"Lucy" - a 29cm OOAK Robot Girl WIP

Well, I'm feeling like I should use my blog for general updates, since I've been poking around on the forums some more, and I figured I'd put up the other pictures from the early stages of my most recent doll...
I started with a few sketches, and I wasn't sure of how her features would look in 3D so I took a lunch period to play around with one of many kneaded erasers I have. I suppose I should get some cheap modeling clay instead, since the eraser is a totally different experience than Sculpey, and wrestling the stuff into shape takes longer than sculpting... Either way, I wanted to figure out how to do eyewells, since that's one of the biggest problems I have with dolls. I had a plastic bead and a glass bead that were both about 8mm, so I wondered if they'd fit inside a 1:6 head...
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They did. Here's a little picture of this wonky head on a stick and my little workspace... I wasn't sure of the features of this one, since they're a mash-up of some of the bits from other characters I have. For background; the concept of this doll is based off a character in a thing I'm writing. She's a boring sort of all-purpose robot who got lost somewhere and was allowed to develop her own personality instead of getting regular software updates that would keep her functioning "normally". In the story, she names herself "Lucy", and during most of the story she has a default, mask-like faceplate that shows no emotion. Towards the end of the book, she asks for a custom plate that resembles a human face, allowing her to change her features around and smile and outwardly emote. Because she's tagged along with a little group of mostly-human adventurers, she decides to model her face off of a combination of their features; one's eyes, someone else's lips, an elf-girl's chin and the very striking nose of the other resident android, who wants none of it. I had trouble getting this nose to work well in 3D, especially with the rest of her face, and decided to go a different route with it...
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I gave her a more generic nose, switching around who contributed what features... At this stage, she doesn't have ears, and I figured that she'd borrow the other bot's ears instead of his nose. That's what I get for having a character that's purposefully awkward-looking... By this point, I'd started to wonder if a rubbery robot face could actually achieve this level of realism, and thought it would be too unsettling to have a more-or-less human face on a stock robot body. I had to make her look more doll-like. This was the opposite of the problem I had with my first "robot" doll. I wished I'd had this problem earlier on in my doll-making journey... I smoothed out the sides of her nose a bit, gave her stylized ears, and spent a while weighing the pros and cons of giving her nostrils.
The other, more recent photos are over on my previous blog post, and right now I'm letting her sit around on my desk... I've got a marble-sized piece of clay left over, so I might have to get another whole brick to make her legs a little thicker. Her body is supposed to be spindly but androgynous, as the robots in my writing weren't designed to have a specific gender, but she's chosen to be female and I usually try to pose/draw her looking "cute" despite the blockyness of her form. It's pretty fun, now that I have her somewhat assembled, to play around with her posing. I have a different character with that same body-type who is most definitely male, and it's amazing to see how Lucy's personality changes the look of the neutral canvas. I'm terrified of how tightly her legs are strung, but so far her clay has held up wonderfully to the stress. Now, I just have to decide on what color to paint her once she's sanded... I'm stupidly excited about her.
Updates coming at some point - probably here, not the blog.

 

Thank you! The blog with the other pics is just the one I have on here (the regular Joint blog), but I'll re-post the pictures from there so they're all in one place. EDIT: Wow, the first two are really blurry. Sorry about that... >_>


Here's her "guts". Note the very, VERY bad idea that is that narrow bottom bar that touches her lower torso piece... That's snapped like twice, along with the side of her torso. Yeah, not good. I'll probably either add some wire reinforcement next time or just not do it all skeletoned again... It'll look wonderful painted, though - I'll be dry-brushing some chrome onto there to really add some dimension.


Here she is, strung for the first time. Er... mostly strung, that is... She's only loosely together in this picture, and hasn't been sanded. I try to put most of her torso into planes, and I did that for the feet and shins, too.


Here's the white blob that is her head picking up all the light from that lamp in the foreground. But this picture's about the body - I have her all assembled and standing for this one. Her joints didn't kick at all, which is a nice change; my other 1:6 doll has that problem with her elbows, and while it's kinda funny when her arm randomly moves on its own, I'm too lazy to fix it. With Lucy, I'm making sure it doesn't need fixing in the first place. Since this picture, I've sanded every inch of her with 220 and 200-something-else so it's got a velvety texture and most of the lumps from sculpting are gone. If I really smoothed it glossy, the paint won't take. I also tweaked her elbows a little so they bend backwards just the slightest bit.

I haven't sanded her precious face all the way, but when I finish with it, I'll start painting her. I've decided to keep most of her black, but the body pieces and head will be black-and-white with a few silver "scuff" details, perhaps, and maybe some silvery threads on the "muscles". Not sure yet, but I can get away with not painting like half of her, just liquid-Sculpeying the pieces and letting them be. The things that I've sanded and re-baked before (most of the torso) actually get darker when I bake them, since the little scratches kinda fill in or something... I've really blasted pieces of that black stuff before and gotten it almost glossy; Sculpey gets wobbly at high temperatures. Most of the bigger limb pieces have foil cores permanently in them, but the torso pieces don't - I'll probably wedge some in there, bake them, and then take the foil out AFTERwards. Last time, I was too eager and yanked the stuff out while it was still hot. That's how the bottom edge of her back tore in two places and I learned that Sculpey is very, very delicate at 200 degrees Fahrenheit. I'll have to do some tests to make sure my paint stays white, and that my other acrylics don't catch on fire, but until then, Lucy's back in lots of little pieces. And after that, I get to play with her new eyeballs.

Thanks for being interested in her! I'll try and take some more pictures with my camera instead of my ipod, next time.

 

Thank you! I'm almost done - hopefully I finish by tomorrow!

A general update; Sanding has finished, on to painting and glazing...


Here are all the pieces before painting/glazing and after sanding. You can see that the legs got darker since I toasted them to get the TLS gluing the pieces together to set. They used to rotate like the arms, but they kept tilting funny so I just gave up.


Here are her "racing stripes". I'm going to put on the decals (crossed-out designation and re-drawn model ID) later with a glossier paint, since she's supposed to have been "defaced" with a paint pen. I've noticed that her features are much harder to see now than I thought they would be, because of the very deep black paint... Ugh. It looks like the glaze on the feet, hands and shoulders has made those pieces a little bit lighter, and I tried some gloss black on one of the feet's joints, and I guess it looks... better than I thought? And to think I'd entertained ideas of re-painting her black parts gray... If it looks really bad, I'll just sand it matte or re-paint the stripes.

Onward! I think...

 

I'm pretty much done! Just a bit of tension to work out with her legs; I re-strung them and they're a bit too loose...
After a poor first attempt at eyes, I gave in and MSPainted them and printed them. Pixelation isn't as much of a problem as I thought it would be, and they look beautifully cyan on camera! Edit: they are ultraviolet-reactive blue - they're regular paper, but I'm holding a little blacklight to make them glow.


Her eyes....


...and her skeleton, all painted!

Sorry for the terrible ipod photography; I'll have better pictures in her finished work thread.

 

@Devilfloss; Thank you! I've finished her and have a few pictures in this thread, with more to come.