Modification remaking an old body into a new doll

I have an older Impldoll Idol body from 2014, around the time Impldoll started the Idol line. It's been through...a lot. I bought it as part of a full Azalea doll, but I really didn't like her in person-- she looked so pinheaded and weird on the Idol body. I tried shortening the neck, and it helped a little, but her boobs were each as big as her head, and the proportions still looked goofy, so I reduced the bust a bit. After all that I'd totally lost all inspiration for the character I'd planned for her. I tried changing things up by dyeing her brown, but my dye job absolutely sucked. It was an irredeemably splotchy, streaky mess. So then I covered it with Krylon Fusion spray paint, and the color looked great, but I still wasn't inspired at all and I still didn't really like the head/body proportions.

I took the whole doll apart and chucked all the parts in a box, where they sat until until last year, when I was switching some hybrids around and found myself with a body that worked perfectly for the Azalea head. So she finally became a full doll-- which leaves me with a box of REALLY messy body parts.


The spray paint is horribly scratched around the joints, and I really don't like the way spray paint tends to do that, plus I want to redo some of the mods, so I started to remove some of the paint and dye. So here we have the whole body, covered in scratches, paint, stains from the dye I used before the paint, and mods that need to be finished much better than I finished them years ago. In other words, a hot mess.

A closer look at some of the details:


My goal for this project is to fix up this body, sculpt an original head for it, and then customize and style the whole doll. She's ridiculously tall next to all my other dolls, so I decided she'll be a doll version of my Altmer (High Elf) character from Elder Scrolls-- that will be a lot of fun to costume and style, as well as giving me somewhere to start from with the head sculpting.

After I get the body cleaned completely, I want to work on the bust reduction mod some more. I'd like to try and get a more natural shape, as well as doing a better job on the finish-- in the second pic you can see where my noob modding was kind of sloppy and there are still lots of scratches in the resin that show up now that there is paint caught in them.

First step is obviously to get the rest of the paint and dye cleaned off all the parts-- which means I need to order more Windsor and Newton brush cleaner for the paint, and acetone-free polish remover for the dye residue.

This is going to be a long, slow project, but hopefully opening a project thread will help me jump in and get it started!

 

Lots and lots of work, but for sure, short of smashing the parts I can't make it any worse! All this mess was done when I was still a super noob at modding dolls.

The Azalea head is on an old Doll Family A 60cm girl body that I freed up when switching some hybrids around. Originally I had my Islanddoll Noah on a 5Stardoll 60cm girl bod, and I had bought my Supia Muriel on the DFA body as a secondhand hybrid. The DFA was really too yellow for the Supia head, and the 5Star body was too small for the Noah. So I bought an Impldoll 65cm Star for the Noah, put the Supia Muriel on the 5Star, and then I was going to sell off the DFA body AND the Azalea head...but when I took them out to do pics for sales threads, I ended up trying the head on the body, and it worked so well I kept the new hybrid!

 

Brush cleaner arrived, so I can start working on cleaning off all the remaining spray paint. I got the big bottle-- I'm expecting to need it. It's so much spray paint...

Also in case anyone was curious how the original Azalea head looks on a much smaller body-- here's Jorja, my Azalea/Doll Family-A hybrid, ready to supervise the project. It's amazing how much of a difference head/body proportions make to the overall look of a doll-- I disliked the head on its original 70cm body so much I was going to get rid of it, but she's so cute on a 60cm body

 

Did some work on the paint removal phase of things yesterday-- got both thigh pieces completely clean of both paint and dye and took the paint off of one lower leg.

Here's a comparison of a thigh with the spray paint still on it (left) vs. a thigh with the paint removed and my lousy dye job still on it (right):


And here is the body as it is now:

The thighs have both had all the paint removed with the Winsor and Newton brush cleaner and then the dye removed with superfine sandpaper. It wasn't that hard to get the dye off the large, smooth pieces with sanding, but for the smaller pieces with more crevices for the dye to get stuck in, I'll be using acetone-free nail polish remover-- I picked up two bottles of it today.

This body's original color was Impl's Realskin, but the Realskin color was so light back when I got this body that it honestly just looks like a very pale yellow normal-- it's one of the reasons I had such a hard time clicking with this doll at all, because I'd been expecting something more like Iplehouse's Real color-- a light tan. This time around, I plan to work with the light yellowy tone instead of trying to cover it up.

Still loads of work to do getting it all stripped back to the original color first, though!

 

I thought this part of the project was going to take a lot longer, and take a lot more brush cleaner-- but I got on a roll today working on cleaning more body parts, and before I knew it I had everything but a few of the smaller parts stripped of paint and most of the dye, and I've just barely used a quarter of the big bottle of Winsor and Newton. Definitely need to give my hands a break for a couple of days, though-- the cleaner and nail polish remover are a bit irritating/drying. Gloves next time...

Here's how the body looks now:

The cleaned parts are a little uneven in color-- some have a slightly deeper yellow tone, some are a tiny bit paler. It's a subtle difference; if I can't even it out more with further cleaning and sanding, I'll probably just use body blushing to make everything look consistent in the next stage of the project.

Not really excited about the next step, which will be trying to get all the paint and dye out of all the toe and finger crevices and all the little locks on the elbow peanuts...!

 

this project is still alive, despite having taken a backseat to a lot of other things for the last year or so! i took it back out and started working on the bust mods a day or two ago, and here's where i got it to so far:

it looks really rough and chewed up; all i did was take off resin with the dremel so far, no smoothing or sanding at all yet. i got rid of the buttcrack-looking cleavage crease in the center, and i started reshaping the left side. in the side view pic you can see where i got rid of the rounded, pushed-up bulge/curve on the top of the breast as compared to the right side that i haven't worked on yet. still a LOT to do yet, but i'm excited to be working on this again

 

a little over three years since my last update, but i FINALLY resurrected this project today! no pics yet, but the last few pieces that still had paint on them have been completely cleaned off and everything is wiped down to the original resin now. it's pretty dull/discolored/icky looking now, but all the paint and dye is gone. next thing i'm going to work on is the bust mod...but first i have to locate my misplaced dremel, so the REAL next step is cleaning/tidying my art room

really hoping to start making headway again with this tho!

 

@Chameleon thank you!! your enthusiasm definitely helped me keep my momentum while i dug around in my too-many craft supply organizers looking for my misplaced dremel

and i found it, and did a little bit of smoothing out the reshaping i'd already done on my first go-around with this project. not much dramatic difference to show today, but i do want to mention the tools i'm using this time around, because one part of why i ended up putting this project aside for awhile was that it was hurting my hands. between the heavy dremel tool and the hand sanding...it really sucked, to the point where the result i was looking forward to in the finished doll didn't feel compelling.

part of what motivated me to pick it back up is that last year my husband got a power detail sander (his thing is woodworking) and i recently realized i could use it to sand doll mods! sooo much faster and so much less strain on my hands (i have issues with joint/nerve pain in my hands and arms). i also have a little craft dremel now-- it's more like the size of a big fat pen and SO much easier to handle than the big giant all-purpose rotary tool i'd been using! between those two things, this project felt a lot more accessible to get back into. i'm really hoping i can make some big progress in the near future--- the bust reshaping is the next thing that needs to be finished before i can move on to anything else.

here's the bust as of today, with the detail sander and the small dremel:
project progress by 7.xiii.j, on Flickr

next time i work on it i will be using a more aggressive dremel bit to take off a lot more material-- today i was just kind of smoothing out what i'd already done to assess it. i want more of a slope downward from the chest into the rounded part of the breast than i've already gotten, but i am working against SO MUCH push-up/balloon boob shape from the original sculpt!