i've noticed that this doesn't get any attention on any sites i have seen. how do you guys make your neck joints? like, right at the base of the head, so that the head will sit properly on the neck, and so that the head will turn correctly, and whatnot and whathaveyou... i'm starting my next head today, and i've just got no idea when it comes to dealing with this bit, especially on the inside. (it also doesn't help that i have never seen a BJD in person, and so, haven't seen the inside of a head, for an example.) i'm also thinking that i want to continue working on perfecting my first doll, that i posted about here, in that area. poor girl is sitting on a shelf looking like her neck is broken. :/
I was planning on doing a faceplate rather than a headcap style head. So, making the back of the head and 'tongue' and then probably shaping the curve on the underside as best I can and using the Dremel to make a nice, smooth concave surface. I'm not making a body, though (at least, not right now) so I'm going to make them generic and hopefully they'll fit a few bodies at about 65-68cm. I have a couple of bodies I can try them with. Maybe that's the answer? Do you have a purchased BJD you can compare to, so you can see how they're made and if the head would sit nicely on a commercial body? I'm really a beginner, though, so I might be wrong. ^_^
The neck joint itself is a simple ball joint with the ball on the neck part and socket in the head. The biggest difference between different dolls is usually just how deep the joint is. Different depth will give you different performance. A deeper joint will have more surface and that means more friction and a more sturdy joint. A shallower joint will have a larger range of motion. What is right for your doll is something you will have to experiment with and find out for yourself. The inside of the head has nothing to do with the neck joint itself. But it does have to do with how the head attaches to the body. Try finding some pictures online to get some examples on how it is usually done.
To make sure the ball fits properly in the socket (and this is the case for all joints, not just the neck), I'd suggest starting with a large hole where the socket would be. Get the neck ball shaped the way you want, and let everything harden. (Or if you're just sculpting a head, get some sort of hard object the size and shape you want for the neck, or the body you'd like to put the head on). Then you can add wet clay to the socket hole, and push it onto the neck ball (just put some cling wrap or something similar between the two parts so the wet clay doesn't stick to the neck). Twist it around a bit, and get the wet clay to take the shape of the ball joint. You can also get an idea of what the range of motion is. Then just let the wet clay harden and smooth everything out, and carve out holes for elastic if needed ^^ As for what the inside of a doll head looks like, it can vary between sculptors, but generally it needs to be hollowed out enough to be able to get your fingers in there to change the eyes, and adjust whatever you've got in there holding the head onto the neck (usually an S-hook). Just a quick Google image search of "inside BJD head" yields a ton of good examples of what the inside of a head might look like
hree. thanks for the tips, guys. i am such an idiot when it comes to google! XD i should have googled that long ago, mokarran. **looks at many pages and falls in love with many heads and leeeeeeaaarrrrns**
