40–49cm Dolls Sculpting Heads for my Novel Characters

A couple of days ago I got to thinking about shelling some characters from the novel that I'm currently writing. I quickly decided that I wouldn't be satisfied with existing sculpts, at least for their faces. I tossed around the idea of sculpting bodies too, but in the end decided that I wouldn't really enjoy that.

I made a line up of the bodies I intend to use for each character, to make sure that they wouldn't look unnatural together once they had the same head size. (From left to right the bodies are from Raccoon Doll, Dollzone, Dream Valley, and Myou.)



Deciding that they looked nice together, I moved on to sketching some concepts for the first head, the one that will go on the tallest body. He will be a shell for my character, Summer, once all is said and done. He's an arrogant bastard so I wanted to reflect that in his smirk.



I also sketched a concept for the other male character, Spring (starting to see a theme here?). He's intended for the Dollzone body, which is currently in the process of shipping to me.



So, yeah, maybe I should have sculpted him first, and maybe he will be printed and ready before Summer even though I didn't, but I really can't help having favorites!

Summer is just such an enjoyable sort of bastard. I started sculpting him in Zbrush last night, with symmetry staying on for the majority of the process. He looks a bit different than my original sketch but I think it's cuter this way.



After a long process of refining, upping the polycount, refining some more, rinsing and repeating, it was time for me to turn off symmetry. I was, honestly, terrified of this step of the process. There was just so much pressure for the sculpt to be how I wanted it beforehand. What if I had messed up something fundamental without realizing it? And so I put it off until today.

But, after smoothing out things that didn't even need smoothing for the 100th time, it was clear I had to continue. I turned off symmetry and scooted things around with the move tool, edited his lips to be more fitting for the new smirk, and gave him his signature scar.





I can proudly say I'm decently happy with how he's turning out so far!

Thank you for reading all this, and feel free to let me know what you think of him

 

Thank you!! Smirking expressions are one of my favorite kinds

Yeah, I really wanted to have a good variety of body types! With heads that were already made for them they would've looked really silly as a group, though, haha. And thanks! I'm having a lot of fun with his look

 

Update time!

I worked on doing a mock-up faceup for Summer, and I was pretty happy with how it turned out!





And, following some advice I received, I decided that it would make more sense to smooth out his scar in case I'd want to professionally cast more than one and sell the others. It would be easy enough for me to mod it back in during the faceup process!



I also started working on sculpting Spring! He's still a work in progress in terms of his proportions, but I think he's coming along nicely so far as well. He's a grumpy boy.




I think that the profile is where he falls apart a bit more... Not sure why yet.



And here are the two boys next to each other! I think they're looking nice and distinct so far.



Which do you prefer? I'd love to know!

 

Nope, not meant to be related. I actually fiddled around with Spring more recently, and I think they look more distinct now! I'll share the pictures in a moment ^^

 

Worked more on Spring's overall face sculpt, and made both his and Summer's ears a bit more prominent.





Here are the two of them side by side again! I'm thinking about tweaking a few more things, but I'm not sure what yet.