want to keep the way her face is but just... make her look a bit better), I want to give her dark blue eyes. It's hard to see in the pictures but I'm pretty sure her eyes here are dark blue. No clue how well this will go but I'm excited to give it a shot!
• Redo the faceup. As another aspect of keeping the original's spirit, I want to mimic the original faceup, as the eyelashes are really cute and unique to me. The main changes I'll do is giving her eyebrows and some blushing (and hopefully a LITTLE less scary facial texture haha). I'm not super good at doing DD anime style eyelashes but these don't seem too bad (hopefully). The main inspiration I have for the style I want to mimic is the Princess Knight manga by Osamu Tezuka because Sapphire's face reminds me a LOT of hers!
• Make her a wig. I have had such bad luck with figuring out wig sizes for DD (so many wigs that are marketed for them just...do not fit so I want to make one for her), and with how the headcap is, I'm not sure how that would impact the head size to be honest, so this is the safest bet. I'm using orange yarn (more of a blend of oranges and whites, I think it'll turn out super pretty!)
• Jerryrig the body/neck connector. Now this one IS my fault but the body I have laying around (an Obitsu 45 or 40, I don't remember) I had modified to get it to work with a resin head. After moving last year, I misplaced the original neck parts so I have to get the body to work with her neck connector (the theoretical way I'll do this is just push the elastic through and then get the s hook into the head, then make a neck donut out of clay to kind of support it so the vinyl doesn't have issues. I also did not realize until now that the neck was ALREADY modified to get it to work with a different connector?? I have no clue what happened to this poor doll lol)
• Make her clothes and then done

Last picture but the nightmare situation inside of the head:

If you guys have any suggestions (maybe for names! or just anything with how to fix the damage, although I do have a pretty clear gameplan) or input on her, please feel free to comment! I'll be updating this thread often as I work on her.

 

Exactly!! She's super cute and honestly the potential is there. I'd be far far too scared to mod the eyes of a new DDH-10 on my own and they are SUCH a cute shape so I'm really excited to see how she turns out

I will! The post office messed up a bit with the delivery so I'm hoping to actually get her later today

Thank you so much! Most people I showed her to thought she was scary so I'm glad to see that people find her cute here!

That's what I thought too! I was pretty sure it was maybe MSC malfunctioned? I know I've gotten a texture similar from improperly applying MSC. But that doesn't explain the cracks I feel or the really odd texture in general (it does explain the gloss though). One of my non doll friends thought it might be mod podge which is a genuinely horrific possibility (it does look a bit similar to me? But I'm also not super knowledgeable w sealants). I have no idea what happened to her or even remotely how things got this bad... It would be different if it was a really old head but the DDH-10's haven't been around that long. She will definitely need it haha

 

Thank you!! I'm really happy to see all the positive reactions

I really wonder!! I would have loved to ask the seller what the vision was for her because it's not super incompetently handled on the modding? Like based off the pictures, the eye mods themselves look pretty even and well done and the nose mod looks good (although I really won't know until I get my hands on her and get the paint off haha). That makes me really relieved that you agree on the eyes because it is truly baffling what happened with her eyes. I really cannot tell if it is unsmoothened clay or what is on the white area above the eyechip. My sincere guess is that someone did the mods on her, and a more inexperienced person did the faceup and eye situation? But I honestly doubt I'll ever know at this point. I feel the eyes were handmade but just in the way that there is a sort of scary barrier to make your own eyes (as in I know the UV resin aspect of it is daunting to some people, me included!) and it was maybe just the best they could do. I really hope to be able to show her all the love and care that I can and give her a loving home Things really just worked out perfectly with her, as I had no plans to use that body until she showed up on my radar! Also if anyone does want more pictures, I'll drop the sales page here (at least until I get my hands on her properly)

 

Update! I picked her head up from the post office and have noticed some... strange occurrences to say the least.

• Her main head is hard as a rock. The headcap (which is from an Obitsu 60) is soft like how vinyl is. No clue why this is going on. Unsure if this will be fixed over time as I fix her up. If any DD experts have any idea why in the world her head is as hard as a resin head is, I would love to know
• She is sticky. I do not think I want to know why this is.
• The eyes are NOT the teddy bear eyes that I assumed they were, it's hard to see in the pictures and not in person but this angle captures the fact they have a slight gradient and a lighter part to them. (you do have to look hard to see this however). I think they may be normal DD eyes that are... installed upside down??? I don't see many dark blue eyes for DD/vinyl dolls in general though so I won't be sure until I pop them out)
• She has also the deepest eyewells I have EVER seen so I think doing eyes is going to be very hard
  
• The headcap is dented in on one side (do not think I can do anything about this, it doesn't bother me too much)
• The skin differences are FAR worse in person. as is the shinyness. Really just hoping this is a sealant thing???
• Comparing her to my Semi-White DD, I'm pretty positive she was painted to match the semi-white vinyl (which is so strange... because I think white DDs are a bit less common? I wasn't able to find ANY other ddh-10s in white vinyl when I was looking)

Photo dump before I go and heat her head up to remove the wig cap


She is definitely not the best match vinyl wise to the body I was planning on putting her on haha. Bit concerned about the bobbleheadedness, but I am NOT attaching her until shes a bit more cleaned up lol. Hoping maybe a wig will hide it?? We will see


The eyes are so so strange to me... we will see

And lastly, her with Beatrix, my DDH-03 my lighting is garbage but I think that it's definitely an attempt to match the SW tone.

 

Thank you so much!! I am too, making faceup mockups has been SO hard bc of how much shes gone through lol

 

My only guess is maybe plasticizer issues?? It would fit with why she's really hard, sticky, and shiny. I've been poking around a bit on forums for this because it would make complete sense why she's THIS hard when the 10s haven't been out this often. Like what these comments are describing sounds exactly like what is going on? She smells exactly like new vinyl and is like... far far far shinier than she should be.
There was definitely faceup sealant issues but I have no clue lol. Pretty sure she is just... a very heavily modded DDH-10, she came in a DDH-10 box and I can definitely see where she wouldn't look like one given the VERY extensive modding that has happened to her but I really am pretty sure she is a 10. The mouth and chin to me really look like it, even tho they're both sanded down a bit? But I am most certainly not a DD expert so I really do not know. I think the eye shape, even with how modded it is, looks closer to a 10. She has a 605 carved on the back of her head so no clue if that helps? The shrinking would be strange to me given how she looks as big as my 03? The other oddity is her neck hole is carved to more resemble a typical resin one so I really have no idea at this point. If it is shrunk/plasticizer leaked, I am definitely a bit concerned on how I'm gonna get the headcap off but we will sure see haha.

 

Thank you!! I have no clue what the 605 is at ALL but thats what would make sense to me with the neck modding as well. She is truly an enigma. I was able to get the headcap off so ty the headcap was ok to remove thankfully!! I'll post updates with the eyes in a minute because good god its bad.

 

Interesting... I think you're right. This is so so strange. I'll have to poke around parabox to see which one she is! Thank you so much for all your knowledge because I am not at ALL knowledgable on vinyl

Edit: I feel somewhat confident it may be an Ai-chan? The head shape looks similar and the rest of the features do as well. Funny thing is I did want an Ai-chan when I was into vinyl a couple years ago so happy accidents I think!

 

Sorry this scary journey is step by step here because the head is open and the stench of vinyl is even worse than before. The inside of the head is very very nasty.

But once I pried the hot glue out, the eyes came loose

It was in fact apoxie sculpt surrounding the eye but the eye is really odd?? It is surrounded by clay on the top like I thought but its also clear at the back. I would say it's very clearly handmade. The head has a ton of gouges on the inside around the eye so I will probably have to sand the inside a bit. The apoxie sculpt that is a separate piece is mysteriously brown also. I'm just very relieved the eyes were able to be removed, I'm going to get the other one out and do a cursory clean. No clue if the eyes CAN be salvaged but I'll do my best to deal w that later lol

 

Thank you so so much! I'm not positive on the Ai-Chan head mold but that's what I'm leaning towards right now! It's 605 She is really cool though, I'm super excited to restore her! I just wasn't sure if it was an Obitsu head due to how the listing had said the headcap was from a different company, and since both Yahoo Japan and the box she came in said she was a DDH-10, I just assumed that was the case!

 

I agree too!! You're so right that it could also look like her artstyle! I'm so excited to start on the faceup I've never made custom eyes before so I am a bit daunted by it, but her eyes are definitely uneven (which is adding another task to this project lol) so it'll be a journey I think haha. I do have to figure out how to get the remaining bit of clay that stayed in the head on one side, but overall she has cleaned up excellently!!

 

Got the faceup removed and holy crap she looks so much better!!

My biggest fear of uneven yellowing and a ton of staining (and even mold... the inside of the head had a TON of black spots, which thankfully were able to be removed w/ acetone) all were for nothing, so I'm grateful to the previous owner for sealing her so well! You can see a bit of green-yellow staining around her eyes (mainly towards the bottom lashline) and her mouth, but honestly it doesn't bother me too much with how I plan on keeping a similar faceup The cleaning has revealed how her eyes are a bit uneven but I am convinced I have some sort of really yucky doll luck, as most times when I seek a gross doll out, they are actually not in super bad shape once I put a bit of elbow grease in! I do definitely plan on sanding the inside of her head a bit as the eye mods were a bit roughly done (completely understandable. I am really impressed with how even they are, there's no way I could get any eyes this even) and I may try to slightly try and make the eyewells a bit less deep. They are SO deep that I feel any eyes would just get lost in them. From what I know it's just a bit of simple sanding from the inside to thin that out a little, but I definitely want to sit on it a bit to see exactly what I want to do. She is definitely pretty yellowed but I'll have to compare her to my Parabox body's vinyl once she's dry. Having so many people chime in and give ideas or support means a lot to me and makes me even more excited to work on her more once my smaller brushes arrive in the mail! I do not plan on really re-whitening her face to match the body (as I am pretty sure it will not match. The head seems to be pretty old or just very yellowed in general), because I do really find yellowed vinyl and resin much easier to work on than non yellowed. I may try and do something to get it to blend a bit better with the body (might do a bit of vitiligo on the face with the tone of the body and then kind of do the opposite on the body? Unsure if that makes sense but that's my problem later). Overall, super super relieved on how she's just as adorable without the faceup and is going to be MUCH less work than I thought she would be (as if the staining was worse, I would probably toss her under a UV lamp (which... I kind of do not think I'll do, unless the sanding I have to do to even the eyes out/fix things makes it easier to then just whiten the doll a bit using retrobrighting). She is such a unique doll and weirdly, the hardness of the head is going to make it so much easier to do a faceup (as the hardness of resin is much more convenient to me than vinyl). I am not sure why the head is hard, as the second I cleaned the faceup off, she lost a lot of her overwhelming sheen, but there are so many mysteries about her at this point!

 

I definitely do plan on giving her a light sanding! She is so so gorgeous and I am so glad that the work I have to do is not as bad as I was worried it would be! I fully agree, modifying vinyl is something that drives me crazy, but I love sanding resin a lot so this is really a blessing for me I think! I love how round her cheeks are and just... she is very charming to me. I also really lucked out, as the Parabox body I had lying around matches her vinyl PERFECTLY (or pretty close!), so really that is just one good thing after another. The eyes are going to be a big big pain though but I truly love how she's coming along already!! Tysm for all your encouragement and advice

 

I know!! I was so pleased with how well the paint came off and just how cute she is!!

That's what I was thinking of, with both options! With how her eyes are on the interior, I have little hope that standard eye sizes will fit her (I tried my other doll's 22 mm (I think? I bought them so long ago) eyes on her and they were just not fitting at all, so I definitely will need to make them). I feel doing the clay will be the safer bet because of how the eyes have been modified (it's hard to describe but they're shaped differently on the inside to most vinyl BJDs I've seen?) The previous owner for her used what I think are eye chips that are embedded in clay (the picture attached is after I pried it off the clay w/ my fingers), so I do think I want to try and clean those up if I can. In theory I think if I maybe tried to polish them using the polishing attachment on my dremel, they'll lose some of the dirt they had, but I have NO clue.

The white here is just parts of the clay, but you can see the really really odd texture on the eye? If anyone has any suggestions on how to clean these up, I'd love to hear it!

That is AMAZING news about your doll!! Obitsu Gretels are so so so cute, and I'm so glad that you've been able to find more information on her!

It is such an improvement! I totally agree, but my only concern is that her eyes are kinda uniquely shaped with the mod (which is making it a little frustrating to try and figure out what exact shape and size to do the eyes in, since I've never really done eyes like this before) and the inside of her head is just oddly shaped so that regular eyes don't fit in well. It kind of reminds me a bit of how Resinsoul has these crazy deep eyewells that make any eyes just get swallowed up in the head instead of showing up properly, except this is just a LOT of curve to the eye area because of how they've been modified to look bigger. I am admittedly very scared to tackle the eyes (and am still waiting for my molds and clay to come in the mail) and when looking up tutorials, I did come across some really good follow me eye tutorials, but the eye shape just really is daunting here. It's mainly the extra bit in the bottom corner and the odd curve at the top that makes any eyes I try and sketch out look really off but that absolutely could just be a issue of not having the skill for it haha

It was such a relief to see everything coming off nicely, the minor stains were SO much less than what I expected. She's been such a fun project already and much much much less difficult than I expected at this point (although I definitely haven't hit the really hard stuff yet)!

She does!! It's so cool how she is SO much cuter underneath, I'm so excited to keep working on her. If I knew what standard size her eyes were/they didn't have the same shape issues on the inside, I would most certainly try those (and might later on too, but I think really right now until I know for sure what her eye size is/what she looks like with eyes in, I want to try and go for the slightly tougher clay approach). The cabochons are SUCH a cool idea and I love how others dolls look with them, so I really do want to try them one day, but her eyes are just kind of a unique situation I feel.

 

Morning updates! Very glad to see everyone so excited on how well she cleaned up, I am too! The package w/ the clay and tools and just... everything I really need to be able to give her a proper makeover has been a bit delayed (sadly) so I'm slightly detouring on my plans. I want to really try and figure out how to salvage the eyes she had, as they are really pretty (to me at least, the simplicity works really well! And hey, if she can have two pairs of eyes, that'll be nice too!). The plans (if I have enough energy at least) are:

• Get the other eye free from the clay (which... given its 99% sure Apoxie Sculpt keeping it in, I'll probably have to dremel it out)
• Get the other chunk of clay free from the inside of her head (her eyes are SUPER heavy (no clue why other than the apoxie? I have lightweight plastic eyes in my DD so they've never had any issues sticking in, so I have no clue what's going on here, but the clay was there for support, I'm pretty sure.)
• Sand the inside of the head (she has pretty deep gouges at the bottom of her eyes and connecting them. I'm assuming that kept them even?). I just feel really bad for her that she has these gouges, and even if it's not visible on the outside, I would feel bad leaving them in and not at least trying to make it look a bit less painful for her
  
• Unsure if I will get around to trying to even the eyes out today. In other uncertain plans, following Novalyna's suggestions, I may try and sand the staining down a bit but honestly it doesn't bother me a ton since I'll be redoing certain aspects of her faceup when I get the stuff I need to do that (mainly just small nail brushes, there is no WAY I am messing around with the eyelashes without proper brushes here).
• In terms of sanding I will be trying to do today, I want to kind of even out the sides of the eyes (as they are pretty rough, definitely not the WORST that they could be but they're just a bit rougher than I'd like). As I've mentioned, her eyewells are VERY deep (pic below the bullets that I took w/ her eyes in and when I had just gotten her) so I would like to maybe try and minimize that a bit as that tends to make dolls kind of look really off when you do not have high dome eyes (which I would not have the first clue how to DIY make that kind of eye). From what I know, it's just sanding the inside of the eye a bit (which if it is that easy, I definitely gotta get some of my other dolls eyes taken care of) to make the depth a bit less bad. I need to do a bit more research on this one to decide on if I want to do this.
  
• I think I will probably save the Milliput adventures for a later date (mainly when I have my clay tools) but now that she is clean, my plans for getting a more broad nose (such as the one DD Alna has) may be gone because I quite honestly think a smaller nose could work? The anime style of the head definitely makes it a bit harder, but I may study Tezuka's noses a bit to see what I can work with in terms of doing a different kind of nose than the really typical very small and sharp noses that this style of doll normally has. Would definitely love some input here from you guys on what kind of nose you think would suit her face (this has really become a big group effort which I deeply appreciate w/ not having as much experience w/ vinyl as other people on the forum!)

You can see how the eye just doesn't really let the eyeball shine here (as well as some of the unevenness I hope to sand away today) because of how deep the hole is. It's so scary seeing old pictures knowing how much better she looks now tbh! If anyone has knowledge on the eyewells, please let me know!!

 

I am so impressed you were able to ID her, that is definitely the face sculpt as her smile is really distinct! That makes it even more impressive that the eyes are as even as they are tbh. It makes a lot of sense as to why she looks a tiny bit bobbleheaded on my 45 cm body! Do you have any idea when these 60 cm Obitsu heads were made first, as I'm super curious roughly how old she is. Thank you so much for solving the mystery, as it was driving me (and others in the thread clearly) a bit crazy!

 

I bet you're right!! I was able to get the other eye out of the clay so I'll give that a shot once I've gotten through the hellish clay situation inside her head. I really appreciate everyone coming together to help her look better, it's definitely made this way less stressful than it was before!

 

Some small updates (after far too much sanding)
I curse Apoxie Sculpt every day of my life at this point but after a bit of time with my dremel, I was able to get the remaining chunk of clay out. It was definitely Apoxie and my dremel was not having a good time with it.
Really shitty before sanding image:

It was a huge glob of the stuff in there and took up pretty much ALL of her cheek space inside her head. Baffled as to why it was there in the first place but after work w the dremel, knife, many prying tools, it came out and her head was MUCH lighter than before lol

I still needed to sand inside the head to get it a bit smoother but did not feel like doing more sanding at the moment, so moved onto Mamo's suggestion with the eyes. I went in with acetone because I was pretty sure the eyes would not really fit the holes properly, and tested on a small section of the eye that wouldn't be super visible. It worked like a charm, heres a comparison of one of the eyes cleaned and one not.

World of a difference!! I got them both cleaned and as I predicted, lining them up in her head, they were FAR too small and just looked wonky in general due to her eye shape. I truly believe that the eyes are going to be the hardest part of this project because of how unique her eye shape is and how I feel a lot of the standard eye shapes (in terms of the iris) just look really off? I could absolutely save them for another doll, so I'm having onto them. They're simple but pretty and getting all the gunk off them was such a relief. The resin itself (as I feel that is PROBABLY what it is) is really clouded over in a way that isn't something I can fix, but the improvement is still great news.

I then went and lightly sanded her head with a 600 grit sandpaper, getting the inside MUCH smoother than it was (although I still couldn't get rid of the marks completely). As for the outside, she had an... oddly yellow chin (at this point I do not question what new surprises she is going to give me) so sanding that a bit got a small bit of that away. I don't think it made a huge difference other than she is much smoother to the touch. Sanding her is honestly super similar to resin, just less dust, so I enjoyed it a lot. I also smoothed the sides of her eyes a bit, which was a lot less frustrating to do than I imagined. I'll still need to modify her eye shape a bit to get them both even but that is truly a problem for a later time.

I feel at least SOME of the staining lightened but it wasn't something that bothered me a ton, so I would have been happy either way. I am so happy with how well she is turning out.

And after sanding. You can't really see a big difference but it feels a LOT better (and I didn't slip with the dremel when working the Apoxie down, which was a huge relief, as I was worried I would). I still don't know what I'll do with the eye depth because the rounded nature of them makes pretty much any standard eyes fit really badly. You can maybe see how rounded the inside of it is in the above image, but it just kind of like rejects the roundness of a normal eye, which I think is why the specific mods were there for the eyes that she had before. Really I think my only option is going to be getting a glob of clay and kind of just pressing it into her eye, removing it, and then adding the actual eye itself later. The design of the iris itself escapes me too as EVERY shape I have tried looks really weird. I'll probably keep making mockups of the eyes, as I do feel that going for a more round eye (in terms of iris shape) is the way to go but I honestly have no idea. I really didn't expect the eyes to be the big issue (for good reason! She was so nasty before this) but all my supplies came in the mail, so I'll probably work on it more tomorrow in terms of sculpting or anything like that. This sure has been such an experience to be making my very first doll eyes for eyes that are modified this much but I'm hoping that with looking at enough reference images (definitely going to be rereading some Princess Knight to maybe look at how the eyes look there. Her eye shape is also very reminiscent of Pinoko from Black Jack, so I'll definitely kind of test those out digitally to see how those look with her eye shape) that something will work! She is such a unique doll and that does come with its issues for sure but she's cooperated with me thus far, so maybe the eyes will just work themselves out lol

Quick edit because the issues with her eyes are really hard to show by just describing. The eyes she had arent super round or anything, so it's very odd.

Really bad images but even though these are flatish eyes, they just do not fit with her eye shape being so oddly shaped (its more concave than I feel a lot of eyes I've seen for vinyl anime dolls will accommodate)

 

I actually saw your project when I was going through the project journals!! You did great work, I cannot imagine having to deal with all the internal issues that you did. There is just something so special about dolls that are damaged beyond what a normal person would be willing to deal with!

 

I definitely think I am going to be doing a more lengthy eye and a slightly odd shape for an anime style eye! She is not very cat like to me, but that is such a good idea if she was!! Thank you

I will be working on it more today, I'm so glad everyone is along for the ride!!

Mamo, you are a neverending source of great ideas here, thank you so much!! I was SO surprised that it was resin too, but it definitely makes more sense with how the listing had (iirc) mentioned something about buying the doll for the eyes and the head itself was a bonus. That is such a good idea!! I truly think this is going to be such a tough eye sculpting process but that is such a good idea! I think I'll probably do a concave inside but still try and keep it the standard somewhat round shape on the other side (if that is even POSSIBLE. But I could maybe just make them fully round, like a human eyeball, and then kind of hack away at the front until its the right shape. no clue how this is going to work with wanting a small well to put resin in to add shine but that's my problem later haha)

 

Good morning, or afternoon! Today's plans are the VERY dreaded nose sculpting stage. My sculpting tools arrived yesterday, so I have no more excuses to put it off. I'm using the ultrafine white milliput, which hopefully should blend in ok with how hard her head was. Before I had bought the doll, I had asked around on how to resculpt it, and as much as I would really be too scared to make a DD slurry, I had decided on milliput. And it worked out perfectly here, with how her head is rock hard. Instead of the previous plans to give her a more "realistic" (used loosely) nose, I think I will be continuing to look to Tezuka for inspiration. Thankfully there are no shortage of Pinoko panels, and as I feel its at least.. slightly likely that was the original vision (with the eye color, lack of eyebrows, and general mods done to her), I want to kind of keep up with that vision. While I do not think I'll be making a Pinoko doll here (in terms of that won't be her full and complete identity if that makes sense lol), I do definitely want to make some alt wigs and stuff like that to try and look like her. All that to be said, I'll be on the nose panel hunt today and then hopefully get to sculpting. It would maybe be too ambitious to start on the faceup today but if I have time, I may! I hope to mix some acrylics to match her vinyl and put that in the milliput, but if that doesn't work out, I have experience painting heads to match (funny given the project, but I'd just be painting her nose to match the resin and not anything fancy haha). Eyes will be the project in a few days, when I have the glitter I wanted to put in her blue eyes!

 

Nose was NOT as bad as I thought.First time working with milliput and sculpting on a doll, so I was a bit scared to do this part tbh. It's not perfect by any means but I think it worked for the purposes that I wanted it to. The front is.. a bit wonky but I'm very happy with the sides, and I think sanding it once it's cured in a few hours will fix the issues mostly. I wanted a nose that kind of blended into the rest of the face (hence the low profile) in the way that Pinoko's does in most side panels and wasn't too big (as I admit, I had grown slightly attached to the no nose look after her having it for so long). Definitely gave me the confidence to get around to doing the milliput on one of my other dolls (as I was too scared to do it a while ago because of how daunting sculpting is to me). So overall, good news, and with how little milliput I used, there was no way I was trying to mix paint in there (it was less than half my pinky nail, very very small amount), so it'll be up to painting it over to get it to look right! I am VERY much dreading doing the eyes (because I feel I cannot really follow many of the normal tutorials that are out there w her eye shape) but I have hope they really may just be this easy too. The sanding hopefully is going to get the front looking a bit better, but I'm very pleased with it!
Before the sculpting:



And after!



I'll pop back in in a few hours with more updates as I sand the nose down a bit (esp on the front, I have a bit of work to do with that lol) and then who knows... maybe faceup today if I feel my hands are steady enough for all the line work. In other updates, her head actually fits an old DD wig that I had bought for my other girl but it was too big on her, so I may work on modifying that a bit to work with her design in my head. I definitely do still plan on making her a wig (yarn one, as I feel that will work best for what I have planned) but she's making good progress!

 

Thank you so much!! I'm very excited to keep working on her.

 

It is finally faceup day! I wasn't feeling great when I woke up so it took me a bit to actually get to work on stuff but I'm starting now! Here's hoping my paint matching will be decent I'll post pics when I'm done/done for the day!

 

Making slow but steady process on the faceup. This will definitely be the longest part of the process as both my shaky hands and my chronic pain have been making it a lot harder to work on it. I'm happy with it so far though and hope to be done by the end of the week.

 

Big update kind of? I got everything but her eyebrows done! The brows have been giving me the most grief because I cannot figure out a good shape or expression. But I'm super happy with the eyelashes, I feel they're as symmetrical as I could get them. I want to probably do a bit more blushing on her cheeks (not much more but just a little) and I'm just genuinely very relieved that it's going somewhat smoothly. I never want to paint an eyelash again after this (slight exaggeration but my god I had to redo them at least 10 times. Blaming my hands locking up a lot during that for this and how long it took).
A wip from when I was working on it and the place I'm up to now (you can see my other doll I've been working on a bit here, it's been a very bad time for someone who hates painting really delicate eyelashes like this, as they both need them)

I was having a very rough time getting the nose to match, as well as getting the eyelashes to work well here. Namely because I knew I couldn't get them symmetrical with the pencils (I do better with paint than pencils most of the time), so all of the lash work was maybe on the 2nd or 3rd layer. Really planned on doing more blushing before I did the lashes, but I wanted to get the worst out of the way lol

Nose is still every so slightly off but I'm very pleased with how it really resembles the original's lashes as much as I could (as that was my goal). I think the nose will continue to vex me with being just ever so slightly off color, but it's close enough at this point that I feel somewhat at peace with it (or as much as I can). The brows are absolutely going to be horrible to do, but I'm glad that, at least to me, her new faceup has the same charm her old one did (just a lot less scary skin issues haha). After I get the eyebrows done and a tiny bit more blushing, I'll have to bite the bullet and start figuring out the eyes, but until then, this is my update

 

Thank you as always! Painting is so bad for trying to keep a good posture but also getting close enough to get the detail work in, I completely agree!

 

My chronic pain REALLY got in the way of finishing this project but I am mostly done now! Did not get a ton of pictures on it, but I can go through the process a bit verbally for anyone still following this thread! Apologies for the wall of text but wanted to explain in case anyone had the specific issues I did in this project.

I finished the faceup mostly in one or two days, which for me, as someone who was very not accustomed to drawing eyelashes on dolls (at that moment, I have definitely improved in the last year), was not easy. The brows and keeping it cartoonish was a massive challenge but the faceup was easily the least problematic element here.

The eyes were really were it came to a complete halt progress wise. First, they're massively uneven despite my best efforts, and you just really cannot make a standard BJD eye work here due to how her eyes aren't really rounded or shaped how a regular doll's eyes would be, so a round iris just would look really wonky. Facing forward eyes would also really make it very very clear that the tops of her eyes weren't even. So it had to be a situation of side facing and fully custom made eyes. I had to press clay into the eye holes to get a faint outline of where I had to work, and then spend months on and off trying to get it even. I wish there was an easier way to do it but I very much struggle with symmetry so this was a massive pain in the ass. Trying to figure out the iris position was also much harder given I had to do some kind of odd hybrid between a typical DD/SmD eye shape and the more cartoonish theme the faceup had. I had in my mind that I wanted a blue eye the entire time and despite some planning in the time I was (very heavily) procrastinating on this, I did kind of end up winging it immensely. The eyes are more flat(ish) pieces of clay than a ball or semi circle like how an eye usually is but it allowed me to get very close to the eyes and remove the kind of frightening impact her eyes had when she came to me (which funnily enough, I feel the eye chip method that the prior owner had done totally would have worked if the eye chips just weren't positioned so weirdly).

As for the body. This was very much a "I'm making this more difficult for myself" situation than any other but she was always intended to be a bit cobbled together and sure was by the time she finished. Several years ago (I want to say 2019? maybe?), I had purchased a Parabox 45 cm male body for a Resinsoul Yao head I had (as the resin heads weren't working and I wanted him on a male body), which then underwent modifications to work with a resin head (for anyone curious- removing the press down mechanism and spring, screw, and then drilling into the neck inner pieces, pushing a thick wire through, and attaching a small bit of elastic and an s hook to the elastic. It works very very well and is very sturdy, and most of all, can be reversed pretty easily). This was somewhat helpful for the fact that her head had a more resin adjacent opening for the neck, but unsurprisingly, a 1/3 scale head and 1/4 scale body does run into some issues. Funnily enough, not the only time I have had this happen to me (my 70 cm head that works somehow on a petite 1/3 scale body that I got after her). First off, despite the scale working (again, cartoonish, so I could get a bit exaggerated with it, and with a wig and clothing, it looks pretty natural which is a relief. Somehow looks better than the Yao head scale wise? I got VERY lucky), the neck size was a massive massive difference. Thanks to the aforementioned 70 cm head/1/3 scale body, I had a lot of experience with the method of put an absurd amount of hot glue in the neck hole and hope and pray. And it did work, I mainly measured up to where the head was over the neck width and basically filled it with hot glue. I will never claim to have good methods but it did work somehow. No more bobbleheadedness, and while I was at it, covered the wires hanging over the internal mod (which to be clear, do tuck into the neck skin, but come out on the outside of the skeleton piece) with some hot glue to make sure they wouldn't puncture. I genuinely have no idea how I got lucky enough that the vinyl matches near perfectly (I didn't even paint the head at all, other than the nose to color match it) and I get to use up a body I had no use for prior to this!

She got a wig I had laying in storage (that I do not at all remember buying) and a very old sewing project shirt + random shorts and was FINALLY done.


As for things I would have done better- I will definitely probably want to redo the eyes at some point. I am just godawful at doing things evenly so it was as good as it can (and they aren't evenly adjusted in this picture, so it is much less bad than it may look there (bc I was just very ready to be done lol)). I definitely want to do something to match the nose to the vinyl a bit better and maybe redo the faceup because I do think I could get the freckles better (although my intention was cartoonish so I am happy with it for now). I definitely want to make her some clothes, but admittedly, I really like the more tomboyish nature of the clothes and how she came out overall. Definitely need to figure out a name as "my formerly yucky head" is not really an apt description of her anymore haha. I honestly am not sure how to do the eyes better other than maybe a projector overhead to make sure the shapes are even or maybe stencils but would definitely love to hear input from people here!

I am beyond pleased with her, she's definitely the roughest shape doll I have rescued but she turned out SO adorable and I am so happy to be able to see her really looking like a normal doll, despite a lot of the work with her being very much me learning along the way a lot of new techniques. I would love to hear any name suggestions if anyone has any!

 

Thank you so much!! Genuinely hot glue will fix anything with dolls!

Thank you so much!! Me too, I went to get a photo to compare how different she was at first, and I really forgot how bad it was!