40–49cm Dolls Flexible 1:4 girl body

I'm trying to make a doll with a realistic movement range (for a somewhat flexible 8-10 year old girl). So far, the hip/lower stomach area has given me the most trouble - she can't bend her legs all the way up unless I add large, unsightly joints that make her torso look deformed.

What I have now seems to work better than peanut joints in the hips, but it's still very unnatural-looking. Maybe there is another way of doing this that won't make her look like she has relatives in Innsmouth?

Also, is there anything else that I need to fix at this point? This isn't my first attempt at making a doll, but I don't consider myself all that knowledgeable about the subject, either.

ETA: Should this have been posted in the critique subforum? I wasn't sure if it was specific enough.

 

I tried that already, it didn't help much. Two stacked cups worked better, but the doll could assume very unnatural poses and had trouble standing.

As far as I know, Fairyland dolls can't do that without removing the joints from their sockets. You're talking about Minifees, right?

 

The flexibility is currently fine, but I'm having some trouble making the torso joints look aesthetically pleasing. If she was an adult, I could make her stomach muscles more prominent and hide the edges that way, but little girls have next to no muscle definition in that area. I'm also unsure if I can make the edges much smoother without making the joints fragile. How thin can resin get, anyway, before it starts cracking?

By the way, do you have any tips for making shoulder joints? I want to make sure her arms are as mobile as everything else, but it doesn't seem to work unless I make the sockets so shallow they can't even keep the arms in place.

Thanks for replying!

 

Finished designing the body - just need to make sure all the joints fit and I can start adding detail. I'm still not sure if the proportions are quite right, but at this point it's probably too late for any major changes. Hopefully there isn't anything too wrong.

I've been thinking about casting her, but I can't figure out what material to use. I'm not particularly fond of polyurethane resin (too lightweight and degrades badly over time), but I can't use porcelain due to the way the joints are constructed. I like how artificial stone looks and feels and, as far as I know, it can be used for casting small objects, but there doesn't seem to be any information on how to actually do it on the net. Don't know if it's because the material is costly, more difficult to use or some other reason. Maybe asking some of the local bathtub manufacturers would be a good idea?

 

Thanks!

I haven't measured the legs carefully yet, but they seem to be roughly the same length. It's probably because the hip joint for the left leg has a slightly smaller ball and the leg is being pulled up into the torso.

Putting her together with springs instead of elastic wouldn't be too hard, but most of her joints can't be sueded - the contact area is too small. They would have to be removed from their sockets every time they were moved or they'd wear down and make horrible grinding noises.

 

After I cast the headback in a stronger material. It's currently made of polymer clay and changes shape when pressure is put on it, so it ruins all the faceplates I make.

How people manage to finish entire dolls like this, I have no idea.

 

Found some info on the artificial stone. The more durable and UV-stable varieties seem to be made of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA, acrylic glass) filled with aluminium trihydrate and pigment powders. The fillers wouldn't be a problem, but PMMA is hard to cast - it has a thick consistency, shrinks and generates a lot of heat while setting, likes to catch on fire and needs to be freed of inhibitors or the casts turn out yellow. I don't know exactly what it is that the figurine makers use, but I doubt it's the same material.

A similar effect can be achieved by using clear polyurethane or polyester resin with fillers (not sure about epoxy), but both of those yellow no matter what you add to them (I think so, at least - there's so much conflicting and/or false information out there you'd need to be a chemist to make sense of it) and I suspect the fillers may not be enough to mask it. If any exposure tests have been done, I can't find them.

I've also been looking for info on porcelain again since it's beginning to look like I won't find a more suitable material no matter how long I search, but, as I already mentioned, there are a few problems with that. The joint issue is one, but I also made the original doll assuming it will be cast in some kind of resin, so the final casts will be badly out of scale if I use porcelain - taking shrinking into account, the original would have to be 7-8 cm taller to be accurate.

The joints could be lined with something other than leather (maybe glazing the sockets would work?) or altered somehow, but I don't know how to enlarge the entire doll and still have the parts fit together. I've found these methods for changing the size of silicone moulds and, apparently, gelatine moulds expand in water, but I doubt they would all expand at the same rate. Has anyone done something like this before?

 

I decided on porcelain after all, so many of the joints had to be remade. Replaced the rest of them with wooden ones while I was working on that; looks much better. Broke the torso while sanding it (let's take a rotary tool to it; what could go wrong), so that had to be replaced too. I did manage to make a pretty serviceable bottom for a two-part torso from it, so I guess it wasn't that bad.

There's still a lot of work to be done, but I'm fairly sure I won't be making any more major changes.

The middle part looks a bit stiff to me, but adding more of a curve would make it look odd when she's leaning forward. Maybe it's not that noticeable?



She can't bend as far as before, but I don't think it's that important. Maybe I'll make an extra torso part after casting the first batch if I still feel like working on her. The lumpy bum, however, will probably have to be fixed.



The hip joints bother me, but I'm not sure what I can do about it, if anything. Making them any smaller would reduce movement range, and any odd multi-part joints would look out of place. Thoughts?



What's left of the old torso. I'm pretty happy with this one.



Random poses. The feet are a little unstable; going to make them a bit wider later.



Legs are still uneven - this time the left one is longer, I think. Started sculpting the face, but it was lopsided, so I had to sand most of it off. No closeups, sorry.

Also, does anyone have any tips for making even oval joints? I can't get the chest part to fit correctly, and I'm beginning to think I won't be able to do it by hand.