first project ended in a cloud of white dust >.< second try with super sculpy! it's a little smaller then the first project, I need critique and suggestions >< aug 23, more pics! everything but the hands and feet blurry close-up of the head, not completely happy with it but I can;t do much better this round blurry pic of the back. my camera sucks at close-ups. and this is a pretty small doll, less then a foot. aug 26 was bored, decided to blush what I had after drilling. I'm getting there!
day 2! made roughs for the limbs, discovred that you cannot pull out foil forms >.< baked everythign for 15 minutes so I could shape it better before adding more bulk/details/defination. tommrow I'll add more details and smooth out some times, and lenthen the limbs, maybe adding ball joints before I get dad's drill out and have some fun. I need to pull more foil out of the chest so the belly fits in better. comments? am I doing stuff wrong?
Hang in there sweetie your doing fine :grin: A big part of making your own doll is just having the will to do it..and you look like your darn determined...lol...I'm pretty much a noob at sculpting too...but it is a lot of fun and yes work makin it happen...foil in the arm and leg parts is a big pain..I ended up sculpting the arms then drilling them out, maybe not the best way to do it but it's what worked for me good luck on the rest of your doll making journey...Jeannie
Oh honey! Not the white sculpey! It's so brittle / too soft to sculpt! It's okay if you are casting him in resin later, but if you intend to finnish him as sculpey I'd reccomend the stronger Super Sculpey (comes in a pinkish color)! It's also a little firmer so you can get those ab-lishious details :wink: hehe. Eee, sorry to sound so alarmist! ops: I just want to make sure your boy doesn't snap apart upon stringing! I forgot to comment on how he's looking good so far! His head/face look asian, cool! In the second batch of pics of his parts laying on the baking sheet, are those his legs? (The bigger, thicker logs?) They look a little on the short side, you might want to look at some naked, other ball-jointed dolls for reference. It also helps looking at the joints to see how they work. Just keep at those details and tweaking him up! :grin:
aye, I was planning on making them longer, I had intending to pull out ot e foil first ops: I've got pretty good schematics I drew up. white scuplty is too soft? I didn't know that.. I wasn't planning on casting because I don't have the materials or the room atm.. maybe he'll just be a test and then use what I learn not to do on a next doll. thank you!
Wow you're fast as this! XD You already have his parts re-made O_O ! How are you liking the Super Sculpey? It's a lot firmer for those details. Yea, casting is too complicated for me too. On my next big BJD (a SD-sized cat anthro maybe...) I want to cast her! But Nixie will stay just the way she is as her Super Sculpey self. ^_^ This is just advice for your mechanics (from a sculpey and polymer clay user of over 10 years) and not against your sculpting skills: To make the parts hollow I first sculpted them solid, then went back with a tool and carved them out (before baking. The firmer clays allow you to do stuff like that without them smushing in your hands). It's a cool sculpey tool that has a "spear" thing at one end and a "sickle" tool at the other end (like a pointy, moon-shaped melon baller ^o^). I used the latter to get all the clay out leaving the parts all about 1/4 inch thick (which I wouldn't go much less than that unless you had too, like in the arms.) One last thing: in her hands and feet, where you put the S-hooks, imbed a cut nail or REALLY tough wire piece for the S-hook to ride against. That way the tension will be on the nail and spread out against the sculpey it’s imbedded in.
heh, I just kidn started smushing bits of it together while watchign a movie... I work fast on about everything I do.. it's a little buit more difficult to start out with because it feel slike it'll crumble, but it definatly holds its shape a lot better. I still have to make his legs and work more ont he face. Iknow what tool you're talking about ^_^ got one at the same time I bougth the clay. managed to injure myself twice on it before leavign the store. I'll definatly try to hollow him out.
oh no! I hope not hurt bad ops: It is pointy, be careful with those clay tools! If you knead the clay up (pasta machines work great to do that if you want to spare your hands, just stick a slab through a couple times on the thickest setting) it will be smoothest / easier to work with. It never gets as soft as the normal sculpey (that would defeat the purpose of it ^^) but it will make it a good consistency. When hollowing out the parts, be careful not to make it too thin. You can hold it up to a strong light and look in to check. The thin areas will show the light through more than thick areas. To make her smoother inside, take any long rod object and stick it in and try to roll the inside smoother gently. After carving out the parts like the legs / arms, you can then add on the ball joints (smooth them on well with your fingers or a round toothpick, or any other tool! Just sticking them on isn’t properly connecting the clay to itself) and cut out where the elastic will ride through. Good luck, I hope my advice helps. (This is all from the experience of making Nixie). ^__^
grrr... I hate doing projects around my mom. because she always tries to help, wheich means she hijacks the project. she "suggests" ideas and how to do them then gets mad when I don't follow her advice. I'm so frustrated with this project I coudl cry. I frikken know the hands are too big she doesn't have to point it out
OMG you have a parent that does that too?! XD My dad does the SAME thing...drives me NUTS. I tell him over and over "LET ME *&#$@ DO IT!" because I'm totally fine on my own but he always tries to "help". And when I do something it's almost never "That's cool Nyssa" or "Neat idea Nyssa" it's aways a suggestion on how to do this or that different (IE better in his mind). Anyway, about your doll! The face is pretty! Not bad at all ^^! The joints (the ball parts) look a litttllllee bit small...Maybe that has to do with how its not moving how you'd like? I don't see and little grooves for the elastic to ride in. You need those for it to "bend"...here are some of Nixie's unpainted parts: See the grooves in the joints of the arms and legs? I would have reccomended painting her, but if you don't mind the texture / color of the clay, it really doesn't matter. ^^ The color is nice of the super sculpey. Keep workin! I'm working on another doll that will not be cast right now too....I hope to finnish before college starts again. ^^
you may want to sand the sculpy so its smoother. i did that when i was experimenting with my sculpy bjd, and she came out really nicely.
cut grooves? O.o damn. they would prolly be less floppy if I had done that... I'm prolyl jsut going to give him to my friend and try another, once I get my own doll to look off of while I'm doing it. I kinda liek the way the scuplty looks, esp after being blushed a bit.. but yeah.. she got mad when I was 13 and got a little geocities site on my own so I coudl have a sailormoon fan page. she's like "why didn't you ask your dad for help" and I'm like " because... I had an html book and I didn't need him?" it's why I never did many projects while I was younger, I felt like I woulnd't be allowed to do soemthign without a parent right next to me, and they were usually too busy to help... so.. yeah. adn I guess I got tired of how she semmed to know "everything" while I would know crap.. even though I would have done whatever more/researched it more. XP I don't know if I'll scuplting at school or not, since the lobby does have a couple of kitchens.. guess it woulnd't hurt to bring a block. thanks for sharing th epics lithe!
