Aesthetics Making a mountain king

This is a project journal for what I will do with my Mara Creatures Ramunder. The doll arrived yesterday and I can't wait to get started on him.
There will be nudity, there will be a doll in pieces and there will be dark themes.

Spoiler: Some cultural context.

The montain king is a staple of swdish folk lore. This is a large troll who lives under ground, typically in a specific moutain or hill, sometimes in undeground caves and sometimes more in the sense that he is part of the mountain itself.
He is associated with most of the other troll tropes, such as a love for treasure, especcially gold. Having a tendency to mess with humans including, but not limited to creating illusions, make them loosing their way if they go close to his home and the ever popular abduction and this include, but is not limited to; keeping the victim as a slave, a husband/wife, in magical sleep or turning them to stone. If hit my sunlight the troll itself will turn to stone and according to many stories this will break the spells he made. Trolls also hates thunder and Tor does seem to have a special hate for the trolls, striking them down whith lightning whenever he see them.
Trolls are associated with trickery and magic, so much so that many words in the swedish language reflect this. To "trolla" is to do magic. A "trollkarl" or "trollpacka" is a male or female magic user (many other variations of the word exists as well and trollkarl is used in modern swedish mostly to refer to an illusionist, rather than a magician, again reflecting the association with trickery). And when a project continously goes wrong we say that "det har gått troll i det" wich means it is ifested by trolls.

So, on to the project itself.
My goal is:

• Fully finish the doll itslef.
• Create an enviroment for him, including a backdrop and a throne.
• Clothes and accessories.
  
• A treasure for him to guard.

So, here is the doll as he looks right now:

 

@skyealloway @C4LIC0 and @Blue Alice Thanks guys. I am excited to work on him.

I'm off to pretty good start. I did his face up today. I'm certainly no professional, but I am pretty happy with how he turned out. He was fun to paint, but tricky.


I also restrung his arms, tightening the elastic a bit. He was intentionally strung a bit loos to avoid damage in shipping. I may still suede his shoulders, though, as even vith the tighter string, ther is a tendency for the shoulder joints to slip.

I also started a light mod on his thighs.
This doll doesn't stand very well on his own. Considering his weight and his body shape, this is hardly a surprise, but it is a little bit anoying and I think I may be able to get him to do a little bit better. The secret to get him to stand seemes to be to get his thighs into just the right position and stay there. As it is, the joint tend to want to slip into a sitting position when getting too far from the straight position. This is caused at least in part by the very generous space allowed for the elastic to move in the joint itself.
Elastic will always strive to contract, meaning it will always travel by the shortest rout available.
It can be seen quite clearly on these photos, note how the elastic comes closer and closer to the front, the further the joint is bent.




If I could force the elastic into a position closer to the center of the joint, the movement should be smoother and allow the doll to balance better. But if I take it to far or get the pivot point wrong I could end up with a doll that doesn't want to sit up unaided, something that he does very well right now.
So, to not risk any damage I've decided on a non permanent mod to test out my theory and see if I can find the best position for the elastic. Im making a small insert from thermoplastic and glue it in with PVA glue. It should hold it in place well enough to see what works, but can be removed later with just water.

 

Small update.
I just restrung him after making an insert for one of his thighs (only one side and only a small change as I rather take it to slow than to rush anything) and I think I'm on the right track.
This is what the insert itself looks like. The black stuff is worbla and the white stuff is those thermoplastic pellets that you can buy in the hardware store.

And this is what the joint looks like from the top with the insert in place. As you can see, I only moved the pivot point in by a couple of millimeters, but it already made a difference. I will keep adding until I get the joint to behave in a way I am happy with.


With just one thigh just a little bit more reliable I managed to get him to stand unaided for the first time, if only just. I am now pretty confident that I am on the right track and I'll try to get both thigh pieces done today. Or at least get some work done.

Fun fact: His right and left pieces is very clearly marked, but curiously his right side is marked "L" and his left is marked "R". I guess it's marked from the perspective of the viewer when looking at him from the front, but it did confuse me a few times when having just the thigh pieces with me in the work room.

 

So... two steps forward and one step back for his thighs. I finshed the temporary mod and while it did have the intended resaults for the joint itself, it's still very dificult to get him to stand.
Before, the joint would slip and jerk him forward, now he doesn't jerk -just slowly sags.
It is possible the elastic just isn't strong enough to hold him, but it is very thick and tight enough that it takes both me and my boyfriend to string him, so I don't know if anything could be done there.
Next obvious problem spot is the friction in the thigh joint itself. There is a couple of silicone nubs in the joint to increse the friction anf they are already showing signs of wear, suggesting they have to do a much bigger job than the material is capable of. So simply increasing friction by tighter stringing is probably not the way to go. Adding hot glue could potetially help a little bit, but with the heavy load I'm not sure making the surface more flexible is the way to go to make him more reliable when standing. I think there is a real possibility that the only true way to make this work would be to somehow reduce the weight in his torso. His upper and lower torso parts weigh about as much as a fully clothed JID, each. I'm sure it would be possible to reduce this since the parts are very thick in places, far more than what is needed for strucural integrity, but that would be a pretty big and permanent mod and I don't want to commit to that before I've thought it over for a while. There may be other, less invasive solutions or at least workarounds that I have simply not thought of yet.

As it is, it is possible to get him to stand, but he is so unstable that something as simple as putting his face plate on after posing him will be enough to make him topple over and something like reposing his arms or adjusting his clothes is out of the question.
He does stand better with just a tiny bit of support behind his back, but this only works when he is naked, as any loose garment will just make him slip.
He does still sit very well, though.

So right for this moment I think I'll leave his poor thighs for later and get on with the easier stuff.

My plans for his clothes are not very detailed yet. I know I want a big, heavy coat, lots of drapy fabric, wide borders with some embriodery... that sort of thing. Dark, muted colours, but preferably in such a way that it looks like very fine clothes that have been worn for a very long time.
I have less of an idea for what he should wear under the coat.
I've made a simple tunic, mostly as a mock up. I realized the best way to get to know how to sew for this body shape would probably be to just get some fabric on to him and see how it behaves.

Not bad for such a simple garment. I think this is a viable option for a main garment to go under the coat and this way I can probably dodge the problem with pants/other leg wear and tail all together.

 

Great minds think alike.
As a matter of fact, I've just started on making a stand for him earlier today.

 

I think he is creepy, but in a good way!
Like most creatures in folk lore, the troll is not neccesarily evil. It's mischiveous and sometimes dishonest, but no more than humans often are. Most times when trolls are actively destructive is when something have made them angry (like throwing stones at churches because they don't like the sound of the bell, but to be fair the trolls were there first.)

Thanks for the suggestion, but don't think wire is the way to go in this case. For one thing, the weight of the troll is enough that I would need very heavy wire to make any difference at all, enough so that it would start to become difficult to bend at all without pliers. The other issue is that most of the channels are very wide so there isn't much for the wire to rest against. This doll doesn't look like a standard doll on the inside, there are very few points where the string passes trough a narrow hole, most places are open and have larger holes, witch is what was causing some of the initial slipping. Now that I've narrowed the channel in his upper thigh pieces the joint doesn't slip as it did before, but the corresponding hole in the lower torso is very wide and I think it would affect his ability to sit if I made that smaller, the wire would just sort of float free in there.
Wire would probably have worked in his arms, as they are consturcted in a much more ordinary manner, but the arms are doing fine now since I tightened them, so no need there.

 

@scripple All right, thanks for your input.

Back to the actual project.
I've finished the stand and it works well enough. It's made from stuff I had at home and is utilitarian rather than pretty. But it will hold him in place while taking measurements, fitting clothes and other general playing around. We'll see how well it holds up, the "saddle" is made from heavy steel wire and worbla and feels pretty good, but it does flex under his weight a bit more than I would have liked. But I can make something better later if need be. The stand itself should hold up fine and I can reuse that even if the saddle should break.


It does a good enough job taking some of the weight from his thighs, making him able to stand safely.
Now I can finally get some pictures of him in profile and it will be useful to be able to see how things hang on him all the way around when fitting clothes. So, a small victory!

 

I've been preparing some fibre for a wig. Now I just need to stop being such a coward and make some decisions on how to make the actual wig. I've made wigs before, but I'm not very experienced and I don't know what type of wig will be best for his head shape.
An all glue hard cap would probably be the easiest short term, but sewn wigs tend to hold up better over time in my experience.

 

I've finished his wig!

After a lot of debating with myself I decided to go with a soft cap wig, despite not knowing how to go about it at the time. I just prefer the method and the ease of storing and I thought it would work better with these fibres as well. It's sheeps wool and I want to be able to use water and heat to style it later if I need to.

So, next problem was how to get a wig to conform to and stay on a head shaped like this? After a bit of experimenting it hit me that since he has a face plate and there is no ovelaping edge between the face and the head, it's possible to use that to keep the wig on, so here is my solution:

It does not interfere with the ears as they slot into the face plate.


And here is the wig finished.

 

Hehe, I must admit I felt pretty cleaver when I came up with it.
But in reality, I just took a piece of elastic and started stretching it around his head in different ways until I found something that worked. It's unconventional, but so is the doll, so... If it works, it works, right?

 

I am working on a coat for him. This is the coat itself before decorations. Sorry about the akward lighting.



Another interesting developement in this project is that I now have a place for him!
There is an empty closet I can use. It has a bit of an akward shape, being a built in closet utilizing the space under the slanted roof, but there is more than enough space to build a semi-permanent display area for him. I didn't really want him behind doors, but removing the doors would leave him exposed to sunlight and on top of that, this room is used as a quest room and not everyone appreciate having dolls staring at them in their sleep, so I guess the doors stay. I any case, it's more room for him than I had couted on and now my head is absolutely full of ideas of what to do with it. I am debating with myself if I can somehow build in some storage for things not currently on display. I am also considering the possibility to put in lights of some sort.
This turned into a bigger project than I had expected, but I don't mind.

 

Thank you! I am having so much fun with this, I may be a little bit obsessed.
It's nice to have a big project like this without any deadline, I can work in my own time and do things my way. It keeps the pressure down, despite being a big project.

 

I've been working on the broder embroidery for the coat.


The wide design is the sleeve. The narrow design it every other edge.

 

Thank you!
Yes, it is slow, but I find once I focus and actually work on it, it's not unreasonably slow, just kind of slow-ish... Uhm. Not sure how to explain that better in english. This fabric is nice to work with and I use regular cotton emroidery floss so it's pretty easy work. Quite enjoyable, really. It just takes time.

No hoop needed for this one. The coat is made from a soft, loosely woven wool blend and lined with a thin cotton. It's stable enough that I don't need the tension of a hoop as long as I pay attention and don't over tighten the stitches. This way I can continuously check to see that what I do hang right and don't interfer with the drape too much.
Right now I am working on the second front edge and it's nice to be able to hold the garment up to check for symmetry as I go.

 

His knees are more or less fixed at the angle they are in in his standing pictures. He can bend them further, but it's not a ball joint, instead you kind of have to pull it out of the socket and reposition it, there are some hefty locks in there to take his weight without the joint collapsing.
Yes, a loin cloth could work. I'm sure pants could too, just with a bit more work. And in both cases I'd have to figure out a solution for his tail. A simple hole for it to go through would probably work. The magnet that holds the tail is fairly weak, though, so it's easiest to pose the rest of him first and add te tail after, so it needs to be easy to get the tail through without having to move him too much.

 

I usually don't bother to put it on when just fitting things and mess around with him. You can see it in the first images in the thread, but he isn't wearing it in the others. I haven't painted the tip of his tail yet, so it looks a bit unfinished.
I'm sure I'll get around to it... eventually.

 

@JJ3_dolls Thank you for reminding me to update this thread!

I have made some progress.

The coat is mostly done and I have worked a bit on a tunic for him.
This is what I've got so far:


This is roughly what the tunic looks like right now. Missing is the buttons at the neckline and finishing and decorating the bottom hem:


here are some close up on the decorations on the tunic.
Collar:


Cuff:


Smocked sleeve head:


Still a lot to do and many pieces missing, but I am still having fun with this project. I am in absolute awe of this doll.

 

Thanks! It's very nice to have a long term project like this, where I can take my time to do things properly and make sure I'm happy with it.
I wouldn't want all my doll projects to be like this one, but for this I am taking the time to really enjoy the process.