Modification Modding Cora, my DC Violet

This will be my progress thread for Cora, my Doll Chateau Violet who arrived yesterday.

I am going to slowly start making her closer to my vision for her! My vision might change over time but these are my current goals for her.

High priority/first steps:

• (done 9/9/2022!) Make semi-cursed photoshopped pictures to visualize wigs and eyes
  
• (done 9/9/2022! Dollyplanet) Get a wig
  
• (done 9/9/2022! Dollyplanet) Get eyes
  
• (done 10/03/2022) Get magnets to fix horns (I bought these), stronger magnets for ears (I bought these) and for eventual tail
  
• (done 10/08/2022) Make horns more stable with putty inside or a dab of hot glue
  
• (done 10/09/2022) "Blush" the tips of the wig darker with pastels

Mods (next steps):

• (done 10/22/2022) Sculpt little horns on forehead
  
• (done 5/2023) 3D print a short, jointed tail
  
• (done 10/22/2022) Lengthen the existing spikier horn parts
  
• (done 10/22/2022) Add two more little hooves/"toes" behind the hooves so she's more goat-like; this would probably have to be on the leg itself instead of the foot piece

Aesthetics (mid- to low-priority):

• (done 1/2023) Change eyebrows
  
• (done 12/2022) Remove tattoos
• (done 1/2023) Sand down pointy breasts
  
• (done 2/6/2023) Body blushing a little darker. I will only dye her if I can do it really subtle.
• (done 2/6/2023) Blueish accents for fur around hooves, ends of ears, end of tail
• (done 2/6/2023) Re-blush horns to be lighter tan/goldish fading to maroon at tips
• (done!) Get different eyelashes, just something lighter than black

Low priority:

• Another outfit at some point but I'm not sure what she likes. If I come across something that looks like her, I might buy it.
• (on order from bjdbhiner 1/03/2023) Get a better doll stand because I have a metal one that could scratch her if she isn't wearing clothes
  
• Take pretty pictures

 

Aaaand here are my first steps! My initial concept for her color palette:




And the aforementioned photoshopped picture of her to see if the wig and eyes would work:



I just purchased this wig and these eyes from Dollyplanet. If you look closely at the above picture, I plan to rotate the "cat eyes" sideways to make the appearance of goat eyes. I was also considering a golden/yellow eye with a non-white pupil, like a dark orange or red pupil, but couldn't find anything quite right. I had initially liked these but shipping made the $17 eyes $68! Luckily eyes are easy enough for me to switch out in the future if these look weird. I do like the faraway look goats have in their eyes though, with the horizontal pupils, but we'll see if it looks good on her or not!

 

Thank you! I did a couple color palettes but kept coming back to this one so most likely I'll be focusing on the blueish accents for her.

Love what you said about goats lol. I like the idea of her vibe/appearance looking like she could be up to something so I hope the goat eyes help me convey that.

Thanks! I have some white Aves Apoxie that I plan to sculpt into a tail. I have sculpting experience but have only used the Aves once so far. I'm thinking I will mold it around something thin as a straight "tube," then remove when it has hardened a little but not totally cured. Then (after it's totally dry?), cut it into pieces and round the sides for articulation. Hoping to attach it via a magnet so I don't have to carve anything into her backside but I haven't really looked for a flat surface back there. I could possibly "flatten" a small area for a small magnet placed on the inside, though. Getting a magnet inside there could be a challenge though; I haven't peeked inside her torso. I'll be sure to chronicle my progress here once I get to that step!

Thanks to both of you! She's fun to sketch and I might end up doing a bit more art of her.

 

A new lil drawing of my goat girl! Just trying out her colors and eyeballs again. I will most likely do the blues and horn colors a little more desaturated than this but I wanted to get a feel for what they'd look like.

 

I got my magnets and, unfortunately, I think I have to make some sort of structure on the inside of the head to keep them in place. The inside of the head is too "square"-shaped to keep them in the correct position, as the only good place for the magnets is on a diagonal across two "corners" of the inside of the head, if that makes sense. I also stacked three magnets on the inside of the head, for each horn, and that doesn't seem like it's enough. I used the second-highest magnet grade (against advice but I was scared of magnets), and I think I will order the highest grade. Still, having to use two N42 for each horn in addition to whatever the one they sent with the doll, is annoying. I am annoyed that DC would engineer her in such a way. They definitely dropped the ball on this one. But I can't be mad at her because she's cute.



For now, the horns stay in place unless you move her too much. I have them taped in there but will be resorting to some kind of sculpting, at least to make a flat surface where they need to be. I'm thinking initially, I will just mark the magnet location with a pencil and sculpt a little low-temp hot glue border around them. It should stay in place as long as I don't peel it off.

It's also unfortunate that this part of the inside of the head is where her serial number is. I don't want to cover that part up. I might look into thermoplastic like it was suggested on here before, and will mess with her more next week sometime.

The horns still rub against her face, but I should be able to fix that by securing the lower "joint" of the horns away from her face to point more forward.

I also learned that if I put her ears upside-down, I get closer to the look I want. I might modify the existing ears so they look a little more correct. They are so cute that I feel bad modding them, but not sure I want to sculpt a new pair of ears. Plus, I get the feeling I will be "ruining the resale value" of this doll a lot, because they made her incorrectly, so I'm not going to worry about that. Life's too short.

 

Miss Cora survived the me leaving her behind in hurricane Ian... We got back a couple days ago to minimal issues with our place, which I'm grateful for.

Her wig and eyes from DollyPlanet arrived today and I tried them out on her. They look how I expected and I'm very happy with them! I need a silicone wig cap for her, which I'll try to remember next time I order something. I would like different eyelash colors eventually as well, since black doesn't seem quite right with the sandy hair color.

No horns in the photo because I didn't want to deal with the magnets again. I did order stronger magnets last night and hope they work out! They'll have to go through wig too so I got stronger and thicker ones. I think the magnet's pull strength went from a couple pounds to something like 12 lb, so if they work out, I'll find out what the exact size was and update it in the main post.

Anyway, photos of her updated look! I love how the eyes have changed her expression. Also, no sanding needed for the eyewells; turns out the included ones from DC were notttt 12mm and just weren't a good fit, but these were pretty much the perfect size.



The wig has these cute little braids on each side. I was initially going to trim those off, but I might keep them if they don't negatively interact with the horns.

 

Yesterday I secured her ear magnets (I bought stronger ones than the included) inside the head with a little border of hot glue around them. If they want to stray with this (maybe once the horn magnets are nearby), I will epoxy them in the future, but I think they are okay for now. I didn't take a photo of this but it's nothing exciting.

Today I took the first step in securing the new, stronger magnets for her horns. First, I put them on her head without the wig to see how they would look. I marked in pencil on the outside of the head cap where the horns themselves rested, then inside where the magnets were (I used the original, weaker magnets because the new ones were too strong for this part and difficult to handle safely while repositioning). Here is how she looks with the wig on. Very weak magnets at this point and the horns didn't stay on, but this was just to see if they were in the correct spot. Again, crazy these were the included magnets.



I love her so much! Her wig got a bit messy because of a mishap with the newer magnets having it in a death grip at one point.


So, I mentioned before that the ideal position for the horn magnets is on a curve inside the head cap, which won't stay because it's kind of a right angle for a flat magnet to rest across. I tried making a flat area inside the head for the magnets, using hot glue, but it was difficult to make it even and stable that way. So, I took my Dremel to it, cutting in at the "corner" areas. It's sort of hard to explain, so hopefully the pictures help.


Basically I used the circles drawn for the magnets and just Dremeled that part. The goal was a flat surface for the magnet to rest across with the most amount of contact possible, so I cut in the most on sort of the 10 oclock/2 oclock positions of the circles. I would then rest the magnet inside to see if it was flat. If there were weird bumps on the bottom, I would smooth them out. It took a couple hours of fiddling with it and carving out small bits at a time. I probably didn't go more than 1/8 of an inch in; I'm unsure how deep I did exactly, but it was enough to just start to see a vague light through the resin. Here is a picture near the end where I tested whether the horns actually ended up in the place I wanted them to (obviously, they are upside down in the photo because I wanted them out of the way). Fortunately, the way I marked them seems to have worked! They lined up with the pencil lines I had placed on the outside of the head cap showing where the horns themselves ended up when I first sketched it in.


Excuse my finger covering up her serial number lol

So, the next thing I did was epoxy around it. These magnets are crazy! Having the magnets indented a little, plus securing them in with epoxy, was the safest way to deal with these. Here is what I did first, just making a little snake around it and then smoothing it out.



I figured that I also needed something across the magnet itself, so nothing on the inside would stick to it, and it would be a little less strong to pull other magnets towards it. While doing this, the tip of my metal sculpting tool kept sticking to the magnet lol.


And here's the end product, at least for the one side. Again, the reason for the crisscross is so other magnets can't get close enough to grab onto it--or, if they do, they'll be easier to remove than on an exposed magnet like this, which is... literally impossible for me without using the edge of a table to pry it apart. Did I mention I wore safety goggles this entire time? Because you should.

I am going to wait the full 24 hours before doing the other side, so the epoxy is at its strongest in case the other new magnet wants to go towards it. I don't even know if these are strong enough to keep the horns on through the wig, although they are super secure without the wig on, so I'm hopeful. I will be pretty disappointed if this doesn't work, but it seems good so far. I linked the exact magnets in the first post. The ones for the horns--in case the link breaks--are 1/2" diameter, 1/4" thick, N52 magnets. Ear ones are 5/16" diameter, 1/4" thick, N52.

As a side note, I have Aves Apoxie in the regular white color, which is more like a medium gray. I mixed equal parts A and titanium white paint--yes, equal amounts--and then the same part of B, for this one. It did turn out light enough where I think it'll be acceptable for the horn mods I want to do at some point. Using the leftover epoxy, I did extend part of the other horn, which I will probably start doing a bit more of soon, as the mod should be the easiest of the ones I want to do. I can also recolor them easily if I want to do that soon.

 

I did the other horn epoxy yesterday! Here's what it looks like inside.



Fortunately, it worked out well and her horns now stay on her head, even through the wig. Please be careful if you purchase the magnets I used, and if you do the modification I did, make sure to only do one magnet per 24 hours so the epoxy has time to cure. I don't doubt the magnets could rip through the epoxy if you don't let it cure fully between magnets. The little epoxy "cage" around the magnets is essential. Be safe with magnets and wear eye protection.

Oh, I also blushed the tips of the wig a little darker with pastels. I might do a little more if I need to, but will wait till I recolor at least the horns, if not the whole faceup, to see how that affects what the hair color looks like. I know in my drawings I have the hair tips a little darker gray, and this looks more like brown currently, but I think it looks okay for now.



An accidental portrait-mode photo of my girl standin



You can see that I added a little to the horns. I plan to do some more spike extensions soon. Here is a recent drawing I made of her; this is more the look of the horns I'm going for.

 

I looked up Resinsoul Mu and saw a review video of him where they showed the inside of the head cap... What a great idea! (For those who haven't seen this doll, it looked like they basically just had a layer of resin hiding the horn magnets inside the back of the head) I get that possibly DC didn't want to seem to be copying that innovation from another company, but a similar way to hold the magnets inside the head would make the doll so much more functional.

If they can innovate all these doll joints and complicated stringing for like, a scorpion doll, I know they can make the horns work! It just seems like they didn't try in Violet's case. I mean, it took me a month to have her function like the way she was photographed/advertised, which is a little excessive imo; most people aren't as willing to modify things as me, and buy extra parts etc. Just making the horns work cost around $40-$50 extra for Apoxie and magnets. As someone currently doing 3D sculpting, I wouldn't be willing to release the doll if it was in the state Violet was when they sent her out to customers, because it's basically a false advertisement. I'll stop being critical about it now that I'm done fixing mine but it's like, hmmmm Doll Chateau.

 

I return with mods! Last week I added the epoxy horns to her main "head" piece, as well as extending the spikes on the existing horns. This morning, I sanded them. Here is a photo before sanding (sorry about the lack of color/lighting correction in the photos; I forgot to do that):



And after sanding:



With ears, just for fun. I think the horns turned out pretty well!



I also tried on the horns next. Not really any photos of the process for them but just lots of sanding at the expense of the factory paint job. I think the horns will be the first to be repainted!



I used to put the ears upside-down for a droopier look, but lately I've been putting them the correct way up. I like either way but the ear shape is slightly more correct this way. Not sure if I'll do anything to mod the ears.

Oh, I also added the little extra hoof parts so she would have four "toes" like a goat. Not much to write home about but here they are:




And finally, a picture of her with her wig on. It needs a bit of tidying up. I did undo the braids and will likely mess with it a bit, but I'm just pretty inexperienced with wigs. If I were going to do a photoshoot with her, I'd make the hair fall a bit more naturally around her new forehead horns, but just snapped a quick picture here.



The last mod I have to do is the tail. I did mold a tube of epoxy around a chopstick but I haven't cut it into jointed pieces or sanded it. That will be what I do next!

 

Hello again! I'm still modding little Cora. Recently I removed the factory body blushing and tattoos. I redid the blushing but think I want to darken it a little more.

I left the factory faceup intact, but carefully painted over the eyebrows and drew new ones in. I think they turned out well with my minimal faceup experience. I also added some freckles.





I smoothed out the breasts. They were so pointy. No more pointy.

So, as for the horns... I have run into some difficulty painting them. Removing the factory paint was exceptionally difficult on these, and getting in the little crevices was impossible in some places. I have sealed it and lightly gone over it with acrylic paint to start to tint it. I am most comfortable tinting it with pastels but not sure I can get a dark enough color for them. I'm not willing to purchase an airbrush just for this project, although don't like the visible brushstrokes acrylic leaves. Any suggestions? Here is what she looks like right now.





Here is the color palette I'm going for. I am feeling like I need something a tad darker on parts of her body, maybe like back of the torso, arms, and sides of legs sort of like a goat or deer would be colored, but more subtle. She just looks so white lol (she is the "peach" resin color, not white)

 

An update: I saw an unrelated FAQ on a custom toymaker's site asking how they get their acrylic paint so smooth, and they said they used acrylic paint thinner/flow-aid, and I think I'll try this for her horns and hooves and see if it gives the results I want.

I was also encountering some difficulty with the blue color I wanted to use for the tips of her ears and fur around her hooves, as it wasn't looking right with the pastels I had. I will try some more pastel but I also might just paint this color as well, transitioning it with fur strokes rather than a pastel fade. I will return with photos once I try it!

Oh, and an added update regarding the tail: I am going to own a 3D printer next month sometime and think it would be easier for me to just print her a tail, and plan to do that rather than finish the little tail I was sculpting. Should be much faster for me to just 3D sculpt it than sculpt and carve the apoxie.

 

Here is a link to the Imgur album in case any photos don't show up.

I was really sick the past two days and had lots of time to work on Cora. Her colors are finished, unless I add/fix something in the future. I know that, as my first project like this, I could probably do some things better next time but I'm happy with her for now.

I'm not sure if the flow aid helped me with avoiding brushstrokes in the paint. I had to do a ton of layers to make it look opaque. I think the horns and hooves turned out pretty well, but the color transition areas on the horns do have some brush strokes you can see. These are mostly covered by her ears, though.





The bottom of the hooves are metallic gold paint, although it is hard to see in the pictures, and I think the msc cut down on the metallic sheen a bit. I do have the gloss stuff but not sure I will put it on there because I don't necessarily want a shiny look. For the little hoof parts I added on the back, these got a little weird with the epoxy transitioning into the fur texture, and some of the colors look a little off there. It isn't a big focal part of her sculpt so I don't really mind.



For the body blushing, I used pastel. I did do a little darker parts on the upper arms, back, and outside of the legs. It turned out a little blotchy almost, but I think that works for her being a goat person, sort of a more natural mottled color? Or like she has been rolling around in the dirt, which she would do.





For now she's got a sweater and no pants, because she would. Next update will be the tail, which might be a bit? I do want a different outfit for her, more of a cloak but not really witchy or goth looking... I'll keep an eye out for that in the meantime.

 

(imgur album link in case some photos don't work)

Hey all! I got around to making Cora's tail back in May. I sculpted it in Nomad Sculpt and printed it with my Elegoo Saturn S.

Before adding the tail, I added more dark spotty parts to her body, and I think this looks better than what I had before, which kind of just looked dirty to me. I also added some more paint to the horns, as well as added some gloss to the horn tips and part of the feet.




I glued a magnet to her. I didn't want to drill anything into the body so I thought this was the best solution. I had to get the strongest grade magnets I could find, as well as put two on the actual tail part to make it strong enough not to fall off.






I 3D printed it with Siraya Tech Mecha with a small amount of resin dye; you can see it's like a slightly yellower color than her default resin (was actually mixing it for another project and had some left over). I did end up sanding quite a bit off of the part that connects to the body, as well as sanding the indented part I made for the magnet, so I don't have a good .stl file to share with you all (or reuse if I destroy her current tail somehow lol).



Here is the tail with pastel blushing! The 3D printed resin takes color the same as her factory resin.



I also swapped out her eyelashes for brown ones, but it's kind of hard to tell. That was really difficult and there's still some glue blobs I might want to dissolve.



For now, I'm going to call this project done! I still plan to try out more outfits for her to see what suits her best. Right now she's kind of got a "witch in training" aesthetic. I kind of like longer cape-like clothes for her.



Might do a photo shoot with her when it isn't 100 degrees out! Barely had the stamina to take a couple photos this morning lol