PulkiDoll

The white streaks don't wash off.. I can't figure out what they are from.

The pale one and green one are completely opaque. I was just messing around and not actually measuring how much pigment I was putting in. For the final casts I will measure everything out properly to ensure they are opaque. Though I really love the blue - it reminds me of those gummy sharks. I think it looks a lot better in person then in the pictures.

 

I'm back. I've had a pretty crappy year, and my doll ended up taking a back seat to life. All I really have left to do is a few more tweaks. The knee needed the biggest overhaul, and I've spent the past couple of weeks finally finishing that. It doesn't look too different - the only visual difference is the back, which looks better. I'm pretty confident the fix will make it very stable.

Hopefully I will order the final prints by the end of the week. I'm worried that I've lost credibility by basically being MIA for so long. I don't know what my problem is - this final stage of all the doll stuff is incredibly stressful for me for some reason. I have some sort of mental block over finally finishing, but I think once I get a final cast I'll get over that. I have been having a hard time deciding if I should try to make this work, or get into a software engineering career. I know, with what I want to do, I wouldn't really have room for both. I'm sure I could do the engineering thing and do the dolls on the side, but I'd barely have time, so at most it would be a couple dolls every once in awhile, and I have bigger visions for my dolls than that.

I'll see how the final print and hopefully molding goes this month, and then figure out how best to go from there.

 

Hey guys! I just logged on to DoA for the first time in forever and saw that The Joint will be back there soon, and that sort of made me want to comment here while it's still The Joint. This is rather personal but I feel like putting this out there so I hope it's not too off topic.

I keep telling myself I will get back to this but I really don't know what the future holds for me with PulkiDoll. It's been over 10 years since I first started on this journey. At the time I was just finishing up high school. My teen years were pretty awful - I was bullied rather intensely in middle/early high school and most of my teachers seemed to look down on me - a few even bullied me themselves. Things outside of school got a lot worse too. I had no real future plans or serious aspirations because I internalized the way I was treated, but when I found out about these dolls I couldn't stop thinking about the mechanics of them. It gave me a sense of purpose, and I became obsessed with coming up with a mechanical design that satisfied my perfectionism, along with all of the character designs and planning the ins and outs of my future company. It was everything to me. I would spend pretty much all of my free time on it, and I wouldn't even spend money on myself because I knew I'd be putting it all into these dolls. College was a much better environment for me and I learned that I did have academic/career potential, so I was torn over where to put my energy, but my dolls were still where my main passion.

I do have some serious problems with anxiety, and it seems to affect me the most when I'm close to finishing something. But, things were going well and I really thought I was about to get past that. When I was in the final stages of this a few years ago, I left my 7 year relationship. It was super hard for me to do so because he was the only stable person in my life and I cared about him a lot, but I knew it was the right move for both of us (and we were able to remain on good terms). Shortly after I started dating someone I was friends with at school. In the beginning he seemed great and supportive and I had never met someone I had such a strong connection with. Things quickly changed, and I'll spare everyone the details, but he is actually a covert narcissist and really tore into my mind and put me through some things that were rather absurd and mind-bogglingly frustrating and devastating for me. I had a really intense, traumatic experience with him and he abandoned me for it, and well, it shattered me. It was very hard for me to come to terms with who he was and what happened between us, and it changed me. I thought I was resisting it, but his gas-lighting and the way he would attack me to maintain his sense of control filled me with crippling self-doubt that I haven't yet managed to overcome.

I've been having a very hard time finding the passion for my dolls that I used to have. I am not sure if this dream has just run its course and I've changed too much, or it's simply due to my overall state, because it's been hard to feel much passion for anything recently. My life is still in disarray because everything with my ex hit at such a sensitive time in my life, but I do still hope that once I get myself together and on to the career I would have gotten into out of college that I will want to pick PulkiDoll back up to do on the side instead of dealing with the pressure of making this my main focus in life. I can't begin to count the hours I poured into this or quantify the sacrifices I made for it. The depersonalization I have been experiencing makes it hard for me to appreciate that currently, but I really hope that once I am in a better place it will come back to me.

I really appreicate the support of this community over the years. Honestly, I'll probably go back to being pretty silent after this post, but I may try to get myself back into things a bit. I used to feel a lot of guilt over this but I think I'm detached enough now that I don't, so maybe that will actually help.