Props Jupet's Mule and Carriage

Hey! I'm going to try and put together some journals for my current doll project. This project revolves around my Souldoll Lev, Jupet, and his wardrobe, props, and modifications. I'll include a directory to the other journal threads here in case you are curious about how another part of the project is going. ​

[Project Journal: Wearables]
[Project Journal: Props] you're here!
[Project Journal: Modifications]

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In addition to the clothes I am working on in the Wearables project journal thread for Jupet, I am also going to be working on some bigger props for him! Jupet, in his story, drives a wooden carriage with his mule companion Lampwick, delivering magical packages around the continent he lives on. I wanted to attempt to recreate a to-scale version of his carriage, along with making a little Lampwick to go along with him!

Jupet's cart is inspired by historical medicine wagons, and is a small, modest wooden carriage meant to transport his packages and personal belongings.

Look at that, a sneak peek of Jupet's caftan mockup! Shhh...
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I started working on my first mockup digitally, and took a photo of Jupet and Lampwick next to a ruler so that I could eyeball some measurements. I wanted to keep the carriage as small as possible so that it didn't take up an obnoxious amount of space in my small work area. The first thing I measured out was the door, which ended up being 7" wide and just tall enough for him to fit through. I extended the walls on either side to make the front/back ends of the carriage about two Lampwicks wide, and gave it a taper of two inches at the top so that it wasn't a perfect rectangle. The internal area of the carriage will be as deep as it is tall at 20". The front of the carriage where the drivers seat and attachment for the traces will go is going to be a little more complicated to measure and draft up, so I will probably end up making several cardboard mockups for them rather than fussing around on my computer.

After making the digital mockup, I immediately grabbed the biggest cardboard box I could find (thanks Ikea!) and got to work making my first draft in cardboard!

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I couldn't get the lines to show up on the cardboard in a photo, so I traced over them digitally for the sake of sharing here. I only ended up making three walls of the carriage and leaving the back open so that I could more easily see how big the inside was going to be. After playing around with setting my doll in different places, putting a small chair inside, and thinking on it, it seemed a little bit wider than absolutely necessary. I decided to narrow down the whole thing by about two inches. I hacked it in half again down the middle and taped it back together at it's new size.

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I will put a few photos together in another post here showing the updated mockup, but I ran out of daylight for now. Thank you for checking out my project journal, and if you're interested in seeing some of the other parts of this project, please feel free to check out the links up at the top!

-WK​

 

While I wait for some daylight to take photos of the mockup, I'll add a little bit about Lampwick!

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For Jupet's mule, I spend a good number of days in 2021 looking around for a toy or model mule that would fit the right scale for my MSD. After a while I gave up on being picky and finding a mule specifically, and just settled on finding a horse instead, since those actually seem to exist.

The ones that ended up being the best scale were the Our Generation 20" horse toys. There are a few different ones available, each with a slightly different pose and paint job. Since I was going to be repainting the thing completely no matter what, I ended up picking the one that had my favorite pose. I spent a while debating if I wanted to get one of the horses with articulated legs, but the thought of having to paint around the joints without being able to take apart and reassemble the whole doll turned me off too much. I liked the Pinto's posing a lot since it looked the most relaxed and didn't have the head facing straight forwards.

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I ordered the doll from Target, ripped it out of the adorable packaging, and promptly let it sit on my bookshelf staring at me ominously for the next year and a half while I drowned in college deadlines.

At one point last year I was feeling ambitious and decided to yank all of the hair out of the mane. It took me until a few days ago to saw the tail hair out with a pair of craft scissors, but we all take our own time to get things done, huh.

Aside from some hair removal, I've been going back to Lampwick periodically to smooth down some seamlines and blemishes in the plastic with sandpaper. These dolls are not the cleanest casts, and there are a lot of goopy bits and weird scuffs in the plastic under the paint that need to be taken care of before I can prime him. I also did a little spot test with some acetone to see what the situation with the paint job was, but it doesn't seem worth the trouble to wipe off what is there before priming, since I think I will just end up getting some kind of spraypaint when that time comes.

Since this is a horse and not a mule, there are a few modifications I would like to make before I start repainting it. The biggest change will be the ears, since mules have much larger ears than horses. I think I will end up taking the original ears off completely with my dremmel and remake new ones with some apoxie-sculpt. I'm also planning on sculpting a bit of a base for the tail that extends off of the body to look a bit more mule-like. I'm not sure how much I will end up reworking the face, though. I could bring his brow out a bit more so that he looks less horse-y from the front, but it isn't really necessary with this doll's head being pretty wide as is.

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Aside from making him bald and sanding him here and there, that is about as far as I have gotten with Lampwick yet! Stay tuned for more barbie horse makeover montage in the future.​

 

Thank you so much! I love a good challenge, and I've always wanted to build some sort of replica carriage. I have a background in cosplay and tabletop gaming, so I've been making props and miniatures for a while. This is definitely the largest project I've done so far, though! (but only by a small amount, I built a four story stackable mansion for a dnd campaign back in 2020, and it's about the same height and width as my carriage mockup) If all goes well I'd like to make a replica Vardo wagon next for another character, but that one would definitely need to be more YOSD scale, haha!

It was a tough decision for me not getting that posable our generation horse! I really wish sometimes that I could move at least the head around on the one I got. Maybe someday I'll splurge on a real ball jointed horse if I can find one at just the right size! Thankfully the OG horses are pretty nice as an alternative, though, and don't break the bank!

Thank you, and I hope you enjoy watching my progress!

 

I had actually checked around online back when I was shopping for the horse, but at the time they were somewhere around $5-10 more expensive to buy secondhand with shipping costs than just ordering it from the store. As much as I would have liked to repurpose a used toy, I couldn't justify spending more money for the same thing. It came with a bridle and saddle that are a rubbery material, and I can't imagine how annoyed I would be if I tried to customize on top of it or remake it, haha! I guess we will have to see if all the straps and pieces of the harness are more or less of a frustration to make than a saddle would be. If all else fails, I'm not against cutting a temporary hole in it somewhere and gluing in some magnets for those pieces!

 

If you want a material recommendation, I use extruded polystyrene for a lot of my miniature projects! It's a hard insulation foam that is super light weight and able to be cut and carved easily. I get mine from Home Depot since I live in the US, but it looks like Bauhaus also sells it as Ursa hard foam board. Any store that sells building materials might have the right insulation foam! I also get foam boards and rolled craft foam from the dollar/craft store that are very thin. I bet a 1/4 Tardis made out of that would be light enough to hold with one finger!

The OG horse looks great with your doll! The scale is really perfect. And I love all of those flowers!

 

NOTE: I keep running into issues where my image imbeds are breaking after a few hours. I'm trying to find a workaround for this, so if you see broken images, I promise im in the process of getting them fixed

 

At long last I have an update! I've actually had this progress done for a couple months now, but this is a project that I'm just going to be bouncing back to irregularly between other things...

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Without further ado, here is the current state of the mockup!

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It has gone through a lot of minor (and major) edits since I glued it all together, mostly with making the body of the cart narrower than I had planned originally. The cart really only functions as a means to store and transport cargo, but I wanted it to be just barely believable enough that Jupet could be using it as a shelter, to keep up with that whole "I'm a living creature who has needs" schtick I still want it to be pretty snug, though!

I pulled off the cardboard for the roof, which was originally a simple arch, just so that I could get some glue on the inside easier. But now I'm considering changing the shape and angle of the roof to make it a little more interesting, maybe with it bowing upwards at the front and back, but that will be something to see in the next update I do. Time to start saving more cardboard!

I still need to adjust a few things as-is, like the size of the rear door and how I want to scale the front and back wagon wheels, but I'm pretty satisfied with the overall scale and shape of the cart. I think it fits well proportionally with Jupet and Lampwick the mule
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I'm hoping to spend a little more time on this project over the summer, so hopefully the next update won't take so long. I really want to set aside more time for my hobbies and having fun! Thanks for coming along on this ride with me!​