Aesthetics Making a Purple Cat-Bird

Hello!

• Order Head
• Order custom eyes (red sclera, gold irises)
• Order body
• Order yarn for mane
• Make mane
• Dye head
• Face-up
• Wing painting
• Ears painting
• Hands painting
• Antlers (3D print)
• Assemble tail

I’m going to be shelling a very old character of mine, Gidja. Gidja is a species I called “Ekko” which are essentially just purple cat-bird-people with antlers.


Here’s what he looks like:




I will be using a Dream Valley Uncia head with a custom body from Resinsoul. Behold the reference image I emailed Resinsoul:




He is a mish-mash of different Resinsoul parts and will be in black and a custom purple resin. Both the white and black tails I ordered will be combined by me into an extra long stripey tail. I’m very excited to see how it turns out. I was quoted around forty days until he ships, so hopefully I'll see him mid-July.


So! What have I done so far?


I’ve got the head.



Yes, one of his ear magnets fell out immediately.

I plan to dye it to match the purple color of the body when the body arrives. I want to try masking out his white face with masking fluid when I dye him. Plan B is to just paint the white on if that doesn’t work out lol. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


Next, I’ll be ordering some custom eyes, and figuring out how to make his mane and crest out of faux fur. I wonder if black iridescent faux fur exists anywhere?


Now we play the waiting game for the body. ᕕ( ᐕ )ᕗ

 

Yup! There are two different tails in the picture. I ordered a black tail and a white tail from Resinsoul, and my plan is to take them apart, and then string all the pieces together to make one extra long tail with interchanging black and white pieces. So it’ll look kind of like a ring-tailed lemur tail (or in this case, an ekko tail lol)

Oooh those eyes do look really cool, but not quite what I’m going for! The sclera’s gotta be red. I’ve found an eye-maker on Etsy who could potentially make a custom pair…I just have to get around to asking them haha

 

Oh! This is an even better idea! I’m gonna try this route, thanks!

I’ve never made wefts before so this’ll be fun lol

 

Oh I’m sure I’ll have to hot glue suede every segment of that chonky tail as well as wire it

And oh my gosh Ashuradarkeyes has such GORGEOUS eyes! Thank you for the recommendation, I’ll have to see if they can make some eyes with red sclera!

 

Thanks! I don't think I've been this excited for a doll in a while! Definitely looking forward to seeing how this custom body looks when it arrives.

Thank you! Should be a fun journey~ He's definitely a character with a lot going on, haha. This is Gidja's new simplified design, too. He used to have SPOTS everywhere.

Thank you! Me too, haha!

I will sing Resinsoul's praises forever. I've seen them fulfill some incredible custom orders! So happy that there's a BJD company out there that does custom requests.

Yup! He's my strange little amalgamation hahahah

Making eyes myself is something I'm too afraid to do myself lol. There's a seller on etsy who has some red sclera eyes for sale right now that look reeeally cool, just the wrong color irises. Dangit, so close lol. But yes, definitely looking forward to see how the red and gold eyes pop against all the black and purple colors he's got going on.

Anywho.

Update!

Gidja's got antlers, fresh off the 3D printer! They're not really true to his design (they should be smaller and with only four tines. I can only imagine how awkward it would be to fly with these Big Boi antlers), but since I have no idea how to 3D sculpt stuff, they'll do. It's hard to see, but they're a shimmery greeny purpley color filament.

 

Small update!

His eyes came!



They were a custom order from ChronicArtDolls on Etsy, and they turned out perfectly!
I love the glittery irises

I also reprinted a smaller and more accurate pair of horns for him. And word from Resinsoul is that his body will be shipping in about a week! I'm very excited to see him come together soon

 

Update!

Birdman’s got a face and a body now!



His face-up was the first time I’ve ever used an airbrush (for the white facial mask). The rest of his head was dyed in an attempt to match the purple color of the body, which was extremely unsuccessful. But I’ll make it work in the end. I have ideas.

But look at his body! Look at the tail! Resinsoul always outdoes themselves with custom orders!

The goal for this weekend is to create his mane, and paint his wings and ears~

 

He's fluffy now!



He got his ears painted and a mani/pedi.

I've realized that unstringing his wings to paint them might be a bit of a struggle. There's a resin peg that's glued into the hinge joint that's keeping me from accessing the elastic knots, but I'll figure it out eventually. I've 3d-printed some thumb claws I want to attach to his wings once they're all painted.

I was also planning on clothing him...but I'd hate to cover up his pretty purple resin.