Second BJD: 65cm woman (Update 9/5)

It's been three months since I finished my first BJD attempt (http://www.bjdartists.com/joints/showthread.php?t=2891), and the sculpting bug has been growing stronger... stronger... can't... resist...

This time I'm remembering to take pictures from the beginning of the process, and I'm going to make NEW mistakes instead of repeating the same old mistakes. :XD Once again I will be constructing her out of LaDoll Premiere, which I decided I liked better than LaDoll Regular.

"Gabrielle" is 65cm tall. She is intended to be a suitable body for DIM Minimee heads, so she needs to be tall and fairly realistic in style. I intend her to have a slim athletic build, not too muscular. I'll probably make a head too, but it may not look like the drawing here. In fact, I suspect that several parts may end up not looking like the drawing. I'm also going to try double knees and elbow joints... and I may or may not put in a lower torso joint.



The red grid lines are for proportion, so that she comes out 8 Minimee heads tall. You can see where I decided to make her legs a little long in proporton to her torso. The cutout pieces to the right are the patterns for the foam core. (Using the Yoshida Style method again.)

Prepping for the foam core. The sheet of Styrofoam was a little too thin to accommodate her hiney and shoulder blades, so I glued on extra foam.


Doing the side view first. The rough cut, using a keyhole saw and that foam melty thingy.


Testing the opposite side for fit. It's hard not to get off a bit as you're cutting through the width of the foam.


Cutting the full face view. The foam melty thingy smokes a lot and makes a bad smell, so I was doing all this outside. And no, I'm not really this tidy, I vacuumed up debris before each photo.



Why doesn't she have arms and lower legs, you ask? The foam core gets so thin in those areas that it's easier to use drinking straws for cores. In fact I've already broken the knee and neck.

(continued)

 

Making the foam core, continued. I take some trouble over this stage, because it seems that as the core goes, so goes the clay outer shell.

Drew some anatomical guidelines on the core:



Then started to sculpt the core with the rasp. This is where things get REALLY messy. Foam crumbs with a static charge are everywhere... on the table, on the floor, on the vacuum cleaner, and probably in places I can't mention in a family friendly forum.

Checking the fit on the drawing:




Here is the finished core. I've patched the broken parts and that divot in the thigh, and attached drinking straws to be the arm and lower leg cores. The dowels inside the straws are to keep them from warping as the paperclay dries.
Front:

Back:


I hope to have time to start applying paperclay later this week!

 

Jphobia and Kwmelvin, thanks for your interest! I hope to post another "installment" soon.

Cureilona, it's something I found in a craft store. You plug it in and the wire gets hot and cuts through the foam, creating mozzarella-cheese-like strings and kind of a bad smell.

 

Cureilona, I keep forgetting to check the brand for you, but it's called a "hot wire foam cutter". Joankagami is right, it works like a soldering iron. Mine was very cheap, from Hobby Lobby. I think it would actually work better if I got the kind with a stiff blade rather than a bendy wire.

And, thanks everyone for the kind comments!

 

Update August 1st

When last seen, our heroine had sticks for legs, foam for guts, and no head. She's looking a little better now.

I wrapped the foam cores in La Doll Premiere, rolled out to 1/4" (about 6mm) thick. She will still be a little undersized after I wrap her, but I wanted a little wiggle room to sculpt in (besides, a sheet of clay 3/8" thick doesn't bend very well). The two dowels help me keep a uniform thickness.



Wrapped the arms and let them dry, then the legs, ditto. Doing it in stages because I keep messing up the wet clay on the part I just finished.





When the arms and legs were dry enough not to dent, I wrapped the torso. At this point she's starting to look like a real doll:







That "knife in her back" is a toothpick I inserted to try to keep her left arm from sagging, since I broke the foam core during this process. But that's not the worst of what I did to her-- impatient for her to dry, I put her in the oven like Hansel and Gretel!

 

More update, August 1st

Last post covered the wet and squishy stuff, this post will be the dry and dusty stuff.

When the torso was leathery-dry, I cut joint lines while it was still relatively easy to do:





Then waited for the paperclay to dry completely before cutting off her arms and doing the rough shaping with the wood rasp. (You can tell when the clay is still a little damp because it feels cool and sounds dull when you tap on it. Dry clay is room temperature, very light, and makes a sharp hollow noise when you tap.)

I used the coarse side of the rasp to smooth her arms and lower legs into nice uniform cylinders, then took off some anomalies with the rifflers (those small funny-shaped files). At this piont her torso is pretty smooth so I didn't do much on that.





Note obligatory blood sacrifice to the gods of doll sculpting.



I also worked a bit on the head, and made wire armatures for the hands and feet. The plan was to cover those in Amazing Sculpt, a 2-part epoxy. That didn't go very well. I'll post more on that later, plus see my review of Amazing Sculpt in the Materials subforum.

 

Jphobia - head shots to come!

Japanda - I got the little riffler files from www.dickblick.com. They were a bit expensive but SO worth it! I haven't compared prices with Kwmelvin's sources, but those are worth a look too.

Glimmer, thanks! I have a feeling I'm going to shed a lot of blood over this one.

 

Arms

I filed my knuckles AGAIN in the very same spot and bled on the arms some more. This doll may have sentience by the time I'm finished.

In spite of the bloodshed, I'm making progress on the arms. I rough-filed them into uniform cylinders. I'm keeping the dowel-and-straw arrangement in them as long as possible, for strength. Also the two different-colored straws are helping me keep right and left straight. This was not intentional, but it's working!



I then added more clay to bring the silhouette up to match the drawing, plus extra to allow for filing it back down.



Then went back and shaped them with the rasp and rifflers. Here they are close to the final shape. They need a little more refining-- X's are where I need to take it down a little and O's are where I need to add more clay.



The final step will be sanding, and of course, joints.

 

Head

Here's my process so far on the head.

Styrofoam core:



Core wrapped in paperclay, with starter nose. (I don't know why she's smiling, because the poor girl is so homely!)



After some preliminary shaping with the files:



Worked on the nose, started the eyes, added to her jaw and cheekbones, and filed again:





Added an upper lip. She's starting to look like a girl, at least.



More work on mouth, nose and eyes. She now has a lower lip, her nose is a good shape, and I'm starting to hollow out the eye area and work on eye size and position.





And added more clay to her chin, brow area, upper forehead, and nape area. This is as far as I've gotten. Still much work left to do...

 

It is a bit, and I'm not thrilled with her open mouth either. Now that the added clay is dry, I'll do some more reshaping.

Kwmelvin, your hot wire cutter is great!

 

Isn't that usually how it goes! You throw out something JUST before you need it.

 

Thanks, Patl! What do you use instead of foam?

 

I was finally able to work on Gabrielle. Hurray for long weekends!

Previously I had wrapped the foam cores in a 1/4-inch layer of paperclay. When that was thoroughly dry I filed the bumps smooth, then went back and applied a 1/8" (3mm) overall. When that dried I added calves and starter breasts.



Then tweaked her shape a bit more and drew guidelines, including probable joint lines. By the way, I DON'T recommend using a Sharpie marker as I did here. Turns out the marker leaches into the paperclay and "migrates" around and makes a mess.



The legs dried in a weird backward curve, which I did not like. To correct it, I cut at the knee and added clay to adjust the angle.

Before, funny-looking:


During. The drinking straws are visible inside. I left them there so I didn't accidentally close up the stringing hole.


After, nice and straight:


(continued next post)

 

Continuing to refine the shape. I gave everything a good filing, then added clay to the breasts, rib cage, hipbones, pubic mound, shoulder blades, lower back muscles, and made her buttocks come down lower on the backs of her legs. This is all looking quite exaggerated at the moment, but it will be softened up during the sanding stage.






Here she is after preliminary sanding. One knee broke along the cut line, the same knee that broke on the foam core. *sigh*



Note that her shoulder blades went away again. I decided she was looking too thick through the upper back, so I filed them off, and will remake them. Also on my to-do list: abs, belly button, kneecaps and nipples. And one breast is mysteriously smaller than the other, so I have to decide whether to match the small one or the big one.

Soon I can start making joints!

 

Thanks, Maggs!

Gerakina, the shoulders should look smaller when I get the joints made (I hope).

KW, we'll see how educational this is when I start actually cutting joints. It might be lessons in what NOT to do!

 

Maybe we can both cover what not to do!

I'm expecting the joints to be a bit of a struggle, especially the knees and elbows. I'm working on the shoulders today. I'll work my way down the body.

 

I'm still here, but life got in the way and my project never got finished. I hope I can start it up again someday soon.