20–39cm Dolls My little pony dream

Hi, hello, good evening, good afternoon and welcome to my Ted Talk

Hehe, this is the first time I've shared my work on a forum, but I saw fit to receive some feedback in my endeavour (because let's be honest i have no frick*** idea what I'm doing)
So I've had this idea to creat a bjd based on my love for the mythical toy line and show "my little pony" MLP for short.

Growing up alongside the first iteration of the show and having murdered my VHS of "Escape from Midnight Castle" while playing withe the second and third generation of toys.



While being nostalgic about they're looks, I have drawn a lot of these little multi-colored horses for a long time, know and have, settle on a style witch, fits me. Some sort off semi-realistic I would say.

I am not really interested in emulating the exact style off the brand witch is perfect as it is to my eyes with itch show his 3D toy counter part being a beautiful reflection of it's time period.

Spoiler: Here is an example of my drawing style for you to know what i'm talking about:

So after gathering enough references and googling I begin sketching:



And here we go!
Having a background in 3D modeling I feel more at ease with the tools offer by the 21st century, even more sins 3D printing as made it's way to the general public.
I have dabbled a bit with the traditional method don't get me wrong but and it looks so much more finicky to me...T.T I prefer to stick to what I know.

First 3d sculpted draft:



I'm fairly satisfied with the overall proportions now i need to understand how to cut it to make usable joints.
And this is a whole new woooooooorld. A dazzling place I never knew... ...
So far my basics have been:

- balls are great, as in ball jointed doll surprising I know.

-but the mighty Bean can be better if you want to achieved greater range of motion although trickier to master from what I can see.

-I have settled for mainly spherical joints except for the knee on the front limbs.
With these ideas in mind, I go to town and try my best refining my sculpt along the way:

Spoiler

As you can see I haven't done anything with the head for the moment and finally decided I needed to know what this cuty will look like. After some sketching I choose a cartoony pretty short face for a horse, following the classical short nose big eyes us humans associate with baby features making supposedly everything more innocent.

head research:



There I think we are finally coming up with something:


(hehe did a little make up it's nice to see a lively face while working it give me a brake and encourages me to continue)

Obviously as I learned I changed things from my original sketch along the way, notably the elongated pastern, the part just above the hoof. (We're even learning new vocabulary look ate us!)

Things that still give me a head hack:

- I'm not sure about my croup joint, the far back body part, is it to thin? i'm still debating on the buttock state. She got great thigs but I don't want to widen the body... (Should the thighs and the buttocks make one? Or as my ref suggest lower the thighs joints?)

- I will probably add a joint in the calf area, so it can hug the thighs while bending.

- It makes a compact almost squarish pony, can fit in a cube! But as I'm thinking about it my body maybe a bit to short, I have realised it cannot sit without bending it's front legs, and I think it bothers me.

- I 'am gonna need to take a shot at the ears, I'm still balancing between the idea of having magnetic ones or ball jointed ones, with the two giving different advantage in my eyes: first, fully customisable and able to move wereaver, but not capable of sustening great weight. Second, very sturdy, can wistand greater weight, still posable but less customisable and get in the way of hairs. (What's your thoughts?)

-The head, it's attachment system and how to access the inside to change the eyes. Well.... frenckly, I don't know... yet! It's a totally different to the human thing where you have attachment at the bottom and opening on top, for the moment I have settle on a back opening witch is also receiving the attachment mechanism. Maybe I should handle it as a faceplate? (writing thoughts to your self is more useful than what I have anticipated)

- lastly, the neck, hmmm... this is going to be thought, because I want a great range of motion, without loosing the shape, witch is quite thin on horses almost sheet like (chicken filet style if you can see what I mean ) and it can go dawn soooo far, for grazing purposes, witch I think I haven't seen any horse bjd trying to achieve, and to be honest I think I will not be the one. Because it means losing a lot of shape to accommodate for a big joint, and i don't want to.

There we are for the moment; I'm not far from being able to print a thirst prototype, I will open string slot next and probably make a V. 1 print mockup to see how it, hm... she behaves .

(I should find a name for her now, Spark? Doesn't sound very girly in english, but it's what she represents for me a spark of joy and something new and exiting I am thrilled to discover, Ha! Discovery? I like it let's continue on shall we and I will report to you when further advancement will be made!)

Don't be afraid to give me some feed back it's always appreciated

see you later alligator

 

Thank you!

I'll take your suggestions in consideration about the ears.

Ok for the spoilers, I wasn't sure what to do and preferred to make my post "cleaner" without big pictures in the middle
I have seen other post where the pictures limit has been reached.
But I will be more generous next time

 

Hey, this is part two in our magical, fantasy land!

So where are we know?

I have done a fare bit of progress I think :



What did I do:

- I have made a faceplate for the head it will be much more convenient I think.
- made a secondary joint in the calf area
- finally made a neck that I'm ok with I think but I would like to see the amount of motion it can have in the real life.
- for the ears, I made the two options, a magnet one and a hole fore attachment. So everybody is happy, I'm happy you're happy. Yeah!



- I have opened all the channels for the elastic to go through. This is certainly going to be my biggest weaknesses going forward, I think elastic placement take a great part in joints behavior and I'm not sure of what I'm doing so, we will see.
- I made a second body plane with a more elongated proportion, so she can theoretically sit, buuuuuut I am not sure if like it or not... .



- Finally, I found a place in town to print my V1, and I'm so exited about it! Next time I post it will probably be in my hands cannot wait! (HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!)

In the meantime to occupy my self I gave her a little makeup:





See ya!

 

Thank you ^^!
Yes, I really would like to add a bunch of options, like wings, horns, differents hooves ...
I feel like the wings are going to give me head hake though.