40–49cm Dolls Qilin- project journal

I am so pleased to announce the start of my doll-making journey! It’s been on my list as a collector to be able to say I made my own bjd, and it’s finally underway! After creating a sketch-up of what I wanted my doll to look like, I originally tried to sculpt the head traditionally... this was a spectacular failure, and the result is so bad that I don’t want to share it out of embarrassment!!
I was resigned to the fact that I might have to either give up on my dream, or, pay someone else to sculpt it for me. Realising that getting a commission done was not only against my interests but, also, quoted at a price that I could buy almost two NEW dolls for, I took the leap and started messing around in 3D software.

I love fantasy dolls, and after recently discovering Qilin (or, Kirin), Chinese unicorns, I knew I wanted to make a doll based on one. I wasn’t sure if I wanted it to be a centaur style doll or even an animal style doll, but in the end, I settled for an anthropomorphic design.



It took a few hours of YouTube tutorials and frustration, but by the end of two days, I'd managed to really start shaping the head.



I think the next stage is to finalise the details of the head and then go about hollowing it out and cutting out the headcap. I really don't know how to size it yet, but I've got some ideas and have heard about a new software I can put the file into to sort all that out. I'm really excited to see where this is going!

 

Thank you! It’s actually Zbrush, I’ll be moving to Blender after my trial is up as Zbrush is verrrry expensive! I’d recommend blender though, because my friend who works in the gaming industry says blender is just the free version of his professional software, Maya.

 

Hi sorry for the late reply! I tried doing sculpting with clay first, but I just couldn’t get it to work and it was really frustrating for me. I do digital art anyway, but learning 3D was a whole new beast. I found it easier than traditional sculpting though!