Noob seeks advice

Hello everyone. This is such a great place!! I'm new to this forum, as well as this BJD phenomenon. I've admired Super Dollfies for a long time, and have always wanted to buy one, but the staggering price really detered me. But since I'm a sculptor, I decided to try and make my own. So, here are some progress pics of what I've done so far. I'm making the figure using super sculpey, and then I plan to make a mold of it and cast it in resin. I hope to start up a doll business...I hope! I've been browsing around and I'm so surprised and excited that there are many others on here doing awsome work! Please let me know what you think of what I've done so far. And don't be afraid to give constructive criticism! I can take it.

...Ugh...Go here to see the pics: http://www.angelfire.com/weird2/bjd_1/

 

Thanks for all your great input! Yeah, the head is really giving me a hard time... It looks way too big to me. The body was originally supposed to be for another head I did, but somehow (even though I measured the body from the head) the head ended up looking way too big! I thought if I made a more animeish head that was better proportioned to the body it would all fit together better...But the anime head looks bigger than the first one! Well, I'm still trying to get the hang of sculpting a full body. I prefer just doing heads and faces. I may have to go "back to the drawing board" and properly sculpt a figure in full, instead of doing it all in seperate peices.

It's great to see that there's a lot of people who live here in portland who are such big BJD fans! Hopefully someday soon I'll have a completed doll to show everyone. I'll continue to post more progress pics as the project develops. Please keep the comments coming! Thanks again.

 

Here's some new progress pics. I just couldn't stand how the head looked too big, so I started all over. I like how the new one is turning out.

The arms are a bit thin, and I think they'll need to be thicker to compensate for the ball joints that I'm going to put in the elbows. The legs also need to be extended...and they look odd to me...a bit too "wiggily" looking. Also, I plan on thining down the neck a bit, and also, bigger boosoms.

To answer the persons question about removing foil: I have always used super sculpey for all the sculptures I've made. It's really easy to get out, providing that the sculpey layer isn't too thin. You just have to be careful and use good needle nose plyers. If you're using some other sculpting material that's too brittle, it's best not to remove it at all.

Thanks again for all your advice!

(please go here if the pics below don't load) http://www.angelfire.com/weird2/bjd_1/index2.html

 

I'd love to give some sculpey pointers! What I do, is first make a rough shape of what size I want the body, arms and legs to be out of armature wire. I just take two peices of wire, and twist them around each other to make it more durable, and hold it's shape better. After I get all the proportions down with the wire, and position everything how I want, I then wrap aluminum foil around it into the shape I want the pieces to be. This greatly saves valuable sculpey, and makes the sculpture a lot lighter to work with. The trick to working with aluminum foil is, that you want to make sure you don't make it too bulky, or when you put the sculpey on, the foil will bulge and stick out of places, and can really be a big pain (I still have problems with that). Be sure to make the foil a few centimeters smaller than what you want the finished sculpture to be.

Now, after you've made a sculpture to your liking, all you have to do is bake it in the oven. The box says to bake it at 275 for 15 minutes per 1/4 inch. I usually bake it at a little less than 275 and keep it in there for 30 minutes, depending on how big or small the pieces are. Before you put it in the oven, get some wet paper towels and bunch them up on a baking pan for your sculpture to rest on. If you just put it on the pan, you'll have a bunch of flat surfaces on your sculpture from the pan. A very important thing to know about baking sculpey is to not take the sculpture out right away after it's done baking. It should be kept in the oven for at least 2 hours. If you take it out too soon, the sudden temprature change will cause the sculpey to crack in a whole bunch of places. Letting it cool in the oven gradually will cut down on cracks, even though you'll get a few here and there, they're nowhere near as bad.

Now that you've baked the sculpture, it's a good idea to sandpaper out any imperfections like fingerprints and stuff. Look over the sculpture to see if there's anything you'd like to add or take away, and go ahead and do it! Sculpey is awsome in its versatillity. You can carve, sand, drill and add more sculpey to something that's already been baked. Just make sure to wash the sculpture you want to add sculpey onto. If there's any oil or dust from sanding, the sculpey won't adhere that well at all. Even when clean, it's still tricky adding sculpey to baked sculpey. What I do, is take a small amount, and firmly smear it on the area I want to add. This will allow you to add more easier. Now just bake it again, and keep working on it until it looks the way you want it.

It takes a lot of practice and patience, but if you stick to it, you too can be a sculpey master!

 

Awww, *blush* I am honored to know you find my sculpting style inspiring! I thought the head before looked okay, but it didn't look "super ultra japanese kawaii" to me. I wanted to get it to look as close to a super dollfie type head as possible. I'm in my senior thesis year, and I'm hoping to do my thesis loosely based on BJD's. Like how they have souls and stuff, but also with a whole bunch of other stuff going on. I'm hoping my thesis mentor is okay with this, because it's sort of a change from what I was going to do. But if she's fine with it, WOO HOOO!!! I'll be able to make a bunch of BJD's!!! Here's a pic of what the head looks like so far.... I think I'd like to shrink the lower part of the nose down a bit.

 

Hey, thanks! But...It's too late. I changed the nose! I'm glad I did though. It looks much better. I just thickened the sides ever so slightly, so it's not so thin at the bridge. I've been working on making the hands all day long! For nearly 8 hours straight so far...I still have a lot more work to do. I'm hoping they'll be done, at least very close to being done by the end of the night. I hate making hands! They're the hardest things to make for me. Getting each individual finger to look exactly right is torture! But, these are the first hands that are looking very proportional in every way. Usually when I do hands, they turn out being too small for the figure. They look just right so far....Maybe I should take a pic to make sure. But good GOD!! If it turns out they're too big or odd looking or something, and I have to do them all over. I'll be screwed!!!!!