second go at a doll - critique welcome please!

Hi Whitewings - thanks for your comments and *thanks* for the headsup about ultrasil (lol booger green) - What a good price! I will run off to buy some since I am almost out of pinkysil. Iagree, Pinkysil does cure very quickly, you do have to have everything setup to pressure right away.

A question for you - what bar do you pressure to? I can only get to about 3.2, which is I think about 43 psi before my paint pot safety valve blows. It seems to be high enough to blow out the bubbles, but I did read that you need to be at about 4 bar or 60 psi.

 

I finally have gotten to the feet and fixed the poseability of the arms. I have been making locks and testing her posing before casting the final moulds (now I have a pressure pot, life is good!) She stands well, and I only have her hands to string as well as a bit more sanding.

 

thanks Jphobia and aneemal. I am not sure about the knees - next time I woujld prpbably make the double jointing more hidden, but I like the posing that it gives you. I have a shinydoll, who has the best posing in the world and I am using her for joint inspiration. I might need to add a cup in the thigh joint for additional poseability in mark 2 as well. But this one I want to get finished!!!

aneemal, yes I hate the mouldmaking!!! hate hate hate - I still dont really have it down pat. But having a pressure pot takes a lot of the pressure off (pun not intended)

 

thanks KW! yes Doi Shin is a genius. even though I have my very own shinydoll, I still cant work out how he manages such elegant simple jointing with such amazing poseability. Here is a link to my picassa shinydoll pictures

https://picasaweb.google.com/laitdoux/ShinyDoll#

 

aww thanks crowtree - such lovely comments - I did try to make her curvaceous. I, too love the lines of a beautiful back and bottom, its not weird at all. But oh I adore your current little one, he has a beautiful bum too!! I am awed at your talent! I do hope your tiny one gets to a finished stage. This girl has taken me 2, count them, 2 years!!!!!! to get to this point, and we still have <ack> moulding and casting in front of us!

 

Well her hands are test strung. After taking these photos, her nose broke! hey ho, another repair will be required before I can cast her. So now, one thigh, her face and one foot still need a little work before casting next weekend! Critique welcome, since I can still make adjustments!

 

Thanks KW you are so nice! I must say, I am gleaning everything I can from *your* mould making process that is so beautifully documented on your blog >..< But still, I will try to document mine as well, but not as well as yours is.

 

It has taken a long time to get reasonable moulds and bubble free casts for me. I am still working on the lower leg moulds, I have a bucket full of epic fail, mould wise. But here is what I have cast so far, with the first freckly faced head cast made up as a red head lol. I find the first cast usually is having a lot of little bits & pieces in it. My only remaining moulds and casts are for the lower legs, forearms and hands. I ran out of silicon, so am waiting for some to complete those.
I need to dremel out the eyewells a little more, they are too thick around the lower lids

 

thanks kw, cerchio and dollblue. Kw, I have tried to reuse as much of the silicon as possible by cutting it into chunks as you describe. However, there is still an awful lot of waste as I learn to make moulds. I am totally going to get that book though, it sounds interesting.

 

Update. I have cast all parts except her hands. I have more work to do on her knee joints, full redesign as she is having trouble not kicking. I am really happy with her except for her knees
picspam

 

Thanks Aneemal and KW! I will try a locking mod on the knees before total redesign, and she doesnt have her own hands yet, so shes not quite all done.....

 

This is a very late update. It has basically taken me 2 years to make my own pair of hands that I was happy with. The main reason was that we moved and I lost my craft space and have only just got somewhere I can work again. I tried many different materials with small wire armatures - epoxy, wax, sculpy, air dry clay. And many different methods - i.e. fingers separately, whole hand and so on. Finally I decided to ditch the armature and found a poly clay that is a lot firmer than sculpt - la doll. Its great - I found I could do the fingers without armature. I got a little oven so I could bake instead of boil and voila - 2 nice hands. Unfortunatly, I broke one of them trying to make a plaster cast to get a wax cast to add a little more detail. I also did a silicon mould that produces truncated fingers, so I have to do another hand. Fail pics here



I have also improved her jointing in feet and hips and made new forearms that I plaster cast and then made a wax copy of. I made my own wax - its great, so easy to get a smooth finish on. Probably a bit soft, I will have to refine recipe, but workable.

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and Twigling left me some silicon - so i tried to make a cast of my forearm with it. normally I use pinkysil, but I tried hers and I love that it is clear although the second part of the mould I used too much hardener and it was all soft and gooey, so I will do a second mould of it today. The instruction said 10% of part B. This means take part A and then use 10% of that as part b. so 200 ml of part A needs 20 ml of part b, not 180ml part a and 20ml part b. I learnt that the hard (or soft silicon) way.

I also made some wax copies of new elbow joints. My plaster moulding needs a lot of work. they were remarkably unsuccessful - a lot of plaster adhering to the cast part, friable plaster, poor separation of 2 part moulds and so on. sigh.

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aww thanks Kw - you are so marvellously encouraging!